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145 ANNA STRHAN AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR? Levinas and the Commandment to Love Re-Examined Introduction “The most important [commandment],” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31) The contemporary significance of this most famous of ethical imperatives can be seen in an open letter sent on 13 October 2007 to many of the world’s most influ- ential Christian leaders from 138 of the most significant Muslim leaders, empha- sising the ideal of loving the neighbour as “a common word between us and you.” In this letter, the shared obligation is presented as a starting point in attempting to build a meaningful peace between the two religions: Muslims and Christians together make up well over half the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of neighbour. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the com- mon ground between Islam and Christianity. (Open letter sent on the occasion of the Eid al-Fitr al-Mubarak 1428 A. H from 138 Muslim leaders to His Holiness Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders, hereafter referred to as A Common Word) Many responses to this obligation have been less welcoming. In the introduction to Slavoj Žižek, Eric Santner and Kenneth Reinhard’s The Neighbor, there is a provocative discussion of Freud’s rejection of the command to love one’s neigh- bour from Civilisation and Its Discontents. Freud questions, “Why would we do it? What good will it do us?” and is even more dismissive when the neighbour is a stranger: Not merely is the stranger in general unworthy of my love: I must honestly confess that he has more claim to my hostility and even my hatred. He seems not to have the least trace of love for me.… If it will do him any good he has no hesitation in injuring me.… Indeed,

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ANNA STRHAN

AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?

Levinas and the Commandment to Love Re-Examined

Introduction

“The most important [commandment],” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lordour God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all yoursoul and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)

The contemporary significance of this most famous of ethical imperatives can beseen in an open letter sent on 13 October 2007 to many of the world’s most influ-ential Christian leaders from 138 of the most significant Muslim leaders, empha-sising the ideal of loving the neighbour as “a common word between us and you.”In this letter, the shared obligation is presented as a starting point in attemptingto build a meaningful peace between the two religions:

Muslims and Christians together make up well over half the world’s population. Withoutpeace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningfulpeace in the world.

The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundationalprinciples of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of neighbour. These principles arefound over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God,the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the com-mon ground between Islam and Christianity. (Open letter sent on the occasion of the Eidal-Fitr al-Mubarak 1428 A. H from 138 Muslim leaders to His Holiness Pope Benedictand other Christian leaders, hereafter referred to as A Common Word)

Many responses to this obligation have been less welcoming. In the introductionto Slavoj Žižek, Eric Santner and Kenneth Reinhard’s The Neighbor, there is aprovocative discussion of Freud’s rejection of the command to love one’s neigh-bour from Civilisation and Its Discontents. Freud questions, “Why would we doit? What good will it do us?” and is even more dismissive when the neighbour isa stranger:

Not merely is the stranger in general unworthy of my love: I must honestly confess thathe has more claim to my hostility and even my hatred. He seems not to have the least traceof love for me.… If it will do him any good he has no hesitation in injuring me.… Indeed,

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1 With the intention that specifically Jewish features of this commandment might be-

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he need not even obtain an advantage; if he can satisfy any sort of desire by it, he thinksnothing of jeering at me, insulting me, slandering me and showing his superior power ….(Freud quoted in Žižek 2005: 2) For Freud, the relationship with the neighbour is characterised by a fundamentalmutual hostility and he rejects the ideal of love. But could we consider the obliga-tion of love in a way that is unsentimental, acknowledging the fundamental possi-bility of hostility in the relationship, yet also holding open the possibility ofpeace?

In this paper I will suggest that Emmanuel Levinas’s presentation of therelationship with the neighbour provides a challenging reinterpretation of the idealof neighbourly love. Instead of a commandment to love imposed from outside,Levinas suggests that our responsibility to the neighbour is always already there,even if we choose to ignore it. According to Levinas, I do not hear a command tolove addressed to me from outside, it is rather in that moment of responsibility tothe neighbour that I am: I could not be were that responsibility not already there.Levinas’s conception of the relation with the neighbour deepens, extends andquestions the ideal of neighbourly love found in the Abrahamic religions. Thus,while A Common Word is right to emphasise the obligation to love as common toboth Christianity and Islam and a basis for dialogue, Levinas’s work invites us toattend to a deeper level of responsibility that is present in every address from oneto another, and so moves beyond this shared command to love to a more funda-mental level of obligation implied in what it is to be a subject, what it is to speakand answer, that moves beyond the three Abrahamic faiths. While Levinas’spresentation of this obligation is infinitely demanding, it nevertheless provides acompelling view of the ideal that admits the potential violence and trauma in-volved in the neighbour’s approach. For Levinas, the neighbour who persecutesme also brings the possibility of peace through electing me as a responsible sub-ject. It is this uncovering of oneself that is the condition of communication, soci-ety, rationality and justice. This notion of a subjectivity to which I am electedthrough the traumatic appeal of the vulnerable neighbour provides a way of think-ing about both subjectivity and responsibility that has significant implications foreducation. Levinas’ writing on the relationship with the neighbour also presentsa challenge for how we think about the nature of justice within education and alsofor understanding the nature of inter/intra-faith dialogue within education.

The main focus of this paper will be an examination of the relationship with theneighbour in Otherwise Than Being, the second of what are usually considered tobe Levinas’ two major works, since it is in this text that we find the fullest treat-ment of the approach of the neighbour. I will first of all briefly consider the idealof loving one’s neighbour in Christianity and Islam,1 in order to suggest ways in

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come apparent when examining Levinas’s presentation of the relationship with theneighbour, but it is, of course, significant that “A Common Word” was addressed to Chris-tian leaders, and not to Christian and Jewish leaders.

2 This follows the commandment to love the neighbour in Luke’s gospel as theanswer to the question “Who is my neighbour?”

3 It should be noted that this letter, although mentioning the common groundbetween the three Abrahamic faiths, was addressed specifically to Christian leaders.

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which Levinas’s presentation of our obligation towards the neighbour challengesand extends these ideals. I will then consider how this might open up debate aboutthe nature of our relationships with others and particularly between those withindifferent faiths and no faith within education. Paul Standish has suggested that theparable of the Good Samaritan2 serves to challenge our thinking about the natureof our relationship with our neighbours:

The point of the parable of the Good Samaritan … is to make us think again about how weare to regard those who are strange to us. It calls into question the connection betweenobligation and belonging. In effect, it requires a shift from a physics to a metaphysics ofnearness. It reorientates obligation, towards the stranger. (Standish 2006: 1)

The same could be said of Levinas’s presentation of our obligation to our neigh-bours, and I aim to demonstrate here Levinas’s provocation.

