An Institutional Approach to Alterity: Thinking Love in Levinas and Hegel

Abstract

Emmanuel Levinas's early work inaugurated a tradition of thinking about alterity as at odds with generalized forms of knowledge that characterize political institutions. However, in his later work Levinas broaches but leaves underdeveloped the provocative idea that institutional modes of reasoning can provide a welcome home for alterity if they follow the wisdom of love. Against this backdrop, I argue that reading G. W. F. Hegel's early writings on neighbor love alongside his mature philosophy of the state offers us important resources for articulating an institutional approach to alterity that offers a compelling solution to Levinas's concern with letting the other(s) be seen by institutions in a non-totalizing manner. Across his early writings, Hegel positions love as the vehicle through which one comes to be at home in the institutions of one's community and the vehicle through which one can revise and expand the institutions of one's community in novel ways. My aim is to demonstrate that Hegel's early account of love provides an indispensable blueprint for understanding his mature account of the relation between the individual qua infinitely unique and modern political institutions. In turn, this will enable us to discern the institutional approach to alterity embedded in his thought.