The fruit of the author's many courses on Emmanuel Levinas in Europe and the United States, this study is a clear introduction for graduate students and scholars who are not yet familiar with Levinas's difficult but exceptionally important oeuvre. After a first chapter on the existential background and the key issues of his thought, chapters 2, 3, and 4 concentrate on and include a short text, "Philosophy and the idea of the Infinite," which contains the program of (...) class='Hi'>Levinas's entire oeuvre. Chapter 5 is a companion to the reading of Levinas's first opus magnum, Totality and the Infinite. It analyzes the structure of this book and shows how its questions and answers adhere together. "Through phenomenology toward a saying beyond phenomena and essence" could be the summary of Levinas's attempt to think, with and against Martin Heidegger, the otherness of the Other. -- Amazon.com. (shrink)

The following is an early, previously untranslated essay by Emmanuel Levinas concerning “the metaphysics of antisemitism.” This essay, published originally in 1938 for Paix et Droit, concerns the shared history and destiny of Jews and Christians, religious groups who maintain a relation of essential “foreignness” to, and so “do not belong” to, the “pagan” world. Levinas distinguishes between the long history of Jewish-Christian antagonism and the newer Nazi-style antisemitism, a particularly insidious “racism” that threatens both Jews and Christians. (...) Levinas calls for a renewed appreciation of the “vocation” common to Jews and Christians to advance Judeo-Christian “solidarity,” a solidarity that Levinas believes is increasingly necessary. (shrink)

As Emmanuel Levinas states in the preface to Existence and Existents, "this study is a preparatory one. It examines . . . the problem of the Good, time, and the relationship with the other [person] as a movement toward the Good." First published in 1947, and written mostly during Levinas's imprisonment during World War II, this work provides the first sketch of his mature thought later developed fully in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence. (...) This new edition marks the first time this important work has been made available in an inexpensive paperback edition. Levinas's project in Existence and Existents is to move from anonymous existence to the emergence of subjectivity; to subjectivity's practice, theory and morality; to its encounter with the alterity of the other person. He is concerned here primarily with the time of the solitary subject; time is the inner structure of subjectivity, of the movement of existing. "Levinas's work," says Alphonso Lingis, "contains not only wholly new analyses of the forms of time of the present, the past, the future but also a new conception of the work of time." Beginning with Existence and Existents, then, it is possible to begin tracing the progressive "alterization" of time as it unfolds across the development of Levinas's entire philosophy. As a "preparatory" study, Existence and Existents introduces the major themes and concerns that occupied Levinas throughout his career. This is essential reading for understanding both Levinas's own philosophy and the developments in philosophical thought in the twentieth century. (shrink)

he following is an essay by Emmanuel Levinas, newly translated by Mendel Kranz, concerning Jewish culture and education, Hebrew studies, and Zionism. The essay was first published in 1954 in the United States by The Alliance Review, a small journal affiliated with the Alliance israélite universelle, and has since been almost entirely forgotten. In 2011–2012, it was republished in French by Denis Poizat based on the original draft found in the Alliance archives. Preceding Levinas’s essay is a (...) preface by Kranz that situates it at the intersection of Levinas’s postwar project for Judaism, his relation to Zionism, and the colonial backdrop of the ENIO—three issues that are rarely considered together in Levinas scholarship. Poizat also provides some commentary on the question of education and the similarities between this and other essays by Levinas. (shrink)

Analizamos las transformaciones de la noción de "horizonte" en la modernidad a través de sus usos en obras científicas del período 1440-1624; en particular, en el marco de la discusión que tuvo lugar a propósito de la disputa entre geocentristas y heliocentristas con relación al argumento ptolemaico que establecía que el comportamiento del horizonte probaba la posición central de la Tierra. Señalamos cómo el concepto de "horizonte" es representativo de otros conceptos fundamentales que caracterizan a los sistemas cosmológicos en pugna, (...) de los respectivos sentidos de realidad y del correspondiente carácter de la observación. Mostramos cómo el estudio de los cambios conceptuales históricamente operados en la noción de "horizonte" implica una nueva aproximación a la denominada revolución científica. We analyze the transformations of the notion of horizon in modernity through the different uses that it had in scientific works, written between 1440 and 1624, in which there was discussion of the Ptolemaic argument for the view that the behavior of the horizon proves the centrality of the Earth. We show how the concept of horizon represents other fundamental concepts, which characterize the cosmological systems in dispute and their respective senses of reality and observation. We maintain that the study of the conceptual changes that took place historically in the notion of horizon imply taking a new approach to the so-called Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

Bundel essays over geschiedenis van de fenomenologische beweging en zijn belangrijkste vertegenwoordigers Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger en Levinas.

Science studies have long been concerned with the complex interrelationship between scienti?c research and popular culture’s interpretations and reconstructions of scienti?c ?ndings (Kember 2003; Lancaster 2003; Penley 1997, among others). Disparities between the two are often presented as popular culture’s misinterpretation or misrepresentation of scienti?c facts; however, in this essay I argue that a more theoretically lucrative approach understands these con?icts as complex social and cultural negotiations over epistemological boundaries between scienti?c and popular cultures. Understanding such differences is tremendously (...) important in mediated societies where scienti?c research is mostly understood through its representation in the popular culture. In this paper, I examine what is at stake in popular representations of scienti?c research and how the popular culture is often seen as threatening to the epistemic boundaries of scienti?c culture. Using the recent controversy over The Oprah Winfrey Show’ s presentation of controversial medical practices as a case study, this essay examines how distinctions between scienti?c and popular ways of knowing are constructed, represented and managed. I argue that scienti?c knowledge should be viewed as a complex and often con?icted cultural discursive practice that signi?es boundary negotiations between scienti?c and popular cultures. (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 20, Issue 3, Page 319-330, July 2012.

