Levinas Specialty Socialism

by Hubert Cua (part 4 of 5)

Seems Familiar?


Some of the things that Levinas says, particularly “There is I and other and all other in a society.” struck me. Considering that he lived in industrial age, Levinas seems to be criticizing industrialization with his socialist viewpoint without explicitly expressing it. In industrialization, many interest conflicts are at work. Let us take factory setting as an example. During industrial revolution, the factory owners make the factory workers work under low wages to maximize profit. Here, we can see that self interest or even selfish interest, which is the profit of the factory owner in this case, is put above collective interest, which is the wages of the factory workers in this case. Hence, ethics and morality is primarily based on self or selfish interest. For the factory owner, it is right to make the factory workers work under low wages, because it maximizes profit. To criticize this, Levinas brought out that ethics and morality must not be interest oriented, but must be collective oriented. In the era of hunting, gathering and agriculture, ethics and morality is primarily based on survival, which is a collective interest. People hunt animals and do not kill each other for survival.

From the analysis in the previous paragraph, we can see that what Levinas says is not something new, even if it seems to be new. Some philosophers do not really bring out something new. Rather, they bring out something old or something lost. Although I am not sure about this, Levinas seems to be thinking backwards or thinking regressively at times. (The way I use the words backwards and regressive does not connote inferiority.)  Aside from the analysis in the previous paragraph, we can also see this when Levinas brings “Being” to “being” to “il y a”.