Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Inventing An Ethics: Existentialism And Engagement Through Literature, Michael Foster Wickham

LSU Master's Theses

The existentialist ethics of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir offers a unique perspective that challenges a traditional, normative picture that has been dominant throughout the history of ethical thinking and continues to dominate in contemporary discourse. The perspective in question refuses to rely on essence to ground its positions, opting instead to focus on the contingency of the subject and the interpersonal as being fundamental in the invention of moral values and ethical practices. This thesis looks to – in the first chapter – explore the relationship between the subjective and the interpersonal through a discussion of Heidegger’s Mitsein …

Emmanuel Levinas And The Meaning Of Ecological Responsibility, Joe Matthew Larios

LSU Master's Theses

Recent work in eco-phenomenology has often tried to find a way to situate Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy in a way that would be productive for environmental ethical concerns. This has often proved difficult due to the anthropocentrism of Levinas’s philosophy and the sometimes inconsistent interpretations of what the face of the Other signifies and whether it should be understood as perceptually present to the one who “sees” it in any way. This, combined with a general lack of engagement with Levinas’s writings on politics, has often made an ecological interpretation of Levinas difficult or awkward.

In this thesis, I try …