Sociality and Justice

Toward Social Phenomenology

Building on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this groundbreaking book puts the phenomenological paradigm into a new perspective. Overcoming the focus on self-reflection of the thinking subject and instead arguing for the importance of sociality as responsibility for the Other, this new approach is based on inter-subjectivity and introduces a social dimension in phenomenology. This also allows for a different interpretation of the notion of justice, which in this context sits in the space between the one, the other, and the third before settling into any relation to the law. In the vast area inhabited by more or less distant others, moral responsibility is implemented through the establishment and maintenance of just institutions.