Levinas and the possibility of dialogue with "Strangers"

Abstract

This programmatic essay explores some of the challenges that a seemingly quintessential European or Continental philosopher such as Levinas faces when his thought on alterity and on the responsibility we bear towards the Other, is brought face-to-face with other (non-Western) ways of thinking alterity and especially difference(s). Given the fact that Levinas‟s entire oeuvre is dedicated to exposing the violent reductionism at work in Western philosophy, a colonizing tradition par excellence that establishes its self-certainty by way of usurping anything and everything that is other-than-itself, such an encounter seems critical. Yet, Levinas and his thinking seem to be burdened with a number of inherent biases that severely compromise any possibility of dialogue. These include the fact that Levinas‟s notion of an abstract Alterity does not account for differences; his undeniable Eurocentric bias and racist prejudice; and finally, the irreconcilability of ethics and politics in this thinking. This essay attempts to address these indictments head on an attempt to prepare the ground for future research that will endeavour to stage an actual encounter between Levinas and his non-Western counterparts.