History of Ethics in Dialogue: Lévinas and Haidt on the Foundations of Morality

Abstract

This article aims to assess the contemporary validity of Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy in the context of Jonathan Haidt’s empirical research in moral psychology. A comparative analysis is undertaken, aligning Levinas’s phenomenological ethics with Haidt’s theory of moral intuitionism. Levinas, through the concept of the Other, posits a primordial ethical imperative of responsibility that emerges in the face-to-face encounter with another human being. Haidt, by contrast, conceptualizes morality as a product of evolved emotional and socio-cognitive mechanisms, emphasizing the intuitive foundations of moral judgment. The analysis suggests that while Haidt’s moral foundations theory reveals the culturally and socially constructed variability of moral reasoning, Levinas’s framework - though situated within philosophical discourse - offers a potentially universal ethical paradigm grounded in intersubjective obligation.