Love of One’s Neighbour in Christianity and Islam

Within the Abrahamic faiths love of God and love of neighbour are foundationalprinciples. The historic A Common Word Between Us and You drew attention tothis3 and the responses to this letter further stressed this command as a deep con-nection between these religions. A letter written in response from over three hun-dred Christian theologians exemplifies this:

We find deep affinities with our Christian faith when A Common Word Between Us andYou insists that love is the pinnacle of our duties towards our neighbors. “None of you hasfaith until you love for your neighbour what you love for yourself,” the Prophet Mu-hammad said. In the New Testament we similarly read, “Whoever does not love [theneighbor] does not know God” (1 John 4:8) and “whoever does not love his brother whohe has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (I John 4:20). God is love and ourhighest calling as human beings is to imitate the One whom we worship. (“A ChristianReponse to A Common Word,” signed by over three hundred Christian theologians andleaders)

There is clearly no scope within this paper to examine fully the commandment tolove one’s neighbour in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I will therefore limit my-self to a brief consideration of the command within Christianity and Islam. InIslam, the importance of loving one’s neighbour is emphasised in the command

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4 Sahih Al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Imam, Hadith no. 13 and also Sahib Muslim, Kitab al-Imam, 67-7, Hadith no.45.

5 This verb is also used by Paul in the famous passage on love in 1 Corinthians 13.

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to love for one’s neighbour what we ourselves cherish. This is the teaching of theProphet Muhammad in the hadith to which the Christian leaders above refer.4 Inthe Qur’an, this ideal of self-sacrifice is also emphasised:

It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces to the East and the West; but righteous is hewho believeth in God and the Last Day and the angels and the Scripture and the prophets;and giveth wealth, for love of Him, to kinsfolk and to orphans and the needy and thewayfarer and to those who ask, and to set slaves free; and observeth proper worship andpayeth the poor-due. And those who keep their treaty when they make one, and the patientin tribulation and adversity and time of stress. Such are they who are sincere. Such are thepious. (Al-Baqarah, 2:177)

And: “Ye will not attain unto righteousness until ye expend of that which ye love”(Aal ‘Imran, 3:92) (both passages cited in A Common Word Between Us and You).

Loving one’s neighbour means serving those in need, specifically the vulnerable.In relation to the current interest and resurgence of political forms of Islam, it isalso worth highlighting that loving one’s neighbour means allowing their freedomof religion. The Qur’an states: “Let there by no compulsion in religion …” (Al-Baqarah, 2:256) and that difference between faiths is intended by God:

Had God willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by thatwhich He had given you (He hath made you as ye are). So vie one with another in goodworks. Unto God ye will all return, and He will then inform you of that wherein ye differ.(Al-Ma’idah, 5:48)

Thus, difference between self and neighbour is seen as good and not somethingto be overcome in a totalising proselytism.

Within Christianity the commandments to love God and one’s neighbour are thefulfilment of the Law (Matthew 22:40). The verb used for love here is ������,5

usually translated as charity, and implying a commitment to help the other. Theincipient dualism that creeps into western strands of Christianity early within itshistory and is in evidence in much patristic theology somewhat complicates theideal of love. In relation to St. Augustine’s view of loving one’s neighbour, Han-nah Arendt highlights the complication in Love and Saint Augustine. There aretwo notions of love operative in his writing: love for worldly things, termedcupiditas, which is a wrong love over against caritas, “right love” which seeks“eternity and the absolute future” (Arendt 1996: 17). Love for the temporal orderis seen as an obstacle and opposed to the desire for an eternal God. As Arendtwrites, “an absolute futurity can be anticipated only through the annihilation of

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6 And it should also be noted that this dualism is not equally present in all forms ofChristianity. For example, Eastern Orthodox Christianity tends to place less emphasis ondualistic oppositions.

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the mortal, temporal present, that is through hating the existing self” (Arendt1996: 27). Thus we see the central contradiction emphasised by Arendt at theheart of Augustine’s command to love one’s neighbour:

The greatest difficulty this self-forgetfulness and complete denial of human existenceraises for Augustine is that it makes the central Christian command to love one’s neigh-bour as oneself well nigh impossible. The difficulty arises from the definition of love asdesire and from the definition of man as one who remains always wanting and foreverisolated from what gives him happiness, that is, his proper being. Even caritas … is nomanifestation of an original inter-connectedness of either man and God or man and theworld. (Arendt 1996: 30)

Arendt goes on to examine Augustine’s “order of love” outlined in City of God.Here we see that a “man’s proper attitude to the world is not ‘enjoyment’ (frui)but ‘use’ (uti)” (Arendt 1996: 37). According to Augustine’s conceptual frame-work, there can be no reason to love one’s neighbour, since he or she is part of theworld, other than the divine command to do so:

The love of my neighbour is at best a secondary consideration for a desire whose aimtranscends mankind and the world, both of which have a justifiable existence only to theextent that they can be “used” for the sake of something that is radically different andseparated from them. (Arendt 1996: 41)

This dualism present in Augustine has tended to dominate Christian interpreta-tions of neighbourly love and can be seen in a recent papal encyclical, exempli-fying Roman Catholic teaching on this point:

Love of the neighbour is … shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, byJesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person I do notlike or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter withGod, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings.Then I learn to look on the other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, butfrom the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend … Love is divine because itcomes from God and unites us to God .... (Pope Benedict XVI Deus Caritas Est)

There are many theories of Christian love that have attempted to redress this du-alistic emphasis.6 Don Cupitt, for example, in his Feuerbachian interpretation ofChristianity has argued that to say that God is love is to say nothing more thanthat love is God, suggesting that loving one’s neighbour is loving God, nothingmore, nothing less. For Cupitt, loving one’s neighbour is the manifestation of thedivine: God is nothing more than the transcendence and grace of this love (Cupitt2003). Thus, the neighbour can be loved in his or her specificity without the need

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7 In Totality and Infinity, the language of proximity is not used: the dominant motifsof the relation between the self and the other in that work are separation and alterity.

