Levinas's contribution to the Law of Hospitality

This article examines the ethical thinking of Levinas, from which Derrida's Law of Hospitality is dervied, to see if it is sustainable in the face of Badiou's claim that transcendence cannot be admitted into the body of philosophical thought. Is Levinas, as Badiou argues, seeking to smuggle religion into philosophy and if so does this attempt amount to no more than an anti-philosophy theology which has to be resisted for the integrity of philosophy? Dissenting from this view I return to Levinas and consider the problematisation with ethics which accompanies the arrival of the Third. The article concludes by examining the contribution of transcendence. I consider that it does have a place in philosophy. I suggest that it allows us to look at the concept of the Good in a way that the thinking of Badiou never can.

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Liverpool Law Review. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10991-019-09236-w