Ethics and the politics of language: Emmanuel Levinas and the sophists

Jacob T Pruett, Purdue University

Abstract

This thesis will explore a Levinasian ethics of rhetoric. I argue that in order to keep with the spirit of this particular approach to ethics rhetoric must at all times be put in the service of ethics, and this means ultimately, put in service of the Other. The challenge is to speak, to act, to be, in a way that brings one back to the fundamental ethical structure of responsibility, to the primacy of the Other person, and to the absolute alterity on which the being of the existent rests. The first chapter explores the main themes of Levinas’ ethics–ethics as first philosophy –a maxim that forces us to reconsider the categories of morality that we so often assume. It implores us to recognize in our moral frameworks that which lies beyond them. Levinas’ ethics and messianic time disrupt this certainty, and remind us that we can never know in advance what is just, moral or good. The second chapter examines the sophists and their larger approach to language which I call sophistics–one shaped by tragedy, philosophy, and politics. This approach to language is immanent and political. It maintains that language is irreducible from that which it expresses and denotes–that language creates being. I explore the link between sophistic time and Levinas’ messianic time as both conceive of language as a breach of totality–the more within the less. Sophistics is not founded on totality, but on elements that disrupt totalization, elements such as kairos and paradox. In this way sophistics offers us a political way of approaching the ethical, which is to say a said that performs a saying. In the final chapter I explore how, and to what extent, a Levinasian ethic of responsibility can be performed by sophistics in the agonistic paradigm of language games. I argue that the struggle, competition and dissensus that define sophistics can lead to transcendence of the self, and recognition of the ethical.

Degree

M.A.

Advisors

Goodhart, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Ethics|Rhetoric

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