Law in Proximity: Levinas in the Spaces of Justice

Plenary Speakers:
Michael Fagenblatt, Monash University
Robert Gibbs, University of Toronto
Jill Stauffer, Haverford College

Ninth Annual Talmudic Lecture
Georges Hansel, Societe Interationale de Rescherche Emmanuel Levinas

Co-Directors
Dr. Timothy Stock, Philosophy, Salisbury University (Maryland)
Dr. James Hatley, Environmental Studies, Salisbury University (Maryland)

“... the law is in the midst of proximity ...” OBBE 159

Levinas’s two most influential works—Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being—develop accounts suggesting how social and political orders based upon the ethical priority of peace over war might be enacted.  In working out a fuller sense of Levinas’s approach, which often remains sketchy in these and his other writings, much has been made of the face-to-face relationship and of how it leads to communication with others, as well as opens up the possibility for commentary.  Indeed, without sufficiently acknowledging the responsibility I take for another, justice, necessarily fragmentary and incomplete, quickly becomes a tool of injustice.  The purpose of this conference is to consider how Levinasian discourse might address a broad range of questions of justice and the role of law in meting out justice in the context of vexing political and social problems we face today.

All questions concerning the conference should be sent electronically to: [email protected]