Self and Other in Ethics and Law: A Comment on Manderson

Abstract:     
This article engages with Desmond Manderson's recent book, Proximity, Levinas and the Soul of Law (2006). I begin by examining a vexed topic in Levinas scholarship: namely, the very possibility of a Levinasian legal theory. Manderson makes a constructive and, I think, important contribution to this question, insisting that Levinas does not require us to segregate the domains of ethics and law, as some interpreters have suggested. This basic issue provides us with a springboard to explore two other themes in Manderson's reading of Levinas. The first concerns the relationship between self- and other-oriented approaches to ethical and legal discourse; the second, the role of ethical experience in informing and shaping judicial reasoning.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 8

Keywords: Law and ethics, legal reasoning, Levinas

Accepted Paper Series