Levinas and Responsibility in the Face of Violence: A View from Lithuania

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of the possibility of responsibility in the face of violence. Invoking choices made within the Holocaust experience, the paper shows how, from Levinas’ perspective, morality and humanity are tested. First, violence interrupts a person’s integrity and forces upon him/her choices he/she would otherwise not make. Second, war as the ultimate form of violence alleges the introduction of a “new morality” to justify its atrocities. Yet, this is belied because morality cannot be defined solely by ontology or epistemology and needs to account for vulnerability and passivity. Recognizing that moral responsibility is conjoined with vulnerability reveals it to be deeper than the logic promulgated by war. This is confirmed by an analysis of Cain’s question, which shows that evil arises by ignoring the face of the other, by a secondary effort to displace the primacy of being for-the-other.