Levinasova etika pred izzivi digitalne dobe
Levinas’s ethics and the challenges of the digital age

slovenian

2025

volume 85, issue 4

anonymous other   corporeality   digital age   disembodiment   Levinas's ethics   totalitarianism

Univerza v Ljubljani, Teološka fakulteta
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

The article explores the challenges posed by the digital age to Levinas’s ethics. Although Levinas understood technology as an ethically neutral tool that could even contribute to human liberation, the contemporary development of digital technologies reveals profound changes in both the human lifeworld and in our understanding of the human being. The paper examines three domains where digitalization particularly collides with the core postulates of Levinas’s thought: (1) the emergence of digital “totalitarianism,” which can be interpreted through his critique of ontology and the logic of being; (2) the problem of the anonymous other, manifest in the anonymity of online communication and the rise of artificial intelligence; and (3) the problem of digital disembodiment, whi-ch undermines Levinas’s emphasis on corporeality as the bearer of ethical digni-ty. The article argues that digital technology cannot be regarded as a neutral tool but rather reshapes the very conditions of human coexistence and therefore calls for ethical reflection. Levinas’s ethics, which places the embodied face-to-face relation at its centre, can thus serve as a corrective to the anomalies of the digi-tal age and as a guide for preserving and cultivating genuine humanity.

17.02.2026