Allied Emmanuel Levinas and Iris Murdoch ‒Metaphysists: A Useful Connection‒

Abstract

As opposed to the scientific description of human beings and the entailing relationship between them, this essay attempts to offer a relationship of humanity made intelligible in states both imaginative and illogical, a thought shared by Emmanuel Levinas and Iris Murdoch. They are visionary, even story-telling in their writing, examining human relationships in their advocacy of metaphysical thoughts over ontological ones. Interestingly, there is a mysterious collation in their interest in the issue of ethics, idea of face, understanding of Shakespeare and the like, without knowing of the other’s existence in different spaces, but the same time. This paper offers the comparative perception of ethics that these two figures share in terms of their reading of metaphysics.