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In his paper ‘Jews, Christians and Other Monsters’, Slavoj Zizek gives his own structure to the views of Emmanuel Levinas. Because this paper alludes to many of Zizek's philosophical/psychoanalytic interests, I will confine my discussion to one of his central concerns: his view that Levinas's theory of human nature lacks a specific and important element.
Underlying all the issues in the paperisZizek's ongoing concern about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Zizek is strongly influenced by German Idealism and has a distinctive interpretation of Hegel. From this point of view, he argues that Christianity resolves tensions intrinsic to his Lacanian/Freudian interpretation of Judaism. For him, this is a long theoretical story; readers who want to explore his views on this question can find a much more detailed argument in his book The Fragile Absolute. His views about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity colour his response to Levinas, and he addresses Levinas's views in this paper.
Levinas, in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, argues that Judaism is peculiarly well suited, as a religion based on the Law and not preoccupied with the afterlife, to become the basis of a universal moral point of view. Zizek opposes Levinas's position, arguing that it is Eurocentric, and a hidden assertion of superiority, a kind of Jewish version of the British colonial ‘White Man's burden’. Zizek's strong opposition to this view may be a factor in his response to Levinas's theory of human nature.
Levinas's ethical views bring us to the important ethical question of supererogation. Supererogatory actions are actions that go beyond what is morally required. Saints, for example, lead lives that are full of supererogatory actions. That is what makes them saints. Generally speaking, discussions of ethics focus on what is morally required. Knowing that, we can see easily enough what it would be to do more than would be required. This is an important and challenging