And Who is My Neighbour

Bibliographic Data

ID22311147
AuthorsAnna Strhan (0000-0002-0875-1197, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume19
Issue2
Pages145-166
Publication date2009-11-30
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Interreligious Dialogue (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0926-2326 • E-ISSN: 0926-2326
PublisherPeeters Publishers (PUBLISHER • BE)
DOI10.2143/sid.19.2.2044689
OpenAlexW1992746088
LanguageEN
Citations received5

With the publication of 'A Common Word' in October 2007, both Christian and Muslim leaders have in recent years highlighted the contemporary significance of the commandment to love the neighbour as a starting point in working towards a meaningful peace between these religious traditions. In this paper, I propose that Emmanuel Levinas’s presentation of obligation towards the neighbour in a relation of proximity in Otherwise than Being provides a provocative reinterpretation of this commandment, extending its appeal by suggesting that the demand of responsibility towards the neighbour and the possibility of peaceful relations is a transcendental condition of subjectivity rather than understanding it as a commandment addressed to members of the Abrahamic religions. Levinas’s conceptions of illeity, vulnerability and proximity as preconditions for society and justice provide a challenge to how we think about relations with others in education, particularly for considering the nature of inter-faith and intra-faith dialogue. Levinas’s vision of loving the neighbour is not sentimentalised but admits of the potential violence found in the approach of the neighbour whilst at the same time presenting the obligation of responsibility to the neighbour as bringing the possibility of peace

Geography · Critical and Liberation Pedagogy · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

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