Temporality of the Face-to-Face in Levinas' Ethics

This thesis focuses on a connection between temporality and ethics in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. I argue that Levinas understanding of temporality is rooted in the function of pra-impression which in its turn does not belong to the intentional consciousness but reveals a subject as being open to the Other. In the face-to-face situation with the Other the pra-impression is an essential and constitutive force: it fractures the moment of the present, questions subjectivity and generates a new meaning of temporality. As a result a responsible subject is revealed; responsibility for the Other marks a latent birth of the subject which is prior to any origin of subjectivity, it discloses a meaning of time that does not belong to the subject but is found in the Other. In this study I suggest that pra-impression finds its productive force in language, the function of the feminine, and what Levinas calls the other in the same .

Despairing Justice and the Ethics of Legal Interpretation

This study discusses legal interpretation. The question is how legal texts, for instance laws, statutes and regulations, can and do have meaning. Language makes interpretation difficult as it holds no definite meanings. When the theoretical connection between semantics and legal meaning is loosened and we realise that language cannot be a means of justifying legal decisions, the responsibility inherent in legal interpretation can be seen in full. We are thus compelled to search for ways to analyse this responsibility. The main argument of the book is that the responsibility of legal interpretation contains a responsibility towards the text that is interpreted (and through the mediation of the text also towards the legal system), but not only this. It is not simply a responsibility to read and read well, but it transcends on a broader scale. It includes responsibility for the effects of the interpretation in a particular situation and with regard to the people whose case is decided. Ultimately, it is a responsibility to do justice. These two aspects of responsibility are conceptualised here as the two dimensions of the ethics of legal interpretation: the textual and the situational. The basic conception of language presented here is provided by Ludwig Wittgenstein s later philosophy, but the argument is not committed to only one philosophical tradition. Wittgenstein can be counterpointed in interesting ways by Jacques Derrida s ideas on language and meaning. Derrida s work also functions as a contrast to hermeneutic theories. It is argued that the seed to an answer to the question of meaning lies in the inter-personal and situated activity of interpretation and communication, an idea that can be discerned in different ways in the works of Wittgenstein, Derrida and Hans-Georg Gadamer. This way the question of meaning naturally leads us to think about ethics, which is approached here through the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. His thinking, focusing on topics such as otherness, friendship and hospitality, provides possibilities for answering some of the questions posed in this book. However, at the same time we move inside a normativity where ethics and politics come together in many ways. The responsibility of legal interpretation is connected to the political and this has to be acknowledged lest we forget that law always implies force. But it is argued here that the political can be explored in positive terms as it does not have to mean only power or violence.

Ethics of Justification : A Defence of Contractualism

In What We Owe to Each Other, T.M. Scanlon formulated a new version of the ethical theory called contractualism. This theory took reasons considerations that count in favour of judgment-sensitive attitudes to be the fundamental normative notion. It then used normative reasons to first account for evaluative properties. For an object to be valuable, on this view, is for it to have properties that provide reasons to have favourable attitudes towards the bearer of value. Scanlon also used reasons to account for moral wrongness. His contractualism claims that an act is morally wrong if it is forbidden by any set of moral principles that no one could reasonably reject. My thesis consists of five previously published articles which attempt to clarify Scanlon s theory and to defend it against its critics. The first article defends the idea that normative reason-relations are fundamental against Joshua Gert. Gert argues that rationality is a more basic notion than reasons and that reasons can be analysed in terms of their rationally requiring and justifying dimensions. The second article explores the relationship between value and reasons. It defends Scanlon s view according to which reasons are the more basic than value against those who think that reasons are based on the evaluative realm. The last three articles defend Scanlon s views about moral wrongness. The first one of them discusses a classic objection to contractualist theories. This objection is that principles which no one could reasonably reject are redundant in accounting for wrongness. This is because we need a prior notion of wrongness to select those principles and because such principles are not required to make actions wrong or to provide reasons against wrong actions. The fourth article explores the distinctive reasons which contractualists claim there are for avoiding the wrong actions. The last article argues against the critics of contractualism who claim that contractualism has implausible normative consequences for situations related to the treatment of different-sized groups of people.

Moral Education in the Japanese Primary School Curricular Revision at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century: Aiming at a Rich and Beautiful Kokoro

This study examines values education in Japanese schools at the beginning of the millennium. The topic was approached by asking the following three questions concerning the curricular background, the morality conveyed through textbooks and the characterization of moral education from a comparative viewpoint: 1) What role did moral education play in the curriculum revision which was initiated in 1998 and implemented in 2002? 2) What kinds of moral responsibilities and moral autonomy do the moral texts develop? 3) What does Japanese moral education look like in terms of the comparative framework? The research was based on curriculum research. Its primary empirical data consisted of the national curriculum guidelines for primary school, which were taken into use in 2002, and moral texts, Kokoro no nôto, published by the Ministry of Education in the same context. Since moral education was approached in the education reform context, the secondary research material involved some key documents of the revision process from the mid-1990s to 2003. The research material was collected during three fieldwork periods in Japan (in 2002, 2003 and 2005). The text-analysis was conducted as a theory-dependent qualitative content analysis. Japanese moral education was analyzed as a product of its own cultural tradition and societal answer to the current educational challenges. In order to understand better its character, secular moral education was reflected upon from a comparative viewpoint. The theory chosen for the comparative framework, the value realistic theory of education, represented the European rational education tradition as well as the Christian tradition of values education. Moral education, which was the most important school subject at the beginning of modern school, was eliminated from the curriculum for political reasons in a school reform after the Second World War, but has gradually regained a stronger position since then. It was reinforced particularly at the turn of millennium, when a curriculum revision attempted to respond to educational and learning problems by emphasizing qualitative and value aspects. Although the number of moral lessons and their status as a non-official-subject remained unchanged, the Ministry of Education made efforts to improve moral education by new curricular emphases, new teaching material and additional in-service training possibilities for teachers. The content of the moral texts was summarized in terms of moral responsibility in four moral areas (intrapersonal, interpersonal, natural-supranatural and societal) as follows: 1) continuous self-development, 2) caring for others, 3) awe of life and forces beyond human power, and 4) societal contribution. There was a social-societal and emotional emphasis in what was taught. Moral autonomy, which was studied from the perspectives of rational, affective and individuality development, stressed independence in action through self-discipline and responsibility more than rational self-direction. Japanese moral education can be characterized as the education of kokoro (heart) and the development of character, which arises from virtue ethics. It aims to overcome egoistic individualism by reciprocal and interdependent moral responsibility based on responsible interconnectedness.