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for divine grace, as emphasised in the papal encyclical, or with the motivation ofpleasing God, as in the Augustinian version.

Having briefly considered the ideal of loving one’s neighbour within Islam andChristianity, let us turn now to consider the presentation of the neighbour withinthe philosophy of Levinas, and within Otherwise than Being specifically, in orderto examine ways in which Levinas’s interpretation of the obligation towards one’sneighbour might open up a way of viewing our relationships with others and be-tween those of differing faiths that might extend the idea of responsibility towardsthe neighbour beyond the Abrahamic religions.

One’s Neighbour

Otherwise than Being uses the language of proximity to describe the relation be-tween one’s self and one’s neighbour.7 Proximity does not denote a “space” orstate of relationship between self and neighbour but rather the movement of selftowards the neighbour outside of the objective character of relationships:

Proximity is not a state, a repose, but, a restlessness, null site, outside of the place of rest.It overwhelms the calm of the non-ubiquity of a being which becomes a rest in a site. Nosite then, is ever sufficiently a proximity, like an embrace. Never close enough, proximitydoes not congeal into a structure …. Proximity, as the “closer and closer,” becomes thesubject. (Levinas 2004a [hereafter OB]: 81-82)

Proximity describes the relationship in which I am outside of the objective char-acter of relationships, prior to identity, and in which “one can no longer say whatthe ego or I is” (Levinas OB: 82), yet I am as a subject constituted by this “nullsite” of proximity. Proximity exceeds the order of the rational, in a non-reciprocalobsession by the neighbour. Because the latter is never close enough, I am alwaysmoving towards my neighbour, always extending myself as a subject:

Proximity is to be described as extending the subject in its very subjectivity, which is botha relationship and a term of this relationship …. As signification, the-one-for-the-other,proximity is not a configuration produced in the soul. It is an immediacy older than theabstractness of nature. Nor is it fusion; it is contact with the other … in contact itself thetouching and the touched separate, as though the touched moved off, was always alreadyother, did not have anything in common with me …. (Levinas OB: 86)

Robert Gibbs examines the themes of height and nearness in relation to proximityin Otherwise than Being, suggesting how these are to be conceived in relation totranscendence. In proximity, I never reach the place of my neighbour, even if Isubstitute myself for them, and this notion of perpetual motion towards the otherdenotes the infinity of responsibility that I receive in my passivity:

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Ethics notes that the more I draw near the further away I am. The more I see the other asthe one for whom I must answer, the greater my responsibility will become. As I stepcloser, my obligations grow, the task of approaching becomes more arduous, andresponsibility increases …. This infinition of responsibility occurs in nearness to the other.(Gibbs 1995: 17)

The neighbour is my brother, with whom I exist in a relationship of fraternitywithout reciprocity (Levinas OB: 87). All fraternity and community start from mydebt of obligation, assigned to me in passivity: “The neighbor assigns me beforeI designate him. This is a modality not of a knowing, but of an obsession”(Levinas OB: 87). Some have criticised this notion of infinite obligation as beingboth impossibly utopian and groundless, questioning how or why such an obliga-tion should arise. It is indeed easy to question, as Freud does the Judaeo-Christiannotion of “loving one’s neighbour,” why I should have this onerous responsibility.Levinas suggests that the source of this asymmetrical responsibility cannot beconsciously known or understood: we could not represent the authority of thiscommand to ourselves, it is found prior to experience or knowledge:

In an approach I am first a servant of a neighbor, already late and guilty for being late. Iam as it were ordered from the outside, traumatically commanded, without interiorizingby representation and concepts the authority that commands me. Without asking myself:What then is it to me? Where does he get his right to command? (Levinas OB: 87)

To ask the question “Why am I my brother’s keeper?” is to misunderstand the na-ture of the obligation, accusing me prior to consciousness and cognition and lyingbeyond thematization and conceptualization. The obligation of which Levinasspeaks arises from a phenomenological description of the transcendental condi-tions of subjectivity as ethical, conditions of which we are commonly in denial.Michael Morgan provides a helpful explanation of how that infinite obligation isalways there, whether or not we choose to help the neighbour who needs us:

[W]henever I am engaged with another person or persons, whatever I am doing, myrelationships and my actions are ultimately of significance, in a sense before I am andbefore my capacity to think or act, precisely because of the capacity I have and thenecessity that falls on me to respond to that other person’s needs and very existence. I maybe blind to this capacity and necessity to respond—my responsibility as responsivity—butit is always there, an aspect of me and my relationship with each and every other person,whether I realize it or not. Hence, in a sense, I am always, in whatever I do, satisfying itsdirections or failing to do so, unavoidably. I am responsible for and to the other person“before” I am a person …. [This] is Levinas’s attempt to unsettle us into seeing ourordinary, everyday life in a different way. (Morgan 2007: 160)

This obligation prior to conceptualisation from which we cannot escape—even ifwe are frequently blind to it—is uncomfortable, even if it brings the possibility ofpeace. Robert Bernasconi points out that between Totality and Infinity and Other-

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wise than Being, the language used to describe the relationship between the selfand the other shifts towards the language of contestation:

Whereas according to the earlier analysis I found myself put in question in the face of thestranger, in the later analysis I am “like a stranger”. My home is no longer the site ofinwardness and hospitality; it has become the site of contestation. Furthermore, theintroduction of persecution alters the status accorded to apology. (Bernasconi 1995: 79)

Although Levinas writes that his ethics should not be seen as arising from a par-ticular experience, Bernasconi links the language of persecution to the dedicationof Otherwise than Being to those persecuted in the Holocaust. Elisabeth Weberpoints out that concepts like “trauma” and “psychosis” that resound throughoutOtherwise than Being in the persecution by the neighbour may refer to the real“psychosis” and “trauma” suffered by survivors of the Holocaust in the “anam-nesis” of the other’s death, the impossibility of forgetting the impossible death ofthe persecuted other (Weber 1995). Bernasconi suggests that in Otherwise thanBeing, persecution is not just the structure of the relationship between the self andthe neighbour but is rooted in the trauma of real persecution:

The fate suffered by the persecuted – the Jewish people and all those who are victims ofthe same anti-Semitism – underwrites Levinas’s philosophy in a rigorous sense. That is tosay, Levinas does not just draw on persecution in developing his thought. It is more eventhan an ontic fundament. Responsibility for everyone, as opposed to some more circum-scribed or delimited conception of responsibility, arises only among the persecuted. Per-secution, as Levinas conceives it, is not therefore a formal structure or an elaborate meta-phor employed to describe the way in which the Other puts me in question. (Bernasconi1995: 83)

To see the notion of persecution as linked to the Holocaust does not limit the no-tion of responsibility to one’s neighbour only to those who have suffered persecu-tion. It rather serves to remind me of my obligation to “the millions on millionsof all confessions and of all nations, victims of the same hatred of the other man,the same anti-semitism,” an obligation to my neighbour who persecutes me withthe knowledge that I am always more responsible, more guilty, can never absolvemyself of this bond of ever-deepening responsibility.

