Abstract

Historically, most traditional philosophers discussing ethics have concerned themselves with answering the question "what is ethics?" The question presupposes there is an essential answer, the truth that can be found. This answer may or may not have to do with how people ethically conduct themselves for others. I say this to highlight that the search for an answer, more often than not, is a search for something unconditioned by human encounters. This is a problem for the dialogic philosophers Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. ;These thinkers charge that in asking this question and pursuing an answer, one is not talking about ethics. Ethics happen between people. Most of the time, ethics are no more than one's conduct for another. Therefore, if one does not philosophically situate one's discussion of ethics in the encounters and relations between people, one is not discussing ethics. Dialogically, ethics are for the other or the other person, so to speak. Thus, a discussion of ethics begins with the other, not an abstract question from which one pursues an abstract answer. ;My goal in writing this project is to show what a dialogic discussion of ethics looks like, and how such a discussion offers resistance to many abstract, traditional philosophical ways of discussing ethics. I believe abstract philosophical discussions of ethics are beyond ethics or the ethical, in that they often disregard those who are alive, those who are or ought to be concerned with ethical conduct. In presenting this work, I hope to provide a picture and way of showing how to resist traditional philosophical discussions of ethics by demonstrating how to discuss ethics where conduct---as opposed to abstract questions, answers, and theory---is primary