The Priority of the Human in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

Abstract

Emmanuel Levinas has recently been given much attention for the resources that his writing could provide for an ethics of the non-human. While some commentators dismiss the humanistic biases of Levinas' analyses in favor of expanded sites of application, others argue that Levinas' anthropocentrism is central to his philosophy. This debate is resolved by demonstrating that Levinas' analysis oflanguage and separation in Totality and Infinity is an analysis of the hW11an on!.v. For Levinas, ethics signifies the peculiar way ofbeing in the world that is found in the site of the human. This way of being in the world is the emergence of concems about justice, the emergence of reason and discourse, but it does not restrict moral consideration to hwnans. Despite Levinas' own tendency to align the non-human animal against the ethical, there is nothing in Levinas' analysis that prevents granting full moral consideration to the non-human.