In the treatise “Suprematism. The World as Objectlessness or Eternal Peace” (1922), Kazimir Malevich positions himself as a “bookless philosopher” who did not consider theories of other philosophers. In fact, the treatise contains a large number of references to philosophers belonging to different traditions. A careful reading shows the extent to which Malevich’s theory is linked to the Russian religious philosophy of the early twentieth century. In my view, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky—philosophers of “Religious Renaissance,” as well as (...) some other intellectuals—acquaint avant-gardists with Neoplatonic conceptions of apophasis. Malevich had access to ideas of fourteenth-century theologian Meister Eckhart, and I will refer to two sources to demonstrate this, including Margarita Sabashnikova’s translation of Eckhart and works of Sergei Bulgakov. Without any reference, Malevich retells the concepts of Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, and Gregory Palamas. I will demonstrate parallels between the treatise on Suprematism and Meister Eckhart’s Sermons concerning the concepts of apophaticism, Platonism, and Nothingness. I will also touch on the theme of Divine Light in the theology of Palamas (fourteenth century) to show the diversity of the avant-garde’s sources of inspiration. (shrink)

Levinas scholarship in English has come a long way since his major philosophical works were translated some 35 years ago. Almost all the writings appear in English, and it is not a great exaggeration to say that the major theses have been explained and the major problems exposed. The task now is to make this seeming point of arrival into a new beginning. For students interested in exploring new directions in Levinas studies, a reading of Maurice Blanchot (...) could prove immensely rewarding. Companions since they first encountered one another at Strasbourg when each was not yet 20 years old, Levinas and Blanchot remainedfriends until Levinas’s death in 1996 and Blanchot’s in 2003. While we can only imagine the significance the friendship had for each of them, for the rest of us it proved what Jacques Derrida called “a grace, a blessing for our times.”. (shrink)

Ethics matters in this contemporary world because humanity has been extremely isolated and easily exposed to the violence. Unless humanity finds a way to overcome this situation, he or she cannot live happily even though the materialism seems to guarantee humanity to live prosperously. With this sense, this research delves into the meaning of ethics, as it focuses on Levinas’appreciation on alterity and responsibility. Most of all, this study demonstrates how Levinas discovers the phenomenality of the face of (...) the Other, how he criticizes on the limitation of Western ontology, and what he argues about ethical responsibility. In Levinas, the face of the Other has the religious implication in that it reveals itself as the form of the Infinite as it makes the I respond on the appeal of the face. This unconditional request helps humanity acknowledge his or her own ethical responsibility on the human predicaments in this contemporary violent world. Based on this acknowledgement, this study tries to grasp the significance of ethics in order for humanity to foster the capability of sympathy on the predicaments of beings. (shrink)

The essay offers a Jewish account of education in nonviolence by examining the first of Emmanuel Levinas' Talmudic readings ‘Toward the Other.’ I begin by exploring Levinas' unique philosophy of religious education, which nurtures responsibility for the other, as part of an alternative to enlightenment-orientated modern Jewish thought pioneered by the likes of Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig. I then consider a question raised by Yusef Waghid and Zehavit Gross at the 2012 meeting of the Philosophy (...) of Education Society of Great Britain in Oxford concerning whether one must forget in order to forgive great wrong doing such as South African Apartheid or the Holocaust of European Jewry. Through an examination of Levinas' treatment of several Talmudic passages, I argue that the Jewish tradition takes a paradoxical approach to this question. We should forget in order to remember wrong doing. The spiritual process that both perpetrators and victims must undergo in order to embrace this paradox, I contend, is a genuine education in nonviolence. (shrink)

동물도 얼굴을 가지는가? 만일 동물도 레비나스가 말하는 얼굴을 갖는다면, ‘나’는 동물에게도 무한한 책임을 져야 할 것이다. 그러나 동물이 얼굴을 갖지 않더라도, 오늘날 동물은 지성의 부재에도 불구하고 고통을 느끼는 생명체로 인간과 같은 배려를 받을 권리를 보장받아야 한다는 종차별 비판 의견 우세에 의해 다루어진다. 레비나스는 고통이 자기 안의 붕괴 자체로 무익하다고 본다. 따라서, 이 의미 없는 원초적인 고통을 동물에게 가하는 것은 부당할 것이다. 하지만 레비나스는 동물을 윤리적 행위의 대상으로 포함시켜야 한다고는 명확히 주장하지 않는다. 그의 텍스트에서 동물이 타자로 여겨져 나의 책임을 무한히 펼쳐야 (...) 하는 대상이라는 언급은 없다. 그렇더라도, 우리는 그가 윤리와 동물에 관해 얘기한 한 대담에서 모든 생명체가 우리의 윤리적 관심의 대상일 수 있음을 언급한 대목을 통해 그의 윤리가 동물에게도 적용할 수 있는 숨겨진 의도를 가지고 있음을 파악할 수 있을 것이다. 비록 레비나스의 ‘타인에 대한 휴머니즘’이 인간 중심주의적 입장을 견지하는 듯 보이지만 고통을 호소하는 동물에게서 우리가 ‘나’의 존재-가짐을 의문에 부친다면 우리는 레비나스의 텍스트 속 활자를 너머 그의 윤리의 정신을 충실히 따르는 것이라 할 수 있다. (shrink)