It is easy to imagine that someone might interpret this obligation as a prescriptionfor self-effacement. This, I would argue, would be a misunderstanding: Levinasis not prescribing a specific course of action. Serving one’s neighbour does notmean that we must agree with or acquiesce in everything others say or do to me.The idea of the “third party” suggests that the condition of infinite responsibilityis worked out in practice against the needs of many others. Thus, as Levinaswrites in Totality and Infinity, the interpellation of my neighbour is not a privateimperative: “Everything that takes place here ‘between us’ concerns everyone, theface that looks at me places itself in the full light of the public order” (Levinas

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8 Prochain is the term used for “the neighbour” most commonly in French trans-lations of the biblical Greek term ����� (of which term the closest English translationwould be near/hard by/close to). Regarding the Hebrew term which “neighbour” translatesin Leviticus and Deuteronomy (and which ����� translates in the Septuagint), there issome disagreement amongst scholars on the question if the term was used more to referto a “fellow Israelite” or an “alien” living nearby (for example, the interesting discussionbetween Morton Smith and J.M. Cameron [1980]), but Levinas’s emphasis on alterity andhis use of the term “stranger” would suggest that the resonances of the translation “fellowIsraelite” are not quite fitting.

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2004b [hereafter TI]: 212). My responsibility for my neighbour is enacted withinhuman community and fraternity, and I have a responsibility for myself thereforeas well as my neighbour. Although the responsibility to my neighbour is infinite,what that responsibility means has to be worked out within the bonds of humankinship and against the background of responsibility for myself. Levinas ex-presses this idea thus in Totality and Infinity:

Society must be a fraternal community to be commensurate with the straightforwardness,the primary proximity, in which the face presents itself to my welcome. Monotheismsignifies this human kinship, this idea of a human race that refers back to the approach ofthe Other in the face, in a dimension of height, in responsibility for oneself and for theOther (Levinas TI: 214).

Thus responsibility for my neighbour involves sacrifice, but this is not the sameas self-debasement.

This raises the question of who this neighbour is to whom I am responsible. Theneighbour cannot be defined, since to do so would be to bring them within mydomain of understanding, and the state of proximity is prior to identity. MichaelB. Smith draws attention to linguistic features of Levinas’s use of the term:

There is a link between Levinas’s decision to use the word neighbor (prochain) alongsidethe earlier word Stranger (Étranger) and the ascendancy of the notion of proximity(proximité)…. French has two words that correspond to the English word neighbor.Levinas is not discussing the term voisin, which is the normal term for the person wholives close by, but the term prochain, which is used in the Bible to indicate one’s neighborin the sense of one’s fellow man (or woman). (Smith 2005: 91-92)

Levinas’s use of the term prochain suggests the intention to evoke the term’s bib-lical resonances,8 recalling the commandment to love one’s neighbour. Here thecommand is not to love them “as myself”: this would bring them into my domain,with love conditional on a prior sense of self. I am bound to “love” my neighbourbefore I love myself according to Levinas, although I may “forget” this in myactions towards my neighbour. This is not to say that Levinas would necessarilyreject the idea of reciprocal responsibilities to our neighbours enacted within

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society; his point is rather that any reciprocity stems from a prior asymmetry ofresponsibility towards my neighbour. I am responsible without choosing to be,and it is only in this responsibility that I can be a self and could therefore lovemyself, as implied in the biblical commandment.

The neighbour approaches and summons me to responsibility for him, a singularother. I am thus myself a singular subject in my unique responsibility. The ap-proach of the third party, disrupting the asymmetry of my obligation to my neigh-bour, is also present in the proximity of my neighbour. This is the condition ofjustice and society.

Justice, Society and the Third Man

The third party is a theme that is significantly more developed in Otherwise thanBeing than Totality and Infinity. It is with this idea that Levinas introduces theconcepts of justice and society, and even philosophy. “The fact that the other, myneighbor, is also a third party with respect to another, who is also a neighbor, isthe birth of thought, consciousness, justice and philosophy” (Levinas OB: 128).Levinas emphasises that the third party is neither an empirical fact nor a specificother: “In the proximity of the other, all the others than the other obsess me”(Levinas OB: 158). It is the approach of the third party that brings about justice,since justice appears with the coexistence that comes with the approach of the oth-er in my proximity to the neighbour:

The third party is other than the neighbor, but also another neighbor, and also a neighborof the other, and not simply his fellow…. The third party introduces a contradiction in thesaying whose signification before the other until then went in one direction. It is of itselfthe limit of responsibility and the birth of the question: What do I have to do with justice?A question of consciousness. Justice is necessary, that is, comparison, coexistence, con-temporaneousness, assembling, order, thematization, the visibility of faces, and thus in-tentionality and the intellect, and in intentionality and the intellect, the intelligibility of asystem, and thence also a copresence on an equal footing as before a court of justice.(Levinas OB: 157)

The relationship with the third “is an incessant correction of the asymmetry ofproximity in which the face is looked at” (Levinas OB: 158). The third party inter-rupts the asymmetry of responsibility between self and neighbour by revealing theexistence of other subjects who are neighbours to my neighbour. Though the thirdparty’s approach, I question my place in these relationships of responsibility, my“own place in the sun,” and with this consciousness begins. Thus, society is notfounded on equality or commonality but on a community of others, as Daviswrites: “a multiplicity of others, in which each subject is unique, recalcitrant toclassification” (Davis 2004: 83). Justice is not meant here as juridical but refersto a community of “neighbours”:

