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Document Details : Title: The Moral Ambiguity of the Absolute Subtitle: Emmanuel Levinas and the Exigency of Demonic Resistance Author(s): DALTON, Drew M. Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 84 Issue: emeritaatsnummer Date: 2022 Pages: 67-93 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.84.5.3290712 Abstract : There are few issues more pressing for contemporary philosophy than the question of absolute value. The exigency of this question is due, in large part, to the efficacy of Kant’s critique of dogmatic metaphysics. There is, however, a terrible irony to the efficacy of Kant’s critique: in as much as it effectively eliminates the possibility of moral absolutes it enables the rise of a variety of new dogmatisms. This fact is testified to in the tragic history of 20th century politics. To counter this tragic history, Emmanuel Levinas argues that it is necessary to identify a new ethical absolute entirely within the realm of phenomena alone. Such a phenomenologically accessible absolute appears, he reasons, in the Other. Unfortunately however, as Visker has argued, Levinas’ account of the moral power of the Other is not without its own ethical ambiguities. This paper examines whether and how it might be possible to avoid these ambiguities by reframing ethical responsibility as an act of demonic resistance to the absolute. |
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