Does Humanism Necessarily Imply Speciesism? The Case of Levinas’ Humanism in the Light of Herder’s

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985955%3A_____%2F25%3A00638977" target="_blank" >RIV/67985955:_____/25:00638977 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.32.1.3294141" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.32.1.3294141</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2143/EP.32.1.3294141" target="_blank" >10.2143/EP.32.1.3294141</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Does Humanism Necessarily Imply Speciesism? The Case of Levinas’ Humanism in the Light of Herder’s

Original language description

This article intends to show that Levinas’ humanism does not imply speciesism. Our argument is that Levinas does not derive the sense of an ethical obligation from a pregiven concept of the human being. His defence of humanism is therefore not the expression of the idea that human beings have an exclusive moral dignity on the basis of their being human. This argument will be developed in two parts. In the first part, we situate Levinas’ humanism within the tradition of modern humanism and differentiate it from Herder’s approach in the eighteenth century, which can be considered paradigmatic for a modern concept of humanism that inevitably implies speciesism. In the second part, we argue that a metaphorical transference is at the core of Levinas’ concept of subjectivity, the appearance of which is required for the ethical sense of oneself-forthe-other. We will refer, therefore, to Levinas’ use of the metaphor of the ‘skin’ in his analyses of subjectivity and otherness in Otherwise than Being. As a result, it will be shown that the ethical sense of subjectivity does not deny but entails ‘the ambiguity of the animal’.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Ethical Perspectives

ISSN

1370-0049

e-ISSN

1783-1431

Volume of the periodical

32

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

BE - BELGIUM

Number of pages

23

Pages from-to

1-23

UT code for WoS article

001553755000001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-105011147764