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[J]ustice is not a legality regulating human masses, from which a technique of socialequilibrium is drawn, harmonizing antagonistic forces …. Justice is impossible withoutthe one that renders it finding himself in proximity. His function is not limited to the“function of judgment,” the subsuming of particular cases under a general rule. The judgeis not outside the conflict, but the law is in the midst of proximity. Justice, society, theState and its institutions, exchanges and work are comprehensible out of proximity. Thismeans that nothing is outside of the control of the responsibility of the one for the other.(Levinas OB: 159)

For Levinas, justice entails consciousness and thematization, but these are notpossible without proximity. Elisabeth Louise Thomas suggests that this justice im-plies breaking down the opposition between private and public law, so that moral-ity and justice do not sink into complacency: “Justice is not the harsh and inhu-man rule of law that must be imposed upon the clandestine relation between thetwo” (Thomas 2004: 115). This notion of justice associated with the approach ofthe third maintains infinite responsibility, the knowledge that I can never be justenough, balanced against working out what justice means in the web of rela-tionships in which I find myself.

Slavoj Žižek, in “Neighbours and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence,”questions Levinas’s presentation of proximity and justice and the relationship withthe neighbour. He suggests that love, in Levinas’s account, privileges the neigh-bour over the “faceless” third and instead calls for a justice that acts in favour ofthe “inhuman” third:

We should therefore assume the risk of countering Levinas’s position with a more radicalone: others are primordially an (ethically) indifferent multitude, and love is a violent ges-ture of cutting into this multitude and privileging a One as the neighbor, thus introducinga radical imbalance into the whole. In contrast to love, justice begins when I remember thefaceless many left in the shadow in this privileging of the One. Justice and love are thusstructurally incompatible: justice, not love, has to be blind; it must disregard the privilegedOne whom I “really understand.” What this means is that the Third is not secondary: it isalways-already here, and the primordial ethical obligation is toward this Third who is nothere in the face-to-face relationship. (Žižek 2005: 182)

Žižek goes on to argue that “the true ethical step is … the one of choosing againstthe face, for the third” (Žižek 2005: 183). Žižek’s argument appears initially com-pelling, but is he really proposing anything radically different to Levinas? Žižekdescribes the “inhuman” third as “inhuman Otherness itself: the Otherness of ahuman being reduced to inhumanity, the Otherness exemplified by the terrifyingfigure of the Muselmann, the ‘living dead’ in the concentration camps” (Žižek2005: 160). He suggests that Levinas’s notion of the face and the neighbour gen-trify and domesticate “inhuman” faces, concealing their monstrosity. But surelyLevinas, in articulating the “event” of the approach of the third, also argues fora justice that balances my responsibility to my neighbour with responsibility to all

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the others, as all the others are already present in the proximity of the neighbour.I cannot forget my responsibility for the “inhuman” third: Levinas’s language ofpersecution, accusation and trauma for this asymmetric responsibility surelyimplies this inescapable responsibility for the “faceless.” We see this idea of theextent of my responsibility to all the others, those whose “faces” are not presentto me in my interactions with my neighbours, in an interview with Levinas inwhich he expands on the biblical roots of the idea of the face and the com-mandment it issues to me not to kill:

In the Old Testament there is the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” This does notmean simply that you are not to go around firing a gun all the time. It refers, rather, to thefact that, in the course of your life, in different ways, you kill someone. For example, whenwe sit down at the table in the morning and drink coffee, we kill an Ethiopian who doesn’thave any coffee. It is in this sense that the commandment must be understood. There is al-so the phrase “Thou shalt love thy neighbour.” It is expressed in several ways. There isalso “Thou shalt love the stranger.” (Levinas 1988: 173)

Here the relationship with the neighbour includes the obligation towards the stran-ger we have never met, and this is linked to the question of justice: what I have,my place in the sun, is put into question by the needs of others whom I have nevermet. Žižek argues that it is not so much the socio-political consequences ofLevinas’s position that he finds problematic as his account of the Other’s face:“This rendering is wrong in its own terms, as a phenomenological description,since it misses the way the Third is always-already here” (Žižek 2005: 184). Butthis is what Levinas emphasises too: I cannot be in a relation with my neighbourwithout the advent of all the others: “The other is from the first the brother of allother men” (Levinas OB: 158).

Perhaps Žižek’s language of facelessness is ultimately unhelpful, making the “un-lovely” an abstraction, whereas Levinas’s language emphasises the particularitiesof every other in their concrete singularity. Surely it is necessary to see every oth-er as a singular and unique neighbour, concrete and vulnerable both to my actionsand to the actions of others, in order for there to be justice. Levinas’s writing onthe vulnerability of the neighbour, and the self in response to the neighbour’s ad-dress, demonstrates that, although we can “forget” this state of vulnerability, it isnevertheless always there, and he calls us to attend to this state of fragility andvulnerability. It is this fragility and vulnerability that unites us as a community ofneighbours and gives each neighbour a unique authority in their vulnerability. Theface, uniquely exposed to the smiter, is surely therefore necessary for this concep-tion of vulnerability, to make the appeal of peace to me. Levinas describes thisnotion of the face in an interview: “There are two strange things here in the face:its extreme frailty—the fact of being without means and, on the other hand, thereis authority. It is as if God spoke through the face” (Levinas 1988: 169). Thus,while Žižek’s argument against privileging certain specific others is important for

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our thinking about justice, I would argue that his positing of the “faceless” otherremoves the emphasis on their vulnerability which lessens the urgency of re-sponsibility.

