• About
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   Institutional Repository Home
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Institutional Repository Home
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of Institutional RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Anarchic Ethics: Rethinking Obedience with Ruskin and Levinas

    Carter, Sari Lynn
    : https://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/etd-08272015-215326
    http://hdl.handle.net/1803/15508
    : 2015-10-29

    Abstract

    Obedience is a concept without much purchase in the modern academy, often assumed to be synonymous with totalitarian regimes and restrictive ideologies. Yet obedience itself, when closely examined, emerges as a content-less modality of relation, an unspoken assumption underlying the ought in any ethical judgment: critiquing an oppressive system as something that ought to be defied presupposes an idea of justice that ought to be followed. But whence this sense of ought? This paper offers a rethinking of obedience in light of this question, drawing upon two very different thinkers—nineteenth-century art and social critic John Ruskin and twentieth-century ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Their conceptions of obedience are multi-faceted, problematic and provocative. Understanding the contrasting ways in which these authors see these facets of obedience interacting underscores the complexity of the concept of obedience and may open a more perceptive ground to contemporary ethics whence to critique the totalitarian abuse of obedience, building from Levinas’s emphasis on an anarchic ethics whose source of obligation is irreducible to institutional closure.
    Show full item record

    Files in this item

    Icon
    Name:
    SariLynnCarter.pdf
    Size:
    499.1Kb
    Format:
    PDF
    View/Open

    This item appears in the following collection(s):

    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations

    Connect with Vanderbilt Libraries

    Your Vanderbilt

    • Alumni
    • Current Students
    • Faculty & Staff
    • International Students
    • Media
    • Parents & Family
    • Prospective Students
    • Researchers
    • Sports Fans
    • Visitors & Neighbors

    Support the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries

    Support the Library...Give Now

    Gifts to the Libraries support the learning and research needs of the entire Vanderbilt community. Learn more about giving to the Libraries.

    Become a Friend of the Libraries

    Quick Links

    • Hours
    • About
    • Employment
    • Staff Directory
    • Accessibility Services
    • Contact
    • Vanderbilt Home
    • Privacy Policy