레비나스는 언제나 시간과 함께 또 시간을 통해 자신의 철학적 입장을 개진해왔다. 그에 게서 시간은 여타의 철학적 주제 중 하나가 아니라 그의 철학이 사유되고 전개되는 바탕을 이룬다고 평가할 수 있는 것도 이 때문이다. 레비나스 시간관의 특이성은 “시간 개념의 탈 형식화”를 내세운다는 데에, 더욱이는 “인간들 사이의 관계 속에서” 시간을 사유하려 한다 는 데에 있다. 레비나스는 시간에 대한 공시적 이해에 반대한다. 이것은 의식의 시간화로 서, 타자를 동일자로 환원하는 전체성의 철학에 복무한다고 보기 때문이다. 레비나스는 시 간의 탈형식화와 통시성을 연결시킨다. 레비나스가 주장하는 통시적 시간은 경험에 (...) 의해 동화될 수 없는 것과, 의식에 의해 이해될 수 없는 것과 맺는 관계를 일컫는다. 모름지기 시간은 관계적인 것이다. 레비나스는 기억과 예측이 관여할 수 없는, 자아의 시간성을 깨뜨 리는 시간의 타자성을 강조한다. 이런 시간이 책임의 무한과 공명하며, 이를 통해 그가 내 세우고자 하는 것은 주체의 능동성이 아니라 주체의 수동성, 주체의 정립이 아니라 주체의 탈정립이다. 시간의 통시성, 주체의 수동성, 책임의 무한성은 한데 얽혀 있다. 우리는 본 논문을 통해 레비나스가 강조하는 통시적 시간의 내용과 그 의의를, 시간의 통시성이 갖는 윤리적 의미를 살펴보려 한다. 레비나스가 공시적 시간이라 명명했던 아리스토텔레스와 칸 트의 시간 이해를, 그리고 이런 형식적 시간관에 반대하고 그 너머를 사유하고자 했던 베르 그송과 하이데거의 사유를 조망하는 일 및 그들에 대한 레비나스의 평가와 해석을 총체적 으로 살피는 일은 이런 우리의 노력에 좋은 길잡이가 되어 줄 것이다. (shrink)

이 글은 의도적인 지적 표상으로, 경험적 대상으로 드러나는 얼굴이, 서양 철학을 지배 하는 전체성의 개념 안에서 고정된 존재의 얼굴이 사실 존재 저편의 외재성과 관련한다는 레비나스의 철학적 사유가 로젠쯔바이크의 사유로부터 주요한 영향을 받았음을 고찰하고 있다. 로젠쯔바이크는 우선 인간의 단독적인 삶을 외면하는, 동일자가 그의 내면성 안에서 타자를 흡수하는 철학적 전통에 대해 비판한다. 특히, 로젠쯔바이크에게, 전체성을 깨뜨리 려는 철학적 기획으로 급격하게 그를 이끈 것은 헤겔의 역사철학, 형이상학과 더불어 전쟁 의 경험이었다. 마찬가지로, 역사적 대참사로서 겪었던 레비나스의 전쟁 경험 또한 비극적 진리를 확고하게 해주는 계기로 (...) 전체성의 극복을 통한 그 너머를 보게 하였다. 따라서 레 비나스에게, 앞선 로젠쯔바이크의 전체성에 대한 저항의 사유는 참조하지 않을 수 없는 자 신의 철학적 사유의 동기가 되었다. 더욱이, 로젠쯔바이크가 다비드의 별 을 통해 설명하 는 문법적 내용의 함의는 레비나스가 타자의 얼굴을 외재성과 무한의 관념의 조우 장소로 설정한 것과 관련이 있다. 그리고 이것은 레비나스가 말하는 타자를 내 안에 맞아들이는 초월의 운동과 연결된다. 따라서 레비나스의 타자 윤리의 윤리적 낯섬 을 이해하기 위한 실마리를 찾기 위한 작업으로 로젠쯔바이크의 선행 연구를 검토하는 것은 상당히 유의미 한 것으로, 그 자체 의의를 가질 것이다. 또한, 레비나스 철학의 형성을 이해하기 위해서 도 로젠쯔바이크 철학의 검토는 필수적인 연구가 될 것이다. (shrink)

