Abstract

More than an introduction to Levinas's philosophical itinerary and the position where it matures, Liturgy of the Neighbor is also a critical discussion and original response to an acknowledged master of the twentieth century. The Levinas who appears in this dialogue is a thinker not only determined to get free of Western tradition, but also one whose project and claims shed new and penetrating light on the major figures whose work stood in his way. By moving to this level, where Levinas's teachers and opponents speak for themselves and not only in the voices Levinas has assigned to them, Bloechl presses the discussion beyond an evaluation of Levinas's readings of his interlocutors, and beyond the question of his success in getting free of them, to the more urgent task of weighing the stakes of reestablishing religion, and the ethics where it has meaning, after Nietzche and, above all, Heidegger.