Abstract
While Schmitt claims that the political is defined by a normless decision about the norm to be adopted, Levinas claims that the political decision cannot simply be normless because this opens up the possibility that the populace may choose an ontological form of politics. The political decision must be guided to ensure it places the other at its heart and, for this reason, is a decision about how to affirm a particular ethical concept: justice. For Levinas, the question of justice relates to the treatment of the other and, in particular, how to answer the infinite responsibility owed to all others encountered. The political decision determines whether to affirm this norm, while also, if it is decided to do so, the organizational structures that will support it. As such, the political question regarding the nature of justice emanates and takes its cue from the ethical face-to-face relation. While the political returns from Levinas’s privileging of the ethical, it is a conception of the political rooted in the ethical. By claiming that the just state is composed of a Greek moment of rationality led by the pathos of the Judaic Bible, Levinas develops a conception of prophetic politics that orientates itself from the other and, crucially, does so based in the divine revelation of the Bible revealed through the prophecy of Judaism. Only this can direct the political decision so that ethics, in the form of justice, is placed at its core. The Levinasian political is, therefore, based in theology in the sense of religion.
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Rae, G. (2016). Prophetic Politics: Levinas and Political Theology. 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_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59168-5_9
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