Epistemology and the hither side: A Levinasian account of relational knowing

In this paper, we argue that the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas is inconsistent with the ideological and economic dogmatism of psychology. His philosophy denies the adequacy of all rational, thematic accounts of human beings and thus undermines psychology's dogmatic adherence to the methods, institutional procedures, and economic practices of empiricistic, positivistic psychology. His philosophy demands that we ground our research in ethical relations and not abstract formulations. This fundamentally ethical approach to epistemology provides us with a clear, though non-rational, frame for adjudicating between different approaches to research in psychology. His philosophy allows us to judge (to qualify and disqualify) contributions to psychological research in terms of their relational, rather than their abstract or instrumental, adequacy.