Ethical and ontological foundations of justice in E. Levinas’s philosophy

Abstract

The issue of justice occupies one of the central places in the history of philosophy. On the one hand, this is determined by the significant social importance of justice, and at the same time it is problematic to reach social and scientific consensus regarding the very conception of justice and its attainability. Perhaps, this is the reason, why this problem has become an unsolvable one, a sort of eternal philosophical question. Despite this, scholars demonstrate little interest in it and it is located on the periphery of the research field. However, the issue of justice has not lost its topicality in political and social philosophy, and it is perfectly proved by a vivid discussion initiated by J. Rawls, in which the concept of justice has been infused with a considerable value. The present discussion about the foundations and principles of justice became the reason to once again turn to the phenomenological concept of justice of Emmanuel Levinas. He believed that ethics had a priority over ontology, and such a fundamental approach allows one to analyze his ethical ideas as one of the perspective areas for inquiry into the phenomenon of justice. Our paper considers the main tenets of Levinas’s social phenomenology, among which ethics takes priority over ontology. It analyses the relations with the Other that appear on the basis of compassion and love, which Levinas perceived as understanding and acceptance in the context of the ideas of rationalism and universalism. The paper argues that ethical formalism is inherent to rationalist philosophy, whereas in social phenomenology another understanding of justice is suggested, which defines with the transcendency of the Other. The latter is demonstrated as an ontological advantage and the possibility of recognition of each human being as a unique person, worthy of respect.