The Fearful Ethical Subject: On the Fear for the Other, Moral Education, and Levinas in the Pandemic
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The Fearful Ethical Subject: On the Fear for the Other, Moral Education, and Levinas in the Pandemic Sijin Yan1 · Patrick Slattery1 Accepted: 6 November 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The article seeks to reclaim a type of fear lost in silent omission in education, yet central to the development of an ethical subject. It distinguishes the fear described by Martin Heidegger through the concept of befindlichkeit and fear for the other as an essential moment for ethics articulated by Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that the latter conception of fear has inverted the traditional assumption of the ideal ethical subject as fearless. It then examines how Levinas’s interpretation of fear might contribute to the discussion on fear and responsibility in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes that fear for the other reveals our tremendous capacity to suffer for the other, which is an aspect of the emotional life that has not been identified in the general educational discourse. This inattention manifests itself as a categorical omission in which the existence of fear for the other is not recognized and impedes the ability of educators to address ethics as it is deeply lived. Keywords Fear · Moral education · Levinas · Pandemic · Emotion
Introduction Is fear inherently unethical? Does one always need to resist the intrusive force of fear in order to live ethically? Should moral education underscore the task to quell, restrain, and overcome fear among students at any time? This article is concerned with the nature of fear and whether fearlessness is an unquestionable ethical ideal and pursuit of moral education. This research question is situated in the context of the pandemic, where many students, educators, and parents have encountered fear as the world has ground to a halt. Also, noticeably, over the past few months, controversies have swirled about how we should understand, pass judgments on, and react to fear in such a precarious moment. Some writers have heeded to the corruptive aspects of fear (Agamben 2020; Lévy 2020; Reno 2020). Being reflective of our affective states, we would like to take up the occurrence of fear as an opportunity to question some taken-for-granted perceptions of fear, explore its ambiguous nature, and investigate the relationship between fear and responsibility in moral education.
* Sijin Yan [email protected] 1
Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
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S. Yan, P. Slattery
In the first section, we make a distinction between the fear described by Martin Heidegger through the concept of befindlichkeit and fear for the other as an essential moment for ethics articulated by Emmanuel Levinas. Then, we argue that the latter conception of fear has inverted the traditional assumption of the ideal ethical subject as fearless in the sense that (1) Levinas’s conception of the ethical subject as being fearful for the other prioritizes one’s ability to be deeply affected by the presence of the other (2)
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