Alphonso Lingis and the question of environmental responsibility

Abstract

In this paper, I situate Alphonso Lingis’s work within eco-phenom enology by showing how his ontological realism locates ethical demands directly within sensibility through a critical expansion of Levinas’s ethic of the “face” to non-human entities. Through the concepts of the elemental, the sensory levels it gives rise to, as well as the imperative, I demonstrate how Lingis views moral responsibility as scalable from an individual bird to an entire ecosystem.