Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: Collective Responsibility Held Responsible - 1,116 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

... is is perhaps Levinas's most famous insight expressed most clearly in 'Ethics and Spirit. ' The human face is the site of human personality. 'The face is not the mere assemblage of a nose, a forehead, eyes, etc. , ' he says; 'it is all that, of course, but takes on the meaning of a face through the new dimension it opens up in the perception of a being' (8). The other is always already a 'Thou, ' because she has a face; she forbids every effort to reduce her to an 'It, ' because objects do not have faces. When I look upon the other's face, I perceive the presence of something more than a composition of interests. I glimpse a being. Her face establishes her uniqueness, her irreducibility to interpretive context, her 'being-in-herself. ' Just as Levinas says in 'God and Philosophy, ' I can account for her behavior, but I can never account for her face.

Her presence before me, revealed by her face, is a summons to respond, to bestir and thus to identify myself: 'here I am' (182 - 84). The I-Thou relation is constitutive of the self, not the other. I construct myself as a person by how I respond to others. But I can also deconstruct myself. As Levinas makes clear in 'Transcendence and Height, ' I can hold myself in unresponsive silence, leaving open the possibility that I have treated the other unjustly, or I can seize her in an effort to know her, committing an act of violence that transforms counterfactual injustice into actual injustice (15 - 17). So responsibility precedes understanding.

Now this would seem to be a paradox, as pointed out by Derrida, since the response to another usually takes the form of speech, and speech is usually taken to designate a meaning. In "The Notion of Persecution in Levinas's Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, " Elizabeth Weber notes that Levinas observes that speech has a moral purpose which is distinct from its linguistic purpose (i. e. you speak to me not only to disclose a semantic content but also to establish and deepen a relationship with me. You await my response). Speaking to another, as Levinas puts it, is a self-denuding before the other, "the risky uncovering of oneself, in sincerity, the breaking up of inwardness and the abandon of all shelter, exposure to traumas, vulnerability" (quoted by Weber 72).

All speech is testimonial before it is propositional. This is to say that all speech is first a confiding, a plea for acceptance, a building of trust. Everything depends upon how it is received. To listen exclusively for the message is to treat as nothing your courage in revealing yourself or to be suspicious of your sincerity. It is to humiliate or to reject you. In either case, it is a failure of love, because all self-revelation is an act of love and a summons to love in return (75).

This means to answer you, I must renounce all claims to domination and sovereignty and acknowledge your claims upon my attention and concern. For example, I must abandon the powerful position of silence. The dialogue of speech and response, then, as Levinas puts in it 'Ethics and Spirit, "institutes the moral relationship of equality and consequently recognizes justice" (8). Weber explains how Levinas is like speech-act theorists, he analyzes speech according to how the saying is said but unlike speech-act theorists, he distinguishes types of speech not in formal terms, but in the intentionality of speaking and listening (73). Speech is 'for-the-other' when it is offered as testimony on behalf of the other, but it is 'by-the-other' when it is heard as testimony by her own means. To try to clarify, in speech for-the-other I designate an object of communication, because I have a responsibility to communicate with you; but in speech by-the-other you display a willingness to be wounded, you risk 'suffering without reason, ' and I have a responsibility to attend to you (quote used by Weber 78).

Thus, propositional meaning is a by-product of responsibility. In other words, speech by-the-other is answered with speech for-the-other. Understanding is possible only because I accept you as a partner in a face-to-face dialogue before I even try to understand you. I speak to you, not to disclose my understanding, but to assume responsibility toward you. As Levinas puts it in "Toward the Other" this is the basis of community, because in responding to you I assume responsibility toward you "on behalf of someone else. " To speak for-the-other is to engage the interest of everyone who has interests in common (20 - 21).

This is where Levinas approaches the concept of collective responsibility, which emerged in post-Holocaust philosophy to characterize German guilt. According to this thinking, members of a community are held responsible for things they did not participate in but which were done in their name. Levinas, however, does not ground collective responsibility upon "the silent dialogue between me and myself" to arrive at one's duty because there is little to prevent this silent dialogue from concluding with the decision to cause injustice (20). At such a state, injustice would have to be prevented by appeal to something outside the self, which is counter intuitive for Levinas because the self is its response to the other.

The dialogue of morality is not between me and myself, but between you and me. If you call out in distress it accuses me, even if I am not guilty of making you call out, because your distress confronts me with the question whether I am going to do anything to alleviate it. And I can assume responsibility on behalf of someone else, someone who might be obligated to me. Members of a community are held responsible for things they did not participate in but which were done in their name, because a community springs from the responsibilities that its members assume toward one another, even if they are not obligated to do so (25 - 26). As a white male I am part of a community that treated as objects black males and females. When reading The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, Beloved, or Middle Passage, I feel that I am not guilty, but that I am accused.

The gnawing of my conscience caused me to look away from these texts because they threatened me, I was afraid of feeling responsible for the pain and trauma of the text. I joined with those who said Slavery was in the past and should stay there, enough is enough. According to Levinas, it is not poets but critics who return literature to its ethical responsibility. In h...


Free research essays on topics related to: injustice, dialogue, held responsible, collective responsibility, weber

Research essay sample on Collective Responsibility Held Responsible

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com