Calling and Inspiration

Abstract

This chapter develops Levinas’s idea of the ethical as the structural call to responsibility for the other’s good. I first develop an idea of transcendence, especially as relates to what I term ‘time immemorial’ and ‘time unforeseen.’ I concretize this by elaborating two types of indirect experiences, one that I name call and the other that I refer to as inspiration. My goal is to interpret education’s commonplaces in light of these two experiences. I argue that these form the structural conditions of those commonplaces, namely, being called to normative responsibility and being inspired with a hope that motivates to action. Te idea of a regulative function uncovers the ethical orientation that gives rise to education.