While influential works have been devoted to comparative studies of various Asian philosophies and continental philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida, this collection is the first to fully treat the increased interest in intercultural and interdisciplinary studies related to the work of Emmanuel Levinas in such a context. Levinas and Asian Thought seeks to discover common ground between Levinas’s ethical project and various religious and philosophical traditions of Asia such as Mahāyāna Buddhism, Theravādic (...) Buddhism, Vedism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Islam. -/- In these 13 essays, contributors draw on resources as diverse as the self-sacrificial ethic of bushidō, Islamic jurisprudence, and contemporary research in cognitive science. The essays are organized around three primary themes of enduring ethical, political, and religious importance. The first set of essays considers a dialogue between Levinasian and Asian accounts of the self, others, and the intersubjective relationship. Through a conversation with a variety of non-Western traditions, the second group of essays addresses the question of Levinas’s extreme portrayal of the self’s responsibility to the other and its potential limits. Finally, the collection ends with essays that utilize Asian thought and culture to consider ways in which Levinas’s ethics of alterity might be put into practice in the sphere of politics, social norms, and institutions. -/- Levinas and Asian Thought is not only a comprehensive attempt to bring Levinas into conversation with the philosophies of Asia, but it also represents a focused effort to recognize, address, and overcome Levinas’s own Eurocentrism. Overall, the thoughtful investigations collected here chart new territory, pushing Levinas’s practice of philosophy outside its familiar European and Jewish contexts, expanding our understanding of key Levinasian terms, thus furthering the thinking necessary for ethics as first philosophy. This volume will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students, as it builds connections among Levinas studies, Asian philosophy, comparative philosophy, continental philosophy, and ethics. (shrink)

본 연구는 포스트휴먼 시대에 직면하게 될 사회정의의 문제에 대해서 살피면서, 그 대답을 찾기 위해서 임마누엘 레비나스의 정의론을 살펴보고 있다. 이를 위해서 먼저 포스트휴먼(트랜스휴먼), 트랜스휴머니즘과 포스트휴머니즘의 쟁점들에 대해서 살펴보았다. 포스트휴먼이란 포스트휴먼 시대에 인간과 공존하게 될 새로운 존재를 말하는 것이고, 트랜스휴머니즘은 이러한 존재들이 인간에게 가져다 줄 유익에 대해서 낙관론적인 시각으로 바라보는 관점이고, 포스트휴머니즘은 포스트휴먼 시대의 철학적인 과제들에 대해서 다루는 것이다. 이어서 포스트휴먼 시대의 직면하게 될 사회 정의의 문제를 조명해보았다. 사회제도와 법적인 차원에서 제기될 ‘로봇권(포스트휴먼권)’에 대해서 살펴보았으며, 아울러서 포스트휴먼과 인간이 공존하는 과정에서 벌어지게 될 (...) 사회정의의 문제들도 고찰하였다. 끝으로 포스트휴먼 시대의 정의의 문제에 대해서 레비나스의 정의론의 관점에서 접근을 시도하였다. 이를 바탕으로 본 연구는 타자와의 관계성에 기초한 윤리적 주체성을 바탕으로 만들어내는 정의로운 공동체가 포스트휴먼 시대의 새로운 존재(인간과 포스트휴먼을 모두 포함)가 살아갈 정의로운 사회를 지향할 수 있는 하나의 길이 될 수 있음을 논증하였다. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethical Theory and Responsibility Ethics: A Metaethical Study of Niebuhr and Levinas by Kevin JungMichael SohnEthical Theory and Responsibility Ethics: A Metaethical Study of Niebuhr and Levinas KEVIN JUNG Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. 237 pp. $69.95In Ethical Theory and Responsibility Ethics, Kevin Jung presents a historical and constructive analysis of two of the most prominent defenders of responsibility ethics: H. Richard Niebuhr and Emmanuel (...) Levinas. The Niebuhr and Levinas specialist will find detailed, historical discussions and clear, rigorous analyses of these thinkers’ philosophical and theological thought. But where Jung’s project really makes a distinct contribution to the field of ethics—and where his work may be of interest to the nonspecialist—is when he brings their insights and oversights into critical conversation with analytic philosophy. Rendering a mutually productive dialogue, he persuasively argues that categories within analytic philosophy cohere with and clarify their respective positions; conversely, their concrete responsibility ethics may contribute to analytic philosophy. [End Page 223]Chapter 1 introduces key concepts and issues within contemporary analytic philosophy relevant to responsibility ethics; these concepts and issues resurface toward the end of the book when Jung puts them in dialogue with the ethical theories of Niebuhr and Levinas. Chapter 2 reconstructs the philosophical and theological background of Niebuhr’s moral theory, engaging a number of influential thinkers—Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl, Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Barth, Josiah Royce, and Martin Buber—who shaped his thought. Chapter 3 examines more closely Niebuhr’s responsibility ethics itself. In the next two chapters, Jung applies the same structure of analysis to Levinas’s ethical theory: he considers Levinas’s philosophical and theological context; engages the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, and Buber; and then exposits Levinas’s own distinct position. Jung traverses and navigates complex and divergent concepts and ideas proposed by Niebuhr and Levinas with clarity and finesse. His purpose is to interpret their arguments in light of their respective positions in ethical theory. In the final two chapters, Jung’s work turns more explicitly constructive when he puts their theories into conversation with analytic philosophy.The specialist in Niebuhr or Levinas studies may find that Jung’s attempts to clarify their thought with foreign, extrinsic categories do violence to their works. Indeed, on occasion Jung seems to shoehorn their ideas into analytical concepts that may not do full justice to the full breadth of their thought. For instance, Jung rightly indicates that Levinas rejects a certain kind of abstract ethical universalism on the basis of his emphasis on the concrete relation to the particular other. But to conclude from this that he is an ethical particularist does not adequately account for the categorically imperative nature of the ethical demands and responsibility to the other that Levinas proposes. In other words, it seems to me that Levinas offers a form of ethical universalism that begins precisely in the concrete situation without collapsing into an ethical particularism.Despite these minor reservations, Jung’s work is to be commended not only for its excellent exposition and rigorous studies of Niebuhr and Levinas but also for its successful attempt overall to clarify and give greater coherence to their ideas with the tools of analytic philosophy. In so doing, Jung provides robust theoretical reflection on responsibility ethics in a time of augmented human power and capacities. [End Page 224]Michael SohnCleveland State UniversityCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Levinas's ethics has in the last decades exerted a significant influence on Nursing and Caring Science. The core of Levinas's ethics – his analyses of how our subjectivity is established in the ethical encounter with our neighbour or the Other – is applied both to healthcare practice and in the project of building an identity of Nursing and Caring Science. Levinas's analyses are highly abstract and metaphysical, and also non‐normative. Thus, his analyses cannot be applied directly to (...) practical problems and questions. Theorists in Nursing and Caring Science are generally aware of this. Nevertheless, many of them use Levinas's analyses to explore and solve questions of practical and normative character. This article focuses on the challenges and dilemmas of using Levinas in this manner.The article is divided into two parts. The first part presents some central ideas of Levinas's ethics based on the latter part of his authorship. The main focus is on the radicalism of Levinas's critique of the symbolic order (which includes concepts, categories, knowledge, etc.) – or as he puts it ‘the said’ – as a basis for subjectivity and responsibility. Levinas's notions of saying, anarchy, and singularity accentuate this point of view. These notions refer to conditions in the language, which counteract the symbolic order in the ethical encounter to such an extent that it becomes an incomprehensible. Levinas gives the argumentation a metaphysical frame: The encounter with the incomprehensible is an encounter with the Holy, which is not the ontological God, but a metaphysical desire. It is a mystery as to what this means, and herein lies possibly the main challenge when using Levinas's ethics in science and research: How to maintain the radicalism of his critique of the symbolic order when this is to be communicated in a scientific context that expects clarification of statements and ideas? The second part of the article explores this question by examining how some theorists use Levinas's ethics on questions and problems in the area of healthcare and Nursing and Caring Science. The focus is especially on the theorists' reception and use of the just mentioned notions. The study reveals that these theorists to a large extent transform Levinas's ethics according to their own approaches, with the result that his ethics loses its critical radicalism. Thus, I question the reason why they use Levinas. (shrink)

Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky Reveals the interplay of phenomenology and religion in Levinas’s thought. "Kosky examines Levinas’s thought from the perspective of the philosophy of religion and he does so in a way that is attentive to the philosophical nuances of Levinas’s argument.... an insightful, well written, and carefully documented study... that uniquely illuminates Levinas’s work." —John D. Caputo For readers who suspect there is no place for religion and morality (...) in postmodern philosophy, Jeffrey L. Kosky suggests otherwise in this skillful interpretation of the ethical and religious dimensions of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought. Placing Levinas in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida and Marion, Kosky develops religious themes found in Levinas’s work and offers a way to think and speak about ethics and morality within the horizons of contemporary philosophy of religion. Kosky embraces the entire scope of Levinas’s writings, from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being, contrasting Levinas’s early religious and moral thought with that of his later works while exploring the nature of phenomenological reduction, the relation of religion and philosophy, the question of whether Levinas can be considered a Jewish thinker, and the religious and theological import of Levinas’s phenomenology. Kosky stresses that Levinas is first and foremost a phenomenologist and that the relationship between religion and philosophy in his ethics should cast doubt on the assumption that a natural or inevitable link exists between deconstruction and atheism. Jeffrey L. Kosky is translator of On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought by Jean-Luc Marion. He has taught at Williams College. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor May 2001 272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index, append. cloth 0-253-33925-1 $39.95 s / £30.50. (shrink)

Lévinas’s philosophy emerges from his critique of the traditional sources of Western philosophy and employs phenomenological methods to transcend the conventional theology and ethics of subjectivity. Through a series of inquiries, Lévinas expands the narrow philosophical vision and problem domain related to the philosophy of the Other. This study examines the profound impact of Lévinas’s philosophy on contemporary philosophy and human society, particularly its elucidation of people’s anxiety, confusion, and overwhelm with the ethical dimension of life in postmodern society. In (...) today’s rapidly evolving landscape, characterized by increased reliance on AI, decreased face-to-face communication, and significant shifts in lifestyle, the study of Lévinas’s philosophy gains heightened relevance. As we navigate these changes, Lévinas’s insights into anxiety, responsibility, and ethical encounters with the Other offer reflections on human connection and ethical engagement, urging us to reconsider our relationship with technology and prioritize meaningful interactions amidst societal transformations. (shrink)

'The Levinas Reader' collects, often for the first time in English, essays by Levinas encompassing every aspect of his thought: the early phenomenological studies written under the guidance and inspiration of Husserl and Heidegger; the fully developed ethical critique of such totalizing philosophies; the pioneering texts on the moral dimension to aesthetics; the rich and subtle readings of the Talmud which are an exemplary model of an ethical, transcendental philosophy at work; the admirable meditations on current political (...) issues. (shrink)

Does art have ethical possibilities? Can literature disclose our responsibilityfor other people? This short text aims to unfold some nuances of responsible and irresponsible art as they appear in Emmanuel Levinas's sparse remarks on aesthetics. We examine some common ways of conceiving Levinas's thoughts in literary studies, followed by a closer discussion of his ideas on the possibilities of art in "Reality and Its Shadow" and his late interviews on Vasily Grossman and Sacha Sosno.

