Levinas' ethical perspective: its meaning for education

This paper seeks to outline the link between the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and education-pi alpha iota delta epsilon iota alpha. By taking a distance from attempts to apply the axiological and deontological aspects of Levinas' ethics in education, it is argued that, beyond instrumentalizing the fundamental categories of the Lithuanian thinker, it is a matter of understanding the meaning of his philosophy and how this can enrich pedagogical practice. The work is carried out in six steps: (1) characterization of Levianasian philosophy as a decentralization of subjectivity and its ethical pre-eminence; (2) description of two areas of human experience-enjoyment and Desire-which define (3) two different types of education: for nourishment and for responsibility towards the Other; 4) characterization of today's world as a world of work, of calculation, of skill and of the relation between means and ends, in which (5) the areas of emergence of a third party-politics, economics, justice, education-are intended to degrade ethics to a second level; and (6) the need to place the face of the Other at the center of the educational act.