Infinite Responsibility: An expression of Saintliness

Conceição Soares ()

No 2, Working Papers de Economia (Economics Working Papers) from Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa

Abstract: In this paper I will focus my attention in the distinctions embedded in standard moral philosophy, especially in the philosophy of Kant between, on the one hand, duty and supererogation on the other hand, with the aim to contrast them with the Levinas’s perspective, namely his notion of infinite responsibility. My account of Levinas’s philosophy will show that it challenges – breaking down – deeply entrenched distinctions in the dominant strands of moral philosophy, within which the theory of individual responsibility is rooted. Finally, I will argue that the notion of infinite responsibility to the Other could be viewed as an attempt to create an ethics, based on secular saintliness/holiness with individual and social consequences in our daily life.

Keywords: Levinas; Kant; infinite responsibility; ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-hpe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.feg.porto.ucp.pt/docentes/repec/WP/0220 ... of%20Saintliness.pdf First version (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.feg.porto.ucp.pt:80 (A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cap:wpaper:022009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers de Economia (Economics Working Papers) from Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ricardo Goncalves ().