Much of the understanding of the nature of science in contemporary psychology is founded on a positivistic philosophy of science that cannot adequately account for meaning as experienced. The phenomenological tradition provides an alternative approach to science that is attentive to the inherent meaningfulness of human action in the world. Emmanuel Levinas argues, however, that phenomenology, at least as traditionally conceived, does not provide sufficient grounds for meaning. Levinas argues that meaning is grounded in the ethical encounter with (...) the Other such that meaning arises in rupture. For Levinas, the physical world and the I provide constraints on the meaning given by the Other, even as the Other is logically prior to all other experience. This Levinasian perspective advocates an epistemology that is open to the rupture of the Other as a way to knowledge. This emphasis on openness to rupture entails a methodology in which psychologists must allow the objects of study to guide their methods of research. Finally, the Levinasian perspective implies a scientific community that is sensitive to the rupture occasioned by the encounter with the Other. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The promise of language in the depths of hell: Primo Levi's Canto of Ulysses and Inferno -- The difference between difference and otherness: Il milione of Marco Polo and Calvino's Le città invisibili -- Traces of the Confucian/Mencian other: ethical moments in Sima Qian's Records of the historian -- War and the Hellenic splendor of knowing: Euripides, Hölderlin, Celan -- The saying, the said, and the betrayal of mercy in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice -- Nom de dieu, quelle race: the (...) saying, the said, and the betrayal of charity in Mongo Beti's Le pauvre Christ de Bomba -- Transcendent divinity and human responsibility in Mahfouz: "zaabalawi" and children of our alley -- That you might have my witness in your poem: Valéry, the symbolist tradition, and Edgar Bowers' later blank verse. (shrink)

Levinas is often credited with introducing a strong notion of ethics into postmodern thought. But his commitment to Zionism, his views on the Palestinian people, and his underformulated theory of justice raise questions about the desirability of his thinking for politics. In this study, the well-known encounter between Levinas and the Palestinians is addressed in order to determine how his philosophy of ethics can be deployed for political ends. As the philosopher famously concerned with the connection between self (...) and the Other, the relation between Levinas, Israel and the Palestinians stands as the natural political test of his ethics. Based on this encounter, it is demonstrated that Levinasian justice is too unsafe as a prescription for a political order. Only when Levinas' ethics as first philosophy is supported by love as first politics is his Messianic polity acceptable. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy 1 -- 2. Beyond Being. Ontology and Eschatology in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas 33 -- 3. The Rationality of the Philosophy of Levinas 56 -- 4. Levinas on Substitution 83 -- 5. Judaism and Hellenism in the Philosophy of Levinas and Heidegger 101 -- 6. Ontological Difference (Heidegger) and Ontological Separation (Levinas) 115 -- 7. Enmity, Friendship, Corporeality 133 -- 8. The Rationality of Transcendence 147 (...) -- 9. Levinas on Theology and the Philosophy of Religion 169. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, widely recognized as one of the most important yet difficult philosophers of the 20th century. In this much-needed introduction, Davis unpacks the concepts at the centre of Levinas's thought - alterity, the Other, the Face, infinity - concepts which have previously presented readers with major problems of interpretation. Davis traces the development of Levinas's thought over six decades, describing the context in (...) which he worked, and the impact of his writings. He argues that Levinas's work remains tied to the ontological tradition with which he wants to break, and demonstrates how his later writing tries to overcome this dependency by its increasingly disruptive, sometimes opaque, textual practice. He discusses Levinas's theological writings and his relationship to Judaism, as well as the reception of his work by contemporary thinkers, arguing that the influence of his work has led to a growing interest in ethical issues among poststructuralist and postmodernist thinkers in recent years. Comprehensive and clearly written, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers in continental philosophy, French studies, literary theory and theology. (shrink)

Levinas and the Wisdom of Love: Breaking Gyges' Secret is an essay on the ways in which wisdom can be used to make one invisible to the other. I also show how a wisdom of love, as Levinas describes it, can make one visible to the Other, and thereby more human. ;In analyzing Levinas' wisdom of love and how it is different from other types of wisdom, I focus on Levinas' saying that "philosophy is the wisdom (...) of love at the service of love." This study examines, in turn, Levinas' understanding of love, which I defend as irreducibly distinct from self-love, but compatible with it. Unlike some other compatibilist interpretations of Levinas, I maintain that this view is consistent with a strongly asymmetrical view of neighbor love. This is possible since Levinas' asymmetry is not properly understood as the absence of return, but by the absence of speech which demands reciprocity. ;In asking what sort of priority love is to have over wisdom , I raise the possibilities of 'chronological priority,' 'logical priority,' and 'hierarchical priority,' while dismissing all but the last type. Then I argue that even the altering of hierarchical priority Levinas suggests is not a mere reversal where now the ethical relation---rather than ontology---has a dominating priority. Instead, I suggest a type of hierarchical inversion of priority which I call a 'pacific priority' and show how this priority seems impossible unless one recognizes the distinction between power and authority. ;After analyzing Levinas' understanding of love and priority, I turn to the question of wisdom and ask how Levinas' 'wisdom of love,'---understood as a real possibility and not just an impossible ideal---is any different than the types of wisdom he critiques. The central difference is how one traces the origin of wisdom, and this allows one to give a different answer to Gyges' veiling question of whether it is better to suffer or inflict injustice. I argue that this question lies at the heart of Levinas' project and suggest ways for becoming visible, which is, according to Levinas, to become human. (shrink)

