Spirituality and Morality: Lesson From Levinas

• In Event: 66.079 - Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: 66.079-11 - The Role of Faith in Various Contexts

Abstract

While Durkheim has located the origin of moral authority in the human experience of spirituality, he has followed Kant in moving the object of the sacred to the secular, particularly, to human consciousness. The loss of the spiritual roots of morality has been part of the ethical problems of modern times. This proposal uses Levinas’ philosophy of subjectivity and ethics to demonstrate how human spiritual experiences lie at the root of morality. Without introducing a particular religion or denomination into morality and education, I attempt to address the foundational spiritual experience of human beings that most religions appeal to.

Author

• Guoping Zhao, Oklahoma State University