Essays on Levinas and Law: A Mosaic

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Desmond Manderson
Palgrave Macmillan, Jan 15, 2009 - Philosophy - 270 pages
Emmanuel Levinas was one of the great writers on ethics of the 20th century. Now for the first time, this collection starts to think through exactly what challenges and problems are posed once we try to apply Levinas' ideas about ethics to law. Essays on Levinas and Law: A Mosaic injects Levinas' provocative thought right into the heart of living law, radically changing our understanding of both. It features a broad sweep of essays ranging from critical reflections on the connection between ethics and justice, to specific discussions of the effect that Levinas' ideas might have on our thinking about immigration, or international law, or political identity, or justice.  For those interested in philosophy and ethics, this book insists that our legal institutions are not a dirty little secret but a crucial realm in which to test our ideas. For those interested in law, this book insists that ethics is not a dirty little secret but a crucial realm by which to assess our structures and policies. For all interested readers, Essays on Levinas and Law does not intend to fulfill a need but to awaken one.

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Contents

Can a Levinasian Ethics Generate
21
Levinasian Ethics and the Concept of Law
39
Questions for a Reluctant Jurisprudence of Alterity 55
55
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

DESMOND MANDERSON holds the Canada Research Chair in Law and Discourse at the Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada. He teaches, supervises, and publishes on a wide range of subjects involving interdisciplinary work in law and the humanities, with particular interests in ideas about the relationship of law to aesthetics, philosophy, ethics, music, and literature. He is the author of several books including From Mr Sin to Mr Big: A History of Australian Drug Laws (1993); Courting Death: The Law of Mortality (1999); Songs Without Music: Aesthetic Dimensions of Law and Justice (2000); and Proximity, Levinas, and the Soul of Law (2006).

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