Self and Other in Ethics and Law: A Comment on Manderson
Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy, Vol. 33, pp. 145-151, 2008
University of Queensland TC Beirne School of Law Research Paper No. 08-13
8 Pages Posted: 20 Oct 2008
Date Written: October 20, 2008
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.
Keywords: Law and ethics, legal reasoning, Levinas
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