A new Sense of Responsibility? A Levinasian Ecology of Religious Sentiment

The aim of this essay is to look at the manner in which the philosophical ethics of Emmauel Levinas can be brought into dialogue with environmental ethics and animal rights. Though his work has often been seen as being at odds with environmental concerns is general, I wish to highlight a basic portraiture of what Levinas' ethics of responsibility and substitution might look like within such a context and to point out the deep resonance which his work has with other recent philosophical attempts to develop similar lines of environmental responsibility. In the end, this essay tries to point such Levinasian insights beyond Levinas' own approach and toward a reckoning with a more 'object oriented' approach to our most fundamental ethical concerns today. Though this presentation will certainly challenge the standard Levinasian division between moral subjects and their objects, such reasoning, it is argued, is beneficial not only for ethical quandaries, but also for re-conceiving the nature of the human-being in its interconnectedness to the environment around it.