Levinas
Contemporary philosophyThe author of Totality and Infinity traversed the turbulent history of the twentieth century, from the First World War to the Second World War, passing through the Russian Revolution.
This thinker, at the crossroads of phenomenology and existentialism, reinterrogates the concept of Other, giving it a central place.
An avid reader of the Talmud, he inspired many contemporary thinkers.
Bibliography
Here are the essential books if you wish to better understand this author's thought:
Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (2002).
Roger Burggraeve, The Wisdom of Love in the Service of Love: Emmanuel Levinas on Justice, Peace, and Human Rights, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2002.
Richard A. Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy: Interpretation After Levinas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
John Llewelyn, Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics, London: Routledge, 1995
Herzog, Annabel (2020). Levinas's Politics: Justice, Mercy, Universality. University of Pennsylvania Press
Recommended videos
Interviews, lectures, radio programmes... here are 10 videos that will help you better understand the thought of Emmanuel Levinas.
To choose your video from the list, click below on the drop-down menu icon at the top right:
Biography: life of Levinas
Youth
Emmanuel Levinas was born in Lithuania in 1906.
His family fled to Ukraine when the Second World War broke out. He studied at Kharkov secondary school, where he discovered the great Russian authors: Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, etc.
He studied philosophy in Strasbourg, France, for four years. There, he studied under such renowned professors as Martial Guéroult, and became friends with Maurice Blanchot.
This marked his first experience studying philosophy in France.
In 1928, he briefly studied with Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg. He discovered phenomenology, which had a profound influence on him, devoting his thesis to the theory of intuition in Husserl's phenomenology. He did much to introduce the work of these two thinkers to France, for example by translating the Cartesian Meditations.
The war
He moved to Paris, where he met Kojève, Gabriel Marcel, and other prominent figures in the philosophical community.
He became a naturalised French citizen and married. He had three children.
In 1939, the Second World War caught up with him; he was drafted, taken prisoner, and then worked in a camp in Hanover, Germany, for five years. There he wrote his first book, Existence and Existents.
At the end of the war, he learned that most of his family had perished as victims of Nazism.
End of life
Appointed secretary of the Alliance israélite universelle, he studied the Talmud, but continued his philosophical work, until the publication of his thesis, Totality and Infinity, in 1961.
This work questioned the primacy of ontology as the central philosophy, which often leads to neglecting others. For Levinas, ethics is the first philosophy, and only through this lens can the truth of the Other come to us, through experiences such as encountering the visage.
He then began teaching at the University of Poitiers, Nanterre, and finally the Sorbonne, where he lectured for three years until 1976.
After his retirement, he taught a few courses in Fribourg, Switzerland. He died in Paris at the age of 89, in 1995.
Main works
The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology
Totality and Infinity
Of God Who Comes to Mind
Existence and Existents
Ethics and Infinity
Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence