Jack Carson Compares Jewish and Cherokee Ethics

 

Photo: Aimee Yu

Jack Carson, an MIT second-year undergraduate and EECS major, is the recent winner of the Elie Wiesel Ethics Essay Contest. His entry, “We Know Only Men: Reading Emmanuel Levinas On The Rez,” compares Jewish and Cherokee ethical thought. 

The essay links Carson’s hometown in Adair County, Oklahoma, to the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon, France. Both were places where the people went to extremes to help the "other". Carson attempts to answer the question: “What is to be done after catastrophe?” 

Carson explains in this interview that he wanted to explore how a culture that has been completely displaced can be preserved. Read the full interview here: Q&A: On the ethics of catastrophe | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Carson believes that the fast pace of technology highlights the importance of philosophy, literature, history, and the liberal arts. He plans to have a career at the intersection of machine learning, chemistry and biology. 

He said, "When I was younger, I just happened across a discussion of CP Snow’s famous essay on the “Two Cultures.” In it, he talks about his scientist friends who had never read Shakespeare, and his literary friends who couldn’t explain thermodynamics. In a modest way, I’ve always thought that I’d like my education to be one that allowed me to participate in the two cultures. The essay on Levinas is my attempt to pursue this type of education."

Perhaps he will wander down the path of cultural anthropology. Were he to do so, the discipline would be the better for it.