What does levinas mean when he claims that ethics is the first Essay

What does levinas mean when he claims that ethics is the first philosophy - Essay Example In light of that, it can be said that Levinas is not writing an ethics at all. Instead, he is exploring the meaning of intersubjectivity and lived immediacy in light of three themes: transcendence, existence, and the human other† (Bergo, 2007). Levinas' claim that the first philosophy is ethics, then, must be understood based off of his esoteric interpretation of the idea of ethics; nonetheless, the argument has some compelling qualities. Levinas' ethics begins with the simple, face-to-face interaction with another human being. Levinas tries to make the claim that the way that people behave when faced with each other implicitly places them in the same moral universe. At the core of Levinas's mature thought...are descriptions of the encounter with another person. That encounter evinces a particular feature: the other impacts me unlike any worldly object or force. I can constitute the other person cognitively, on the basis of vision, as an alter ego. I can see that another human being is â€Å"like me,† acts like me, appears to be the master of her conscious life. That was Edmund Husserl's basic phenomenological approach to constituting other people within a shared social universe. For Levinas, then, the fundamental reality to an interpersonal encounter is the basis for ethics. This ties in with ideas of ethics that Victorian-era scholars, Hume and Enlightenment scholars in general had about the obvious connection between empathy for others and moral behavior. (Wright, 1983, pg. 232; Parrinder, 1972; Halperin, 1974). Hume, for example, argued that empathy preceded more advanced moral judgments and was a necessary condition for those judgments: â€Å"[S]ympathy is the source of the esteem, which we pay to all the artificial virtues† (Wright, 1983, pg. 232). Hume's position is that empathy naturally guides us to behave to others morally: There is no need to tell most fathers that it is wrong to starve their children, and no need to tell people not to beat their friends randomly. It is when that empathy is stunted that pathological behavior is caused. Hume argued that the role of morality was merely to make explicit and clear the transition from obvious pri nciples derived from empathy to abstract behavior norms. Indeed, the Enlightenment in total agreed with Levinas' sentiment that it was human sympathy and interpersonal interaction that gave birth to moral behavior. Even Adam Smith, seemingly amoral in his defense of markets, actually assumed a deep empathy in human behavior, which combined with a fundamental political and economic equality that he assumed for his model

Social theories in social work Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Social theories in social work - Essay Example Social work is a discipline that involves the application of social theory and some research methods. The purpose of which is to improve the overall quality of living of society at large. Social work incorporates and uses other social sciences in order to improve the human conditions. Social work is thus a profession committed to attain social justice and an enhanced life style. Social work deals with and resolves almost every major social issue. Social workers are involved in the analyzing the root causes of various social problems and developing ideal solutions studies for the same. They may work with individuals, groups or the society evolved in the early nineteenth century.  Social work as a profession evolved in the early nineteenth century. This was initiated by the problems created in society by the industrial revolution. Social work as a profession. It was triggered by the vivid application of scientific reasoning and theories to various studies. Numerous educational instit utions accepted social work as a discipline and began to offer courses. In the twentieth century, the social work as a profession began to depend heavily upon research and various evidence based practices. This led to an overall improvement in the professionalism of social work. At present social workers are obsessed with myriads of pursuits in solving societal problems. Professional social workers usually hold a professional degree in social work and may even have a license or are professionally.