Much due criticism has been directed at Levinas's images of the feminine and “the Woman” in Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity, but less attention has been paid to the metaphor of maternity and the maternal body that Levinas employs in Otherwise Than Being. This metaphor should be of interest, however, because here we find an instance in which Levinas uses a female image without in any way seeming to exclude women from full ethical selfhood.In the first three (...) sections of this paper I explain how maternity functions in Otherwise Than Being. I argue that maternity is used as an image of the vulnerability or passive sensibility that characterizes the relation with the Other, as well as a metaphor for Levinas's account of ethical responsibility as substitution. In the final section of the paper, I defend the claim that Levinas's maternal metaphors are not disparaging to real, empirical women. I also discuss a remaining worry that feminists may have about the metaphor: namely, that it characterizes pregnancy and motherhood in ways that challenge some pro-choice assumptions. (shrink)

Until a few years ago, the prevailing view was that children should not be participants in clinical research trials because children were incapable of consenting to such nontherapeutic interventions and are particularly vulnerable to abuse. That view has undergone a significant shift in the last few years, particularly in the context of trials to test the safety and effectiveness of drugs. A number of events facilitated this change, including the widespread off-label distribution of drugs to children and developments in the (...) AIDS epidemic. These social forces have shifted the core ethical question from whether children should be research subjects to when children should be research subjects.The presumption in favor of including children as research subjects for drug trials has manifested itself primarily through two different reforms: a 1997 federal statute and a set of regulations promulgated by the Food and Drug Administration that recently became effective. Together they reflect the view that children deserve the same access to safe and effective therapies as adults. (shrink)

When Richard Rorty passed away in June of 2007, we lost a philosopher who contributed to a major number of philosophical currents, a thinker who, with his writing, managed to be at a height of an epoch. This interview was conducted during the year 2005–2006, and it has not been published in English. I publish it now as a way of honoring one of the most interesting philosophers of recent years.

When Richard Rorty passed away in June of 2007, we lost a philosopher who contributed to a major number of philosophical currents, a thinker who, with his writing, managed to be at a height of an epoch. This interview was conducted during the year 2005–2006, and it has not been published in English. I publish it now as a way of honoring one of the most interesting philosophers of recent years.

In Le paradoxe de la morale, Vladimir Jankélévitch proposes that the moral life is a matter of balancing the demands of love, which call us to give without limit, and our natural, egoistical attachment to self, which he terms 'being'. This balancing act is ultimately paradoxical since love must both depend on and overcome being. The vision of moral life as a paradoxical balancing act of love and being, however, is implicitly challenged by another, "supernatural" vision of ethics that Jankélévitch (...) proposes near the end of the text. In these passages, the egoism of being that marks human nature is not merely balanced but genuinely transformed by the passionate care for an other. In this paper, these two visions of the ethical life offered by Jankélévitch's text are discussed in turn, and a way to read them as complementary rather than contradictory is proposed. (shrink)

At the start of Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas announces his project as one that will respond to the challenge of moral skepticism. Meanwhile, in a section titled “Skepticism and Reason” near the end of Otherwise than Being, Levinas interprets the recurrence of skepticism within philosophical reflection as a positive sign of the saying that refuses to be absorbed in the said. Here, I discuss the relationship between these two discussions of skepticism, and argue that Levinas’s appeal to a variety (...) of skepticism about language and reason is an important part of his answer to the moral skeptic. After first distinguishing between two challenges raised under the specter of moral skepticism at the start of Totality and Infinity, I demonstrate that Levinas answers both challenges, in part by appeal to the skepticism that he approves in “Skepticism and Reason.”. (shrink)

Almost from its origins, phenomenology has been modified in various ways by ‘phenomenologists’ who are inspired by Husserl but who deviate in significant ways from certain details of his approach. Jean-Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Levinas are two prime examples. While each is widely identified as a phenomenologist, each also departs from Husserl, the former by using phenomenology to pursue ontological questions and the latter by describing non-intentional modes of appearing. Here I argue that each is nevertheless rightly called a phenomenologist (...) for at least two reasons. First, each undertakes a careful study of the structure and contents of conscious experience in order to describe the foundations of the subject-object correlation and identify its conditions. Secondly, each accomplishes this by developing the notion of intentionality, focusing on the ways in which the intentional character of consciousness enables its lived encounter with what is transcendent to it. (shrink)

The author discusses the social influences that gave rise to the presumption in favor of children's participation in research and emphasizes the need for an ethical framework to guide decision-making in this context. Specifically, the author proposes a framework of child-centered bioethics that integrates the core bioethics principles of beneficence and autonomy with an assessment of children's needs and interests. Finally, the author articulates recommendations regarding mature minors and institutional review boards consistent with this framework in order to resolve the (...) difficult ethical issues posed by including children of all ages in clinical drug trials. (shrink)