Thread : Levinas and Bauman

Emmanuel Levinas and, following Levinas, Zygmunt Bauman both propose a theory of ethical responsibility based upon the encounter with the Other.

Levinas argues that most people tend to go about understanding their world by reducing it to themselves and their interests. You have your projects, your goals, your expectations of what exists in the world and what is probable and improbable within it. Understanding tends to reduce things to a familiar perspective. Reason seeks to coordinate other people such that they act in conformity with our plans and projects. This is especially true in capitalism, where selfishness is often seen to be a virtue and reason and understanding are reduced to strategies to facilitate self-preservation and profit-maximization.

In spite of all this, Levinas claims that although you may have an idea of another person, this idea can never capture the being of that other person. Furthermore, if you come to think that your idea of another person is adequate to that person, that your concept of that person exhausts what there is to know about that person, then in a certain sense you have lost contact with that person. The reason for this is that each and every person is irreducible to any concept, and thus to any set of plans and expectations that you may have as you go about your business in the world.

This is where ethics comes in for Levinas. Ethics, for Levinas, does not take the form of universal laws or norms and rules for right or virtuous behavior. Rather ethics occurs in the encounter between two human beings, and in the demand made on the "I" by the Other.

Think about it this way: pretend you are opening up a new business next week. So far everything is going according to plan and everyone that you have hired to get the business running on time are keeping on schedule. You show up to the site of your new business and the carpenter you hired is waiting to speak to you. You can tell from the look in their eyes that there is something wrong. They ask if they can leave early because they have just learned that their child has died, and that they probably can't come back to work for a few days. If you allow this then your business will not open on time and you will lose a lot of money. What do you do?

I think the crucial thing about this example is that, although we strive to make the world around us conform to our own interests, expectations, and understandings, ethics has something deeply inconvenient about it. Ethics originates in the demand that the Other places upon us, a demand that often throws us off balance and disrupts us, but which demands a response of some sort or another.

Here is this person looking you in the eyes and this person, you suddenly see, in no way conforms to your plans and expectations. They don't fit into the order that you try to impose upon the world. Yet their presence before you presses down on you and demands a response. The Other singles you out and makes a demand. This demand is not in their words or any reasons that they communicate to you. It's more physical than that and it comes before any reasons or understanding; it is in their eyes and communicated by their face. This demand may be inconvenient, but you can't avoid it without denying the humanity of the person making the demand.

Ethics is grounded in the unavoidable and unpredictable demand for a response made on you by another person, a demand that erupts into and disorders your expectations.

So if ethics is grounded in these sorts of face to face encounters, what problems does that raise for stakeholder theory? Or, on a related note, what ethical concerns does Zygmunt Bauman raise with regards to the predominance of bureaucracy in modern society?

What do you think about the inconvenient nature of ethics? And what are the implications of this for business?

How would you apply a Levinasian perspective to understanding the ethical obligations corporations have to stakeholders? How would you apply this perspective to business ethics more generally?

Do you have any other thoughts or questions about this topic?