Conclusion

Abstract

In one of his works, Emmanuel Levinas poses a set of important ethical questions about the nature of our interactions with our others:The Levinasian answer to the question of justice and our responsibility toward others is, for me, the most important ethical question of our time. Just as Levinas makes the existence of a state, law, or government conditional to our view of human nature, so should we pose the question of life in the advance capital. Our conservative friends ask us to combine the two most egregious human attributes—self-interest and free enterprise—and want us to imagine a world void of governmental intervention. A monstrous world comes out of this vision and we as humans do not come out ahead, for if all are seekers of self-interest in the Darwinian marketplace, then what hope do we have as a species? On the other hand, the Taliban want us to buy into a system of government that, in return for some welfare, wants to regulate every fiber of our being, body, and soul. We are not “beasts” and hence neither need the iron hand of the government nor the guiding hidden hand of a competitive marketplace. After all is said and done, we can be decent and compassionate beings who would think of our others not because we are coerced into it but because that is how we define our humanity. But that, like so many other things in this fast-paced world, is just a hope.