Abstract
While Levinas initially appears to reject the political to affirm the importance of the ethical, he subsequently realizes that his turn to the ethical leads to a problem that cannot be resolved within its boundaries. The sociality of human existence means that the individuals of the face-to-face encounter are always accompanied by others. This brings forth the question of how each individual can fulfil his infinite responsibility to all faces within the constraints of a finite existence. It is politics that decides how to deal with this issue. For this reason, Levinas’s affirmation of the ethical entails a primordial critique of the political that subsequently returns to the political. The political returned to, however, is not the political based in an egoistic ontology, but one based in and from the ethical relation.
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Rae, G. (2016). Levinas and the Return of the Political. In: The Problem of Political Foundations in Carl Schmitt and Emmanuel Levinas. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59168-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59168-5_8
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