Tortologies
(2006) 31 Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy) 14-49
5 Pages Posted: 2 Aug 2012
Date Written: 2006
Abstract
It matters how we conjugate the world. The grammar in which one frames an area of law indicates what is seen to be important about it and why. How did law arise and to what end? These questions have generated a variety of powerful myths surrounding the origin of law. Over the past several years, I have been working on a project which has attempted to articulate the insights of Levinas to a legal audience, with particular reference to the distinct idea of responsibility in tort law. Above all, as I hope this essay will go on to illustrate, Levinas offers a point of departure in trying to understand why we ought to be responsible for others that is radically unlike the standard grammars and philosophical reference points which have to date governed our understanding of this responsibility. Levinas suggests that we can understand responsibility in quite a different way, and in a manner that both captures something central to the legal discourse, and - just as relevantly - central to our own experience. Law is, after all, not just a structure of arbitrary rules of co-ordination. It is a story as to the way in which our society re-attaches commitments to their proper authors. Responsibility is not a judicial auto-da-fe but an influential narrative about who we are.
Keywords: Levinas, torts, responsibility, negligence, proximity, ethics, grammar
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