In Otherwise than Being, the otherness and unknowability of the neighbour islinked to the concept of illeity. This contradicts Žižek’s charge that the neighbouris understood in Levinas’s presentation whereas the third remains beyond under-standing: for Levinas both the neighbour and the third are beyond understanding.The term illeity, as Michael B. Smith points out, is linked to the Latin demonstra-tive ille, illa, illud and, as with this pronoun, designates something present but ata distance. Smith suggests that this term is then used by Levinas in contrast withthe notion of reciprocity in a dialogical relationship:

The dialogical relationship brings with it elements that make it an inadequate structure fortranscendence because of the reciprocity and eventual play of gratitude and psychologicalinterplay to which both parties of the dialogue are open. The otherness of the other personis preserved and his or her stature as “greater than myself” safeguarded only if the face ofthe other is “in the trace” of illeity. (Smith 2005: 89)

Illeity, as used by Levinas, is the refusal of reciprocity and totality and means thatslipping into a relationship of equality is impossible, which means that neither I,the third, nor my neighbour, can be reduced to essence or identity. This marks asignificant difference between Levinas’s idea of the relationship between the selfand the Other and Martin Buber’s I-Thou relationship. With illeity, the emphasisis placed by Levinas on the impossibility of fusion, on the space of separationbetween I and Thou. Illeity is described by Levinas as the trace of the divine, andit is this transcendent otherness that is the characteristic of the relationship. AsJohn Llewelyn explains:

Levinas underlines the importance of retaining a different third-personal pronominality inthe primary intrigue. In the space marked by the hyphen between the I and the Thouintrudes not It, but He. In the trace of the never having been here—the never Daseinly Da—of illeity stands the Thou whom I approach, lest even the asymmetrical proximity of re-sponse that conditions responsibility fuse into being-with. (Llewelyn 1995: 188)

Thus, the trace of the transcendent as never brought to presence is always in theapproach of my neighbour and the introduction of the third as illeity, and this pre-vents the asymmetrical relationship of responsibility from becoming the pure mu-tuality of the I-Thou of which Buber writes.

Levinas uses theological terms to signify the grace and transcendence bound upin this concept of illeity:

This saying belongs to the very glory of which it bears witness. This way for the order tocome from I know not where, this coming that is not a recalling, is not the return of a

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present modified or aged into a past, me unbeknownst to myself, “slipping into me like athief,” we have called illeity. (Levinas OB: 150-51)

This conception of illeity, coming “from I know not where,” has significance forhow we understand plurality in Levinas’s presentation of society in which I, myneighbour and the third all bear the trace of the absolutely other. Plurality is al-terity in illeity, but this roots responsibility in the self, since I cannot claim toknow my neighbour’s responsibility. The alterity of all the others in illeity meansthat I am responsible for them; it is only through the experience of grace that Imay be a neighbour, unknown and Other, to my neighbours. This illeity thenmeans that justice and peace are my responsibility, and that my subjectivity isfound in the experience of the demand for justice but that through the approachof the third I too can be a recipient of justice, as one of the others myself. In thissense, illeity radically differentiates Levinas’s theory of society from other polit-ical and philosophical theories. Society is founded on conversation, in the addressof my neighbour who remains beyond my comprehension in illeity and yet intro-duces with him the third party, who makes me a neighbour to the others, as agrace. There is, then, in this society of equals founded on a prior asymmetry of re-sponsibility, a surplus that cannot be represented, yet which is the possibility ofsociety. As Theo de Boer suggests:

It is sometimes called a “surplus”; yet, far from being superfluous, it is a condition of pos-sibility …. It is true that charity without social justice is void, but social justice withoutthis dimension of goodness and hospitality may be blind. (De Boer 1986: 103)

And so the surplus in the trace of illeity allows my neighbour and the third to re-main beyond my comprehension and the self-absorbed affection of which Žižekaccuses Levinas’s theory, yet at the same time allows a way of understanding so-ciety as predicated on the possibility of peaceful relation between the self and theneighbour.

Before moving on to consider how these notions of proximity and illeity mighthelp us think about the challenge of loving the neighbour in education, let uspause to consider some objections.

Some Objections

I have already considered the objection that this is a prescription for self-efface-ment and suggested that the introduction of the third party in the approach of theneighbour means that my responsibility to my neighbour is always balancedagainst my responsibilities to others. Another challenge to consider is if someonecould see Levinas’s message as a groundless imperative, calling us to live in anew way, to turn from our former ways. This would, however, be a misinter-pretation: Levinas is not offering an ethical option among others. He is rather de-

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scribing the transcendental conditions of subjectivity as ethical, conditions ofwhich we are commonly in denial.

Another objection is whether the neighbour’s authority is a kind of authoritarian-ism. However, as already suggested, the authority of the neighbour does not comefrom a concrete relationship of power. The authority of my neighbour comes fromher very vulnerability, giving her interpellation urgency and places her need abovemine. Thus she has authority over me in the same way that a vulnerable infant hasauthority over its mother.

We have already noted Freud’s objection that our relationships with our neigh-bours are characterised by hostility. I hope that I have demonstrated that Levinas’sview acknowledges the potential hostility and capability for wounding our neigh-bour in their approach, while the very fact that we have language and communitydepend on the possibility of peace, the exposing of oneself to the smiter and theirhospitality in response. This is not an overly optimistic view of human nature, al-though there are utopian moments in Levinas’s presentation, but acknowledgesthe traumatic nature of the relationship with the neighbour whilst also encouragingus to attend to the possibility of peace already present.

A further objection concerns the inequality of the relationship between the selfand the neighbour. Levinas does acknowledge that in a sense we are all “equal,”but justice and the ethical relationship depends on my altruism (but not an altru-istic will or action that is rooted in my spontaneity), my putting my neighbour’sneeds before my own. Only I can feel my responsibility myself: I cannot projectmyself into my neighbour’s being to say that he is just as responsible to me:

But, in the ethical act, in my relationship to the other, if one forgets that I am guiltier thanthe others, justice itself will not be able to last. But the idea of dissymmetry is another wayof saying that in the perseverance in being we are all equal, but the idea that the death ofthe other is more important than my own is an affirmation that we are not being looked atfrom outside, but the essential difference between me and the other remains in my look.(Levinas 1988: 179)

My obligation to my neighbour remains mine alone, although we have alreadyseen how the approach of the third disrupts the asymmetry of responsibility. Le-vinas elsewhere in his writing argues for an egalitarian liberal democracy and theprotection of human rights, and this is fundamental to the practical working outof the conditions of responsibility.

I’ve told you that justice is always a justice that desires a better justice. This is the way thatI will characterize the liberal state. The liberal state is a state which holds justice as the ab-solutely desirable end and hence as a perfection. Concretely, the liberal state has alwaysadmitted—alongside the written law—human rights as a parallel institution. It continuesto preach that within its justice there are always improvements to be made in human rights.

