Bauman and Levinas: Levinas cannot be used

The most ambitious attempt to use Emmanuel Levinas to justify a new moral philosophy in a postmodern world is that of Zygmunt Bauman in Postmodern Ethics. Levinas cannot be used. Bauman would use Levinas in order to "desocialize" the subject. That is, to render the subject less a creature of the organization, community, and group, each of which is the enemy of ethics. While Levinas would also desocialize the subject, the terms and concepts he employs are only superficially similar to those employed by Bauman, as well as other social theorists. Terms such as "the other" or the "face" are employed by Levinas in such unique ways that they are unavailable to be used as guidance or inspiration for social theory. In many respects this is a good thing, for it means that Levinas must be encountered on his own terms.