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Where a Levinasian Moral Self and a Rortyan Private Ironist Meet for Coffee

Sun, December 16, 4:15 to 5:45pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Beacon Hill 1 Complex

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to bring a pragmatist consideration into the space of the encounter with the Other. According to Levinas an actual encounter with the face of the Other is necessary for a development of the moral self. In opposition, Richard Rorty rejects this kind of "gawky, awkward, and unenlightening" encounter and insists that ethics is solely what happens "when we face a choice between two irreconcilable actions, each of which would, in other circumstances, have been equally natural and proper." For Levinas the free choice of a moral self can only come after being forced to acknowledge moral responsibility. But Rorty imagines a free self in the image of an eccentric artist rather than a righteous and caring member of the community. Rorty's rejection of the Levinasian encounter in the creation of the moral self misses a point of great resemblance between the ethical perceptions of the two thinkers. Both insist on the priority of ethics to the act of philosophy. Interestingly enough, the place in which Levinasian ethics comes close to describing the Rortyan ideal liberal is the imagined Jewish European intellectual he describes so vividly in the presentations of "Difficult Freedom".

This striking similarity brings me to suggest that what Rorty understands as the sole ethical activity is in fact a pragmatist description of a Levinasian reasoning, a reasoning which emerges in the wake of a "gawky" encounter. This paper suggests that there is no moral self that can rationalize its way through ethical dilemmas without a Levinasian encounter with Otherness. This encounter is what allows one to develop the sense of solidarity which for Rorty is the center of the moral stance. In my presentation I read closely presentations from "Difficult Freedom" and show that, the same notion of solidarity emerges through understanding of the encounter with the Other in terms of a sacred command "Thou Shall Not Kill". Thus, Both the Levinasian encounter and the Rortyan liberal sentiment meet through a notion of solidarity.

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