While Kierkegaard and Levinas may well be thought of as religious or ethical thinkers, I should not like the reader to be misled by this into assuming that this article is primarily about religion or ethics. Rather, my main concern may more properly be described as metaphysical or epistemological, for I am interested in certain styles of thinking that underlie the religious/ethical themes dealt with here. Thus, this article aims to show that in relation to traditional metaphysical styles, and (...) to each other, the thinking of Kierkegaard and Levinas is parallel and divergent in complex ways. Both share a mistrust of modernist meta physics, which they aim to escape by pointing to the way in which conceptions of metaphysical totalities are breached by a destabilising infinity already internal to them. This anticipates later postmodern styles of thinking which challenge modern meta physics, its resentment against time, and its confidence in human power to represent all that is by means of closed systems of interpretation. To the ex tent that they offer philosophical alternatives that accommodate the temporal, both have had highly significant contributions to make to a postmodern style of thinking that has implications not limited to religion or ethics. A study of the philosophical strategies of these two thinkers, where they seem to succeed or fall short in relation to each other and to the traditional strategies of metaphysics, should go some way toward clarification of what I believe to be the most viable style of thinking for a postmodern world. As I see it, one is confronted with three options. The first, represented by Kierkegaard\'s \'infinite resignation,\' may be associated with a Derridean style of thinking. Kierkegaard him self abandons this in favour of a style of thinking for which faith and revelation stand as metaphors. Levinas, in contrast, offers an alternative whose leitmotif is ethical responsibility. I shall try to show in the end that the first of these, which best accommodates the 'undecidability' of a middle ground, is the most suitable for contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

Levinas and Twentieth-Century Literature considers how the work of the century’s most original ethical thinker may reshape understandings of modernism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism, gender studies, and globalism. Tracing how modernist technique and anti-totalizing ethics enter into relations that, by the turn of the twenty-first century, not only revitalize diverse national literatures but also produce post-national, migrant, or hybrid literatures, the collection illuminates the ethical within literature while disclosing the literary contexts of Levinasian ethics.

This essay overcomes the division between “principled” and “strategic” approaches to nonviolence studies by demonstrating that ethical analysis is key to understanding movement strategy. I show how the moral phenomenologies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Emmanuel Lévinas, figures usually treated by scholars of principled nonviolence, possess genuine insight for nonviolent strategists. With reference to each thinker and supporting evidence from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, I argue that nonviolent resistance makes a moral appeal through the medium of the body to (...) the conscience of those bearing witness. Analysis of the way King combined moral reflection and strategic action recovers his legacy for the pragmatic tradition of social thought, while Lévinas's theory of the face offers additional considerations for nonviolent practitioners aiming for moral transformation at the local level. Studies that elucidate the complex moral dynamics by which nonviolent movements either succeed or fail will make the field a greater asset to practitioners. (shrink)