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Human rights are the reminder that there is no justice yet. And consequently, I believe thatit is absolutely obvious that the liberal state is more moral than the fascist state, and closerto the morally utopian state. (Levinas 1988: 177-78)

Having paused to examine these objections, let us consider the implications of thisfor education and inter-faith dialogue within education.

Learning from my Neighbour, the Stranger

Although Levinas’s hermeneutical writings on Judaism are distinct from his writ-ing on the transcendental condition of responsibility, his description of infinite re-sponsibility towards the neighbour presents a provocative extension of what thecommand in the Abrahamic religions to love one’s neighbour might mean. In ad-dressing the question of what the commandment to love means within Judaism,Levinas emphasises that this is a shared obligation, bringing together, in his view,Christianity and Judaism:

Two typically Jewish elements have appeared: the idea of the commandment, as somethingessential to the love-relation; love is manifested in the commandment, it is alone in beingable to command love; the idea of Man the redeemer and not of God the Redeemer ….

In order for love to be able to penetrate the Word, which is Redemption, in order for Timeto move to Eternity, Love must not remain at the state of individual enterprise, it mustbecome the work of community, the time of a community. (Levinas 1997: 193)

The shared obligation to love, he suggests, does not remain my obligation butbecomes “the work of the community.” This was one of the central messages ofthe Muslim leaders in A Common Word. It was also emphasised as a shared obli-gation by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a statement issued on 11 October 2007:

In this country, in which we are together both British citizens and citizens of heaven, loveof neighbour could happily be our watchword for the year ahead. My hope is that we willbe able to demonstrate the meaning of neighbourly love towards those around us, whetherof faith or not. (Archbishop of Canterbury 2007: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/releases/071011a.htm)

Levinas emphasises the shared heritage of Islam with Judaism and Christianityand suggests that the monotheism of each obliges members of each to enter intopeaceful dialogue:

[I]t obliges the other to enter into a discourse that unites him with me. This is the point ofthe utmost importance …. Monotheism, the word of the one and only God, is precisely theword that one cannot help but hear, and cannot help but answer. It is the word that obligesus to enter into discourse. (Levinas 1997: 178)

Elsewhere, Levinas suggests that the basis for entering into dialogue is con-science:

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Father Daniélou spoke movingly of the dramatic fate of every religion which, whenconfronted with others, is torn between charity and truth. … Like him, I believe that wemust take our conscience from this common civilization and that we must take consciencein common, in order to understand one another. (Levinas 1997: 176)

Levinas’s idea that, on the one hand, monotheism obliges us for dialogue and that,on the other, conscience obliges us can be linked to his presentation of religion asthe obligation prior to rationality of the self towards the transcendent other. How-ever, it is not this idea of the obligation towards dialogue that I take to be Levin-as’s most significant insight for thinking through relations between those of differ-ent faiths within education. The question Levinas raises is rather how to thinkagain about relationships between individuals in education in the light of his no-tion of the proximity of the neighbour, who elects me to responsibility. His no-tions of the illeity and vulnerability of the neighbour are the most significant in-sights for enriching how we think about relationships between those of differentreligious perspectives within education. Much writing on dialogue in subjects inwhich it is particularly prominent, for example, Religious Education, tend to em-phasise the importance of reaching shared understanding, empathising with theOther. Levinas’s writing challenges that view: his notion of illeity highlights thatwe can never fully bring the neighbour within the sphere of understanding. Al-though we can speak to and create commonalities between ourselves, my neigh-bour always remains beyond language and thought, as does my responsibility forher. But it his emphasis on the condition of the neighbour’s vulnerability and fra-gility that is perhaps most significant for considering anew why attending to thequestion of the neighbour and my responsibility for them is so important ineducation. Although the traditions of the Abrahamic faiths do consider the ques-tion of who my neighbour is, there is little emphasis on the fragility of the neigh-bour and my responsibility towards them in how I address them in a dialogue sit-uation. And so Levinas’s writing on the fragile space of proximity allows us toattend to that obligation of love that is at the deepest level of intersubjectivity inall relationships between people, even if it is often covered over in the day-to-daylanguage of assessment, performativity and marketisation within education. Thevulnerability of both students and teachers in the exchanges of dialogue is some-thing that needs further attention and opportunities for recognising that shared thevulnerability that is basic to our humanity needs greater recognition, if vulner-ability is not to be seen as an excuse for creating barriers between self and Other.

Judith Butler has drawn on the work of Levinas in Precarious Life, which ex-amines US foreign policy after 9/11. In this book, she powerfully calls for a re-cognition of shared vulnerability as opening the way for a new humanism and anew road to peace between both nations and individuals:

A vulnerability must be perceived and recognized in order to come into play in an ethicalencounter, and there is no guarantee that this will happen. Not only is there always the

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possibility that a vulnerability will not be recognized and that it will be constituted as“unrecognizable,” but when a vulnerability is recognized, that recognition has the powerto change the meaning and structure of vulnerability itself. (Butler 2006: 43)

Jacqueline Rose also highlights the significance of thinking of mutual vulnera-bility as the path forward for future peace. She examines psychoanalytic interpre-tations of vulnerability, and how we are commonly in denial of the situation ofour vulnerability and seek to hide this condition through an attitude of aggression.She considers this condition in an examination of the way the Holocaust has beenused to justify violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict and clearly articulates howrecognition of shared vulnerability is might be a way out of the cycle of hostility:

Israeli soldiers are regularly sent on visits to Auschwitz in order to strengthen their resolve.Responding in July 2003 to questions about the killing of Palestinian children by theIsraeli army (in the conflict at that time, one in five dead Palestinians was a child), thecommander in Gaza starts by taking responsibility: “Every name of a child here, it makesme feel bad because it’s the fault of my soldiers”, but by the end of the conversation he has—in the words of the interviewer— returned to being “combative”, invoking the Holocaustas his rationale: “I remember the Holocaust. We have a choice, to fight the terrorists or toface being consumed again.” There are suicide bombings on the part of the Palestiniansin which Israeli children have died; they have rightly been described as unacceptablecrimes. But the flames on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are not the flames of theHolocaust …. What would the situation in Israel-Palestine look like if the commander inGaza deduced from his “memory” of the Holocaust, for example, a shared vulnerabilityof peoples? What kind of nation would Israel become if the state ceased to promoteomnipotence as the answer to historical pain? To recall Hareven: “Even if often in historyI have been the victim of others, I will never oppress those weaker than myself and neverabuse my power to exile them.” (Rose 2007: 55-56)

This striking passage mirrors the way in which Levinas’s writing seeks to breakthe cycle of hostility with my actions, my recognition of the neighbour’s vulnera-bility to my words and my actions, and my own situation as vulnerable within thecommunity of neighbours, the community into which we must educate the nextgeneration.

