Productive ambivalence

Levinasian subjectivity, justice, and the rule of law

Jill Stauffer

pp. 76-91

in: Desmond Manderson (ed), Essays on Levinas and law, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

The weight of justice hangs on the distinction between consent to obligation and responsibility for what no one would choose. What could this mean? It is often thought that the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas gives us valuable insight into the field of ethics, but has little to offer when it comes time to make the difficult decisions imposed on us by politics and institutional legality. However, if the weight of justice does hang on the distinction between consent to obligation and responsibility for what no one would choose, then what Levinas offers us with his philosophical description of human subjectivity sets in motion a much needed correction to a tradition we might wish to preserve in some of its aspects. That tradition — of liberal rule of law legality and equal rights — assumes that the subject of law and of rights is autonomous and self-sufficient, capable of consenting to take on any duty he or she would bear. That narrative respects individuals and supports liberal ideas about justice but cannot explain to us why we might bear duties beyond our legitimate legal duties. And yet such duties are indelible in our current political landscape: Who is responsible for the refugee, the prisoner of war, the sufferer of poverty or famine, the one to whom I never consented to owe a thing? If we want to answer those questions with any lasting success, we need to amend the theoretical pre-history of liberal individualism, starting with the narrative of subjectivity we inherit from that tradition. This chapter will set forth Levinas' revision of subjectivity, show its affinity with the tension between formalism and responsiveness we find in rule of law theory and practice, and gesture toward a new way to conceive of a liberatory form of individualism, all for the sake of justice.

Cited authors

Levinas Emmanuel