What does it mean to listen to someone? Listening as an act of hospitality

Abstract

This thesis puts forward a phenomenological account of what we refer to when we talk about the phrase ´to listen to someone´. On this account, listening is an intersubjective, and therefore ethical, relation in which the listener is not passive but actively involved. Listeners, particularly when relating to those who are disempowered, have a Levinasian responsibility to offer the other person the hospitality of listening to them, thereby facilitating the completion of that person´s communicative aims.