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Document Details : Title: Two Slices from the Same Loaf? Subtitle: Weil and Levinas on the Demand of Social Justice Author(s): LOUGHEAD, Tanya Journal: Ethical Perspectives Volume: 14 Issue: 2 Date: June 2007 Pages: 117-138 DOI: 10.2143/EP.14.2.2023964 Abstract : In this essay, I seek the roots of social justice in the writings of Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas as such roots relate to nourishment. Both thinkers have a rigorous demand embedded in their ethics, a demand that (unlike a Kantian demand) tries to appeal to man as an emotional, sympathetic, rational, and embodied being. For Levinas, it is the actual face of the Other that calls me to my ethical duty; for Weil, the bellow of protestors marching the picket line. Neither relies upon theory (first) from which to base the ethical demand. This essay argues that alongside both we find a saintly ethic of excess, although this excess takes different forms. |
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