Dr James Laing | Oxford

Date | 23 September 2026

Title | People, their faces, and the possibility of murder

Location | Room 0.55, D’Olier Street

Abstract:

In the Anglophone tradition philosophical interest in the face has tended to be theoretical: the expressive capacities of the face unsettle some assumptions which generate the problem of other minds, in both its epistemological and conceptual incarnations. In the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, by contrast, the philosophical interest of the face is primarily ethical. In this talk I will offer an elaboration and defence of a surprising yet central Levinasian thesis: that the face of the other makes murder impossible. In doing so, I will draw attention to a way in which the face-to-face relation is inherently ethical.