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Encountering the ‘greatest ethical philosopher’: Emmanuel Levinas and social work

Stressing his importance, a number of writers have endeavoured to explain Emmanuel Levinas’s complex philosophy to a social work readership. In contrast, this article takes a much more critical stance and remains wary about Levinas’s gradual incorporation into the profession’s literature. It begins by briefly sketching his biography and outlining the case made for Levinasian social work. After illuminating some of his main themes and concerns, four interrelated conceptual problems are identified. First, the encounter with the ‘Other’ seems to take place in a vacuum drained of social, economic and political content. Second, Levinas’s antipathy to Marxism and the conflating of Marxism with Stalinism is redolent of the politics of the Cold War. Third, his usefulness as a resource for ‘critical social work’ is eroded because he fails to adequately account for the operation of the state. Finally, Levinas often appears to valorise ‘charity’, rather the ‘welfare state’, with the recipient ‘Other’ frequently evoked as merely an abject and passive figure.