Name: Diachrony and Hopeful Asymmetry in Levinas: Shame Beyond Ethical Collapse
Start: 2026-07-06T16:30:00+1200
End: 2026-07-06T17:25:00+1200

Diachrony and Hopeful Asymmetry in Levinas: Shame Beyond Ethical Collapse

Monday July 6, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST

N3.01

This paper investigates a fundamental aporia within the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas: how can ethical responsibility endure when infinite responsibility exceeds the finite subject’s capacity to fulfill it? Levinas grounds subjectivity in an asymmetrical responsibility for the Other that precedes freedom, reciprocity, and self-possession. Yet such radical responsibility threatens the subject with ethical exhaustion, shame, and retreat into ontological self-enclosure.
Against interpretations that soften Levinasian asymmetry through reciprocity or mutual recognition, this paper argues that asymmetry remains irreducible. At the same time, however, asymmetrical responsibility generates what I call “hopeful asymmetry”: a fragile ethical hope directed toward the Other. Through an analysis of shame, substitution, and diachrony in Levinas’s major works, I argue that this hope functions as the transcendental condition that prevents ethical responsibility from collapsing into nihilistic absurdity. Hope does not resolve impossibility; rather, it suspends impossibility so that ethical responsiveness may continue despite constitutive inadequacy.
Ultimately, the paper proposes a new interpretation of Levinasian ethics in which ethical shame becomes bearable only through the irreducible hope awakened by asymmetrical responsibility itself.

Speakers

Jaeseok Choi

Master, Boston College

Jaeseok Choi is a Jesuit priest and a first-year M.A. student in the Department of Philosophy at Boston College. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering and his M.S. in Urban Planning from Seoul National University in South Korea. He also holds an M.A. in Philosophy and an M.Div... Read More →

Monday July 6, 2026 4:30pm - 5:25pm NZST
N3.01

Continental Philosophy, Remote

AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Jaeseok Choi

Attendees (4)

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AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Jaeseok Choi

Attendees (4)

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