Abstract

This chapter seeks inspiration for media ethics in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas’s ethical message concerns the import of the relation with the Other, a relation that interrupts any attempt at its thematization, including Levinas’s own philosophy. Levinas’s writing serves as an exemplary medium for this ethical message in conveying the teaching of ethics along with the interruption it advocates. This chapter extends the logic of the ethical message beyond the two key media in Levinas’s work—speech and writing—to speculate on whether interruption can be carried over to audiovisual media. Running throughout the chapter is the question of mediation, which takes the discussion outside the context of the face-to face, where Levinas’s thought is typically situated, to the context of thirdness and justice.