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Subject Sensible to the Other: Ethical Sensibility of the Subject to the Other in Mencius, Levinas, Poetry, and Pieta

Lee Chang-dong's Poetry and Kim KI-duk's Pieta are cinematic critiques on the Korean society that has been devastated by the ugly capitalist ideology valorizing or glorifying the pursuit of self-interest, endless competition, material success, and egoism. The paper will examine the ethics of sensibility to the other in Mencius and Levinas and investigate how the two films represent the subject who is sensible to the other. Mencius argues that the feeling of sympathy on the suffering of the other is universal to the human and that by strengthening the natural goodness of the heart, we should make the society of the ren(仁) in which people care others. Levinas also argues that the egoism of the subject breaks down in the encounter with the face of the other, which is transcendental and evokes the ethical sensibility for the other, and that such ethical sensibility is universal to humans. Lee Chang-dong's Poetry presents Mija, who does not feel and cover sympathy on the neighbor's suffering but takes ethical responsibility as argued by Mencius and Levinas. Mija's ethical sensibility is deepened by her aesthetic sensibility. Poetry suggests the aesthetical and the ethical are the two sides of the same sensibility. Kim Ki-duk's Pieta represents the subject, who lives a callous and cold life as a money-exploiting cog of the ugly capitalist machine and, by experiencing the motherly love, recovers his sensibility to feel the sympathy on the suffering of his victims to take the responsible act for them. Pieta suggests that the tree of social love grow on everyday ethical sensibility.