Erós a spravedlnost : Erotický původ společnosti

Readers of Levinas are often puzzled by the move from the ethical to the political. The ethical relation is that of the face-to-face. It is marked by inequality and exclusivity. The political, however, is characterized by equality and universality. Since the Enlightenment, its ideal has been a justice that is no respecter of persons; the touchstone of the political has been equal justice for all. How, then, are we to move from the ethical to the political? Does Levinas provide us with a way to mediate between the two? The very notion of mediation presupposes that there are levels that intervene between the individual and the political. For Levinas, such levels are provided by the family. This, I argue, is the import of Levinas’s account in Totality and Infinity of the erotic origin of society. In the final sections of this article, I draw out the implications of Levinas’s account of fecundity for the concept of the political.