Moral behaviour springs from the Other’s powerless demand, not from sanctions

Evidence

The autonomy of moral behaviour is final and irreducible. It escapes all codification, as it does not serve any purpose outside itself and does not enter a relationship with anything outside itself; that is, no relationship that could be monitored, standardized, codified. Moral behaviour, as the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century, Emmanuel Levinas, tells us, is triggered off by the mere presence of the Other as a face, that is, as an authority without force. The Other demands without threatening to punish or promising reward; his demand is without sanction. The Other cannot do anything; it is precisely his weakness that exposes my strength, my ability to act, as responsibility. Moral action is whatever follows that responsibility. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 611

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core Levinasian definition of moral action as response to the face of the Other — an authority without force or sanction.
• XREF: This is the pre-social moral impulse that grounds Bauman’s whole argument about how bureaucratic rationality suppresses morality — key scaffolding for the toolkit. — connects to: Identity is constituted through splitting and an interiorized Other, not pure difference.; Colonial selfhood is constituted through the violent gaze of the Other.; Ideology defines the self by stigmatising the Other — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 833 (+6 more)

Related

• Under modern order moral behavior often means resisting societal authority (similarity 0.81)
• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Hobbesian sanctions produce egoistic macro-motivation to cooperate #contradicts (0.78) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 194