Abstract

As far as I can tell, the concept of “desert” in Levinas’s thought seems to retain itsfamiliar associations, namely, as an environment that can be empirically characterizedas inhospitable, barren, and destitute of the kinds of material resources necessary forthe growth of the autonomous and autochthonous subjective self. It also seems plausiblethat a relevant extension of desert conditions to human community in Levinas’stopography would be the “cities” of concentration camps of the Holocaust. In otherwords, there is a correlative interior type of desert that, with Levinas, can be intuitedas what I am calling a desert of the ethical. In what follows I would like to refer toboth of these conditions—the ontological and the ethical deserts—as a way to betterunderstand why humans in general move from such desert regions to areas that promisewhat seems like greater fecundity and the possibilities of growth and expansion offamily and tribe. I would like to modify each of these depictions in consonance withwhat I take to be a Levinasian ethical horizon for my reflections.