Phenomenology and Religion: New Frontiers

morny joy

solicitude, the sense of justice presupposes it, to the extent that it holds

persons to be irreplaceable. Justice in turn adds to solicitude, to the

extent that the field of application of equality is all of humanity.^26

As in personal relations, the other must be regarded as irreplaceable.
Thus, treating the other as a peer or equal, whether in the reciprocal
recognition of friendship and solicitude, or in the public recognition
of the other as a subject of rights, surpasses the more general Kantian
injunction to not treat another human being as a means. Personal
solicitude transmutes into a concern for justice as embracing the
welfare of humanity. It is a high-minded and perhaps even visionary
evocation of the conditions attendant on acknowledging the equality
of all human beings, involving, for Ricoeur, both concern and activist
conduct in the cause of justice. Ricoeur is aware that there is a marked
difference in his own approach from that of Levinas, which he feels the
need to describe. As he remarks in an interview:

The Other, who has a face, can become a friend. And this is the problem

of intersubjective relations. I believe that Levinas is the thinker of this

relationship to the Other with a face. But we always have to keep in

mind the relation with an Other who has no face for us. For me, the

Chinese over there somewhere will never become friends. But I have

relations with them through institutions. We have a shift from the

concept of friendship to the concept of justice. Oneself as Another puts

both relations on the same level — friendship and justice. I define,

moreover, the first ethical relation in the following terms: “To aim at

the good life with and for others in just institutions.” Consequently,

the idea of justice concerns my relations to the Other without a face. It

is here that the institution makes the relation and not intersubjectivity.

This is why I would react against a narrow personalism that would

reduce everything to relation: ‘I–you.’ There is a you, but there is also

an ‘each one.’... ‘To each his or her right.’^27

I think that Ricoeur’s intention in maintaining such a definite
emphasis on the “irreplaceability” or the “eachness” of every person
at the communal level is a form of caution. Firstly, it cautions the
practitioners of theory — in their philosophical, political, and judicial

26. Ibid., 202. Ibid., 202.


27. Ricoeur in Raynova, “All that Give Us to Think,” 674. Ricoeur in Raynova, “All that Give Us to Think,” 674.