The "Other" in the etihcs of E. Levinas. Implications for education

Abstract

In this article, the author addresses the need to promote and encourage another way of “being in the world” and of relating to others based on the ethics of compassion. Nothing can be changed without analysing the causes of the current situation of individualism that leads to the construction of societies of isolated, atomised individuals without links that unite them to shared projects in their own community. The author describes the effects of idealism in the configuration of our society and advocates the ethics of compassion as a “tool” that can favour the construction of a just, equitable and supportive society, that is, a society with a human face. In this work, the author sets out the fundamental features of Levinasian ethics, underlining the unconditionality of the ethical response and its asymmetry. The condition of subject depends on the other who interpellates us from the authority conferred by his or her situation of vulnerability. No one is human by themselves; it is the other who makes us human. The author advocates taking up the challenge of an ethics of compassion that fixes its response on the vulnerable concrete other, on “the foreigner, the orphan and the widow”, in the felicitous expression of Levinas. Likewise, it proposes as a strategy for educating in responsibility to use on the experience of the student as content of education and the creation of an educational climate in the classroom. Finally, he points out the need to go to the roots of “evil”, of a society that has made indifference and coldness its main characteristic. He proposes a return to the roots of our culture. This entails a constant work of denunciation and resistance, as well as the memory of those who have gone before us.