Connecting the Theoretical, the Personal, and the Ethical in Psychology: George Kelly and Emmanuel Levinas.

George Kelly’s personal construct psychology has proven popular among many psychologists because of the unique way in which it blends both elements of a postmodern, constructivist philosophy with elements of a modernist, scientific philosophy. However, Kelly’s theory offers little in the way of substantive guidance for how we might understand moral judgment, moral action, and responsibility. That is, although Kelly’s theory seems to escape the dangers of epistemological relativism, it still engenders the potential for moral relativism because it fails to provide adequate tools for addressing genuinely ethical questions. We argue that the ethical phenomenology of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas provides a compelling account of how ethical responsibility can be found in the raw datum of lived-experience, rather than in the processes of mental construction, and in so doing provides a way for psychologists to more fruitfully address ethical questions from the perspective of Kelly’s personal construct theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]