The act of thought-thought as an act-would precede the thought thinking or becoming conscious of an act. The notion of act involves a violence essentially: the violence of transitivity, lacking in the transcendence of thought... Totality and Infinity The work of Emmanuel Levinas revolves around two preoccupations. First, his philosophical project can be described as the construction of a formal ethics, grounded upon the transcendence of the other human being and a subject's spontaneous responsibility toward that other. Second, (...) class='Hi'>Levinas has written extensively on, and as a member of, the cultural and textual life of Judaism. These two concerns are intertwined. Their relation, however, is one of considerable complexity. Levinas' philosophical project stems directly from his situation as a Jewish thinker in the twentieth century and takes its particular form from his study of the Torah and the Talmud. It is, indeed, a hermeneutics of biblical experience. If inspired by Judaism, Levinas' ethics are not eo ipso confessional. What his ethics takes from Judaism, rather, is a particular way of conceiving transcendence and the other human being. It owes to the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber a logos of the world and of the holy, which acknowledges their incom mensurability without positing one as fallen and the other as supernal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Levinas on Art and AestheticismGetting “Reality and Its Shadow” RightRichard A. Cohen (bio)1. The Standard Misreading of Levinas on Arta. IntroductionMuch has been written in the secondary literature about Levinas and art and about Levinas and literature more specifically. In addition to Maurice Blanchot’s observations in The Writing of the Disaster, which is more a primary text than a secondary source, two exceptional studies (...) — well-written, insightful, nuanced, erudite — in English on Levinas and literature are Robert Eaglestone’s book of 1997 entitled Ethical Criticism: Reading after Levinas and Jill Robbins’s 1999 book entitled Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature.1 No doubt there are other fine studies, but these two will be sufficient for our purposes. They are scholarly in the best sense, effecting to understand Levinas first of all, hence hermeneutically sympathetic, and at the same time taking critical distances, articulating reservations, basically unconvinced by Levinas’s claims. Unfortunately, given all their considerable virtues, these books are also hampered by a serious flaw, one that unhappily appears in all too much of the secondary literature on Levinas and art. [End Page 149] Despite their good will and intelligence, both books fundamentally misunderstand the relation of Levinas’s thought on and to art, and thus also his relation to literature more specifically, because they misconstrue the nature and the status of Levinas’s account of art within his philosophy. Surely this is serious and unfortunate. One aim of the present essay is to expose this flaw, despite its pervasiveness and entrenchment. Another aim, more positive and ultimately the means by which to accomplish the first, is to present a faithful account of what Levinas really has to say about art.Counter to the misgivings leveled against Levinas in the above two books, not to mention the many commentaries that repeat more or less the same things, the present article proposes two theses in his defense. To the charge that Levinas has misrepresented art, my first claim is that Levinas does not misrepresent art and, indeed, that he has a fine sense of it. To the charge that Levinas is hostile to art, my second claim is that Levinas is not at all hostile to art, one sign of which — noticed by both critics — is the literary and aesthetic references that abound in his own writings. That is to say, contrary to his critics, Levinas grasps quite well the nature and the value of art. His own literary practices, found throughout his own writings, some of them quite obvious, such as exegeses of Shakespeare and repeated citations taken from Dostoevsky and Grossman, not to mention a wealth of other references and allusions to artists and writers, and, of course, including explicit comments and discussions about art, all these are consistent with and help underwrite my larger claim that Levinas understands and values art and, indeed, that he understands it very well and values it highly.To be sure, and no one can mistake this, Levinas’s philosophy is ultimately an ethics and not an aesthetics. The ultimum verbum belongs not to aesthetics but to moral responsibility and the quest for justice. It is here, for those who would make aesthetics ultimate, that the rub lies, here that we find the spur and speculum for their distortion and darkening of Levinas on art. All the more necessary, then, are the two sides of the present essay: to understand properly what Levinas is saying by means of a careful reading of his one article devoted entirely to [End Page 150] art, “Reality and Its Shadow,” to discern in as unprejudiced a fashion as possible what Levinas actually has to say about art and its value, and by so proceeding to unmask the inadequacies of Levinas’s aesthetic critics. Getting Levinas right certainly does not foreclose criticism, by any means. It is, nevertheless, the first step to serious criticism or to acceptance. Getting him wrong, however, goes nowhere at all, because it has not even begun.Inasmuch as their mishandling of Levinas is in an important sense basically the same, in the following I treat Robbins’s Altered Reading and Eaglestone’s... (shrink)

Some commentators have claimed that Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy should be understood as a response to the Holocaust. This study assesses that claim. It begins by clarifying what it means to call his philosophy a “response.” The bulk of the article then analyzes his essay, “Useless Suffering,” one of the few works in Levinas's philosophic oeuvre where he discusses the Holocaust. Levinas is widely read as claiming that there can be no explanation for the Holocaust—that it marks “the (...) end of theodicy.” It is shown, however, that his point is not that it cannot be explained, but that we misjudge the nature of evil when we view it as calling for explanation rather than practical activity. Based on this analysis, it is argued that Levinas's philosophy can be understood as a response to the Holocaust in the sense of being a performative writing that sought to address the evil that occurred in the Holocaust by transforming the ethical sensibilities of his readers. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas has been Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne and the director of the Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale. Through such works as "Totality and Infinity" and "Otherwise than Being", he has exerted a profound influence on twentieth-century continental philosophy, providing inspiration for Derrida, Lyotard, Blanchot and Irigaray. "The Levinas Reader" collects, often for the first time in English, essays by Levinas encompassing every aspect of his thought: the early phenomenological studies written under the guidance and (...) inspiration of Husserl and Heidegger; the fully developed ethical critique of such totalizing philosophies; the pioneering texts on the moral dimension to aesthetics; the rich and subtle readings of the Talmud which are an exemplary model of an ethical, transcendental philosophy at work; the admirable meditations on current political issues. Sean Hand's introduction gives a complete overview of Levinas's work and situates each chapter within his general contribution to phenomenology, aesthetics, religion, politics and, above all, ethics. Each essay has been prefaced with a brief introduction presenting the basic issues and the necessary background, and suggesting ways to study the text further. (shrink)

Levinas’ relationship to Platonism is ambiguous. In Totality and Infinity, indeed, references to Plato’s writings are multiple and Levinas depicts Plato as following two diverging paths. On the one hand, Levinas considers Plato’s writings to be works that consecrate the primacy of identity over difference, of the Same over the Other. On the other hand, Platonism is presented as a philosophy of absolute transcendence due to its refusal to make the Good a simple ontological principle and to (...) its attempt to free the Good from all forms of totality. The present study aims to show that, although Levinas criticizes the first path taken by Plato, he conceives of himself as partially in line with Plato’s philosophy of absolute transcendence, albeit in a paradoxical form. In this way, Levinas understands the meaning of the Platonic approach in an original way. (shrink)