ENACTING LEVINAS’S INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY AS AN ETHICO-POLITICAL COMPROMISE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/eps.2.1.96Keywords:
Levinas, ethics, politics, infinite responsibility, business ethics, CSRAbstract
Levinas’s work does not offer us an ethical theory but seeks rather to describe a pre-originary ethical encounter with the other. Within this face-to-face encounter with the other, my subjectivity is held hostage because of an originary asymmetry between us. This ethical asymmetry produces an infinite responsibility to and for the other, in order that the singularity of the other be preserved. In order to moderate such a demanding position Levinas introduces the third party who restores justice by permitting ethical calculation. This marks a move from ethics to politics. Nonetheless, there remains a lacuna between ethics and politics. I argue for a reading of Levinas’s claim that the third party is an incessant correction of the asymmetry of proximity in order to posit infinite responsibility as the compromise of ethics with politics. I discuss some implications for business ethics, in particular CSR, in light of these findings.
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