Ethical Theory and Responsibility Ethics: A Metaethical Study of Niebuhr and Levinas by Kevin Jung (review)

In Ethical Theory and Responsibility Ethics, Kevin Jung presents a historical and constructive analysis of two of the most prominent defenders of responsibility ethics: H. Richard Niebuhr and Emmanuel Levinas. The Niebuhr and Levinas specialist will find detailed, historical discussions and clear, rigorous analyses of these thinkers’ philosophical and theological thought. But where Jung’s project really makes a distinct contribution to the field of ethics—and where his work may be of interest to the nonspecialist—is when he brings their insights and oversights into critical conversation with analytic philosophy. Rendering a mutually productive dialogue, he persuasively argues that categories within analytic philosophy cohere with and clarify their respective positions; conversely, their concrete responsibility ethics may contribute to analytic philosophy.

Chapter 1 introduces key concepts and issues within contemporary analytic philosophy relevant to responsibility ethics; these concepts and issues resurface toward the end of the book when Jung puts them in dialogue with the ethical theories of Niebuhr and Levinas. Chapter 2 reconstructs the philosophical and theological background of Niebuhr’s moral theory, engaging a number of influential thinkers—Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl, Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Barth, Josiah Royce, and Martin Buber—who shaped his thought. Chapter 3 examines more closely Niebuhr’s responsibility ethics itself. In the next two chapters, Jung applies the same structure of analysis to Levinas’s ethical theory: he considers Levinas’s philosophical and theological context; engages the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, and Buber; and then exposits Levinas’s own distinct position. Jung traverses and navigates complex and divergent concepts and ideas proposed by Niebuhr and Levinas with clarity and finesse. His purpose is to interpret their arguments in light of their respective positions in ethical theory. In the final two chapters, Jung’s work turns more explicitly constructive when he puts their theories into conversation with analytic philosophy.

The specialist in Niebuhr or Levinas studies may find that Jung’s attempts to clarify their thought with foreign, extrinsic categories do violence to their works. Indeed, on occasion Jung seems to shoehorn their ideas into analytical concepts that may not do full justice to the full breadth of their thought. For instance, Jung rightly indicates that Levinas rejects a certain kind of abstract ethical universalism on the basis of his emphasis on the concrete relation to the particular other. But to conclude from this that he is an ethical particularist does not adequately account for the categorically imperative nature of the ethical demands and responsibility to the other that Levinas proposes. In other words, it seems to me that Levinas offers a form of ethical universalism that begins precisely in the concrete situation without collapsing into an ethical particularism.

Despite these minor reservations, Jung’s work is to be commended not only for its excellent exposition and rigorous studies of Niebuhr and Levinas but also for its successful attempt overall to clarify and give greater coherence to their ideas with the tools of analytic philosophy. In so doing, Jung provides robust theoretical reflection on responsibility ethics in a time of augmented human power and capacities.