Who is My Neighbour?

Abstract

Who is my neighbour? The discussion of this question throughout the ages has ranged from asking whether my neighbour is the Jew and the friend, through whether my neighbour is any and every other human being including the stranger and my enemy, to whether he or she is God. Is it conceivable that my neighbour might be a non-human animal? Would this be conceivable to Levinas? This question is relevant to the question treated in Chapter 1. If it is claimed that Levinasian metaphysics can meet a shortcoming in the ethics of utilitarianism at least as this is understood by John Stuart Mill it must not do so at the cost of ignoring the fact that utilitarianism requires that in determining the morality of an action, rule or institution consideration must be given to the welfare of any sentient being. Of what classical utilitarians have said on this matter nothing is more eloquent than the words in which Jeremy Bentham declares his hope that:

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?¹

Et quis est meus proximus?

Luke, 10: 29