This has significant implications for how we view our relationships with othersand inter/intra-faith dialogue within education. Levinas suggests that the startingpoint for dialogue might be the common experience of conscience. This is similarto “loving the neighbour” as the starting point for working towards peace sug-gested in A Common Word. However, Levinas’s description of obligation towardsthe neighbour suggests the need to move beyond an ethic of reciprocity impliedin the Abrahamic commandment to love one’s neighbour as oneself. For Levinas,the neighbour must come before myself: it is only in responsibility to them thatI become myself. The commandment to love comes from a transcendent heightin both Levinas’s presentation and in the religious traditions. But the authority

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that compels me to responsibility is in Levinas’s presentation invested purely byits very vulnerability. The responsibility towards the stranger, my neighbour, ispotentially already there in every relationship I have with others, although I amcommonly in denial of this: indeed all my interactions with others depend on thisprior relationship of responsibility. Although Levinas’s ethics are not normativein any traditional sense, his writing encourages us to attend to the vulnerability ofthe other and the infinite demand for justice. It also encourages us to recognise thealterity of my neighbour rather than attempting to bring them within the sphereof my understanding. What could this mean within education?

Levinas is not arguing against rationality, as he is often portrayed: he suggests thatfollowing the experience of conscience, a shared rationality might be a startingpoint for inter-faith dialogue: “I am convinced that we must have recourse to themedium of full understanding and comprehension, in which all truth is reflected—that is, to the Greek civilization and what it engendered: logos, the coherent dis-course of reason, life in a reasonable State” (Levinas 1997: 176). This shared un-derstanding is predicated on a relationship of difference, in which language, ra-tionality and society depend on what is prior to rationality, the risky uncoveringof the self, appealing for hospitality whilst risking violent rejection. A view ofdialogue based on illeity, in which all are vulnerable, unique, all potentially re-sponsible for every other is a view that extends the understanding of neighbourlylove within the Abrahamic faiths to an ideal that has broader appeal. Levinas’snotion of the relationship between the self and the neighbour encourages us toreassess the ideal of neighbourly love, and yet it is an approach to the neighbourthat would surely find acceptance among most strands of the monotheistic faiths.If education could encourage attentiveness to vulnerability and difference, it mightbe possible to foster relationships of non-violence between those of very differingreligious sensibilities and between secularists and those of religious faith, of vitalimportance in the current climate of suspicion and latent hostility harboured bymany who feel marginalised because of their religious views.

A Common Word highlights the importance of working towards common groundin religious understanding:

Finding common ground between Muslims and Christians is not simply a matter for politeecumenical dialogue between selected religious leaders. Christianity and Islam are the lar-gest and second largest religions in the world and in history … making the relationshipbetween these two religious communities the most important factor in contributing tomeaningful peace around the world. If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the worldcannot be at peace. With the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims andChristians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflictbetween more than half the world’s inhabitants. Thus our common future is at stake. Thevery survival of the world is perhaps at stake. (A Common Word: 15-16)

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Education has a vital role to play in drawing attention to this common ground andworking towards non-violent relationships. An attentiveness to the self’s relation-ship of responsibility extending towards all the others is therefore an attentivenessthat education should aim to foster. This is not a sentimentalised view but onerecognising the capacity for violence whilst emphasising the possibility of peaceand shared vulnerability that lie at the heart of intersubjectivity. This is a visionof loving one’s neighbour that is aware of the aporiae of understanding and po-tential for violence lying between the self and every other. It does not attempt tosmooth over and provide facile and false bridges to overcome difference and seesthose aporiae as an inescapable part of what it means to stand as a singular,unique subject.

This obligation of an infinitely demanding justice and an infinitely demanding re-sponsibility are clearly challenging and need to be worked out against the notionsof moral education and citizenship education that emphasise equality, reciprocityand the social contract as foundational for ethics. They also suggest that life itselfis an ongoing education, as I become more alert to the infinity of my unique re-sponsibility. While Levinas might not want in practice to challenge the idea thatformal education might serve to bring about greater equality and reciprocal rela-tionships, his writing challenges us to consider the unequal relationship of ethicalobligation that is prior to this. Each individual within society is always already aneighbour to all the others, in the manner that Levinas suggests, even if we chooseto ignore this. Recognising this relationship of obligation could therefore be trans-formative for the actual relationships we have with others.

Reading Levinas encourages us to consider what the commandment to love theneighbour, the shared obligation as meeting point between the Abrahamic faiths,might mean in a new light. His writing of the relationship with the neighbour ex-tends the idea of obligation towards the neighbour and draws attention to the in-finity of responsibility, the alterity of the neighbour and the shared vulnerabilitythat characterise the fundamental state of proximity. Levinas challenges us towork towards those moments of non-violence for which the writers of A CommonWord are also calling, in which I begin to take up the infinite responsibility towhich my neighbour calls me. My neighbour is ultimately a stranger to me, trans-cendent in his or her alterity, but recognising this strangeness while also seeinghis or her unique fragility is for Levinas the foundation of the relationship ofpeace, a peacefulness that lies at the heart of all intersubjectivity, human rela-tionships and society. Freud is right that potential hostility is part of the rela-tionship with my neighbour: in summoning me to responsibility, they accuse me,place me in the traumatic and dizzying position of an infinite responsibility fortheir vulnerability and take me from my position of self-sufficient enjoyment. Butthis traumatic accusation also offers the chance of peace. If one of the tasks ofeducation is to foster peace, then Levinas’s presentation of what it might mean to

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love one’s neighbour, and the possibilities this offers for thinking about inter-religious dialogue in education, provides a challenging ideal for educationalists.

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