Interpreting from the interstices: the role of justice in a liberal democracy - lessons from Michael Walzerand Emmanuel Levinas

ENWorking in a more robustly sociopolitical vein, author brings Levinas into dialogue with the work of the American political theorist Michael Walzer. The two share considerable discomfort with the modern liberalism of someone like John Rawls. The latter is commonly understood to take the view that, as regards political action, it is to be expected that good government will insure that all citizens have sufficient freedom and thus sufficient equality to exercise their rights and pursue their interests. As regards political theory, modern liberalism engages in the project of formulating a universal account of inalienable rights, permissible interests, and proper governance. Those who are familiar with Levinas’s conception of ethical plurality will recognize the basis for significant hesitation at any notion of a justification that does not originate in concrete responsibility, and those who are familiar with his occasional political writings will also anticipate serious misgivings about prolonged confidence in the institution. Walzer’s position, itself explicidy critical of modern liberalism, is consonant with this much. But Walzer is also intent on grounding concrete responsibility in practices that are promoted by a community that draws on a shared tradition. Walzer’s difficulty is also that of communitarians like Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre: after all, in the meantime liberalism is, at least in the North Atlantic, the order of the day. How then to open a society that is by and large liberal to a richer sense of what counts as morally and politically acceptable? And why do so? As Brown shows, Levinas is far from deaf to these questions, and, interestingly, he responds to it in a manner close to that of Walzer - by probing the resources of the Jewish and talmudic tradition for signs of a means to redefine normativity in a manner that is closer to the real conditions for practice.