Emmanuel LEVINAS

With the appearance of the human--and this is my entire philosophy--there is something more important than my life, and that is the life of the other. That is unreasonable. Man is an unreasonable animal ("The Paradox of Morality" Interview).

BIOGRAPHY

Levinas, Emmanuel (1906-1995), philosopher and Talmudic commentator, born in Kaunas, Lithuania, naturalized French in 1930. In 1923 he began to study philosophy at Strasbourg University, where he came into contact with Charles Blondel, Maurice Halbwachs, Maurice Pradines and Henri Carteron. It was also during these student years that Levinas began his lifelong friendship with Maurice Blanchot. In 1928 he went to Freiburg University to pursue studies in phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. At Freiburg he also encountered Martin Heidegger, whose Being and Time (1927) was to have a profound and lasting influence on his thought. Levinas’s debt to both masters was evident in his first three major publications: The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (1930), Existence and Existents (1947), and En Découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (1949). In France Levinas won early acclaim as one of the foremost exponents of the work of Husserl, and was read by Jean-Paul Sartre among others. After the second World War, most of which was spent in captivity, Levinas frequented the avant-guard philosophical circles of Gabriel Marcel and Jean Wahl. It was mainly during the fifties that Levinas began to work out a highly original philosophy of ethics with the aim of going beyond the ethically neutral tradition of ontology. Levinas’s first magnum opus, Totality and Infinity (1961), influenced in part by the dialogical philosophies of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber, sought to accomplish this departure through an analysis of the 'face-to-face' relation with the Other. Central to the work is the claim that the Other is not known or comprehended as such, but calls into question and challenges the complacency of the self through Desire, language, and the concern for justice. This claim and others were further elaborated in Levinas’s second magnum opus, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence (1974), an immensely challenging and sophisticated work seeking to push philosophical intelligibility to the limit in an effort to lessen the inevitable concessions made to ontology and the tradition. It is this work that is generally considered Levinas's most important contribution to the contemporary debate surrounding the closure of metaphysical discourse, much commented upon by Jacques Derrida for example. Alongside his strictly philosophical corpus, mention should also be made of Levinas's so-called 'confessional writings,' especially his Talmudic commentaries (Quatre lectures Talmudiques (1968), Du sacré au saint (1977), L’au-delà du verset (1982)). While these exhibit a clear confluence with his remarks on ethics, Levinas denied ever trying to reconcile them explicitly. He died in Paris, December 25, 1995.

For a full-length biography of Levinas see Marie-Anne Lescourret, Emmanuel Lévinas (Paris: Flammarion, 1994).

LEVINAS DATABASE

Georges Hansel (Levinas's son-in-law) has entered all 27 books Emmanuel Levinas wrote (in the original French) into a database. He and Yves Sobel have created a software program answering inquiries concerning the information stored there. If you wish to utilize this powerful research tool, send an e-mail with your question to:mailto:%20Georges.Hansel@liafa.jussieu.fr

LEVINAS DISCUSSION GROUPS

There is currently a wide range of Levinas Discussion Groups available at eGroups.com. To find a group, go to http://www.egroups.com/ and enter the name "Levinas" in the search box. To subscribe to a group, follow the on-line instructions.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Levinas Center at UNCC

Announcement (9-4-96) from Professor Richard A. Cohen:

I am in the process of establishing a Levinas Center located at the Atkins Library (currently undergoing a 3 year, $23,000,000 expansion) of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). The Levinas Center is intended as an international research facility whose object is to facilitate scholarly research into the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). Levinas's publications, writings about Levinas (books, dissertations, articles), and relevant audio and video tapes, will be located at one site, catalogued, and made available to scholars and interested individuals. Email, fax, and a web site will make this catalogue and information available to the worldwide scholarly community. The Center would also serve to disseminate information regarding future papers and conferences on Levinas. In addition, the Levinas family heirs (the daughter, Simone Hansel and the son, Michael Levinas) have been contacted and a request has been made to receive copies of all unpublished manuscripts, papers, lecture notes, and letters of the late Professor Emmanuel Levinas.

Request: If you have relevant documents - books, dissertations, articles, lecture notes, videos, cassette tapes, correspondence and would like to make a donation to the Levinas Center, please e-mail: mailto:RichACohen@aol.comor write to: Levinas Center, c/o Richard A. Cohen, UNCC - Religious Studies, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC 28223-0001. I can also be reached via my web site at the following address: http://www.geocities.com/richacohen/

FROM JACQUES DERRIDA'S FUNERAL SPEECH IN HONOR OF LEVINAS, GIVEN TUESDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 27, 1995

For a long time now, so long, I have dreaded having to say Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. I knew that my voice would tremble at the moment of saying it, and above all at the moment of saying it aloud, here, before him, so close to him, pronouncing this word of goodbye, this word "à-Dieu" [literally: "to God"] which, in certain manner, I get from him, this word that he will have taught me to think or to pronounce otherwise. In meditating on what Emmanuel Levinas wrote about the French word "adieu," which I will recall in a moment, I hope to find here the strength to speak. I would like to do so with these bare words, as childlike and disarmed as my sorrow. . .

From: Jacques Derrida, Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas (Paris: Galilée, 1997) (personal translation). Also published in l’Arche, le mensuel du judaïsme français, no. 459, February, 1996. English translation by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, entitled "Adieu," is published in Critical Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 1, 1996, pp. 1-10, and in Philosophy Today, vol. 40, no. 3, 1996, pp. 334-340.

OTHER LEVINAS PAGES

Gen Nakayama (in English and Japanese) (Includes a bibliography of Levinas's works published in French)

Brent Dean Robbins

Gérard Schaefer (in French, but includes German, English, Spanish and Italian bibliography)

William Simmons

OTHER LEVINAS LINKS

Levinas Search Engine built by Anthony F. Beavers

Essays:

'Martin Heidegger and Ontology,' by Emmanuel Levinas

'Emmanuel Levinas and the Prophetic Voice of Postmodernity,' by Anthony F. Beavers

'Introducing Levinas to Undergraduate Philosophers,' by Anthony F. Beavers

'Levinas: The Unconscious and the Reason of Obligation,' by James Faulconer

'Viewing Power,' by Roadrunner Krazykatovitch

'The Originality of Levinas,' by D. G. Leahy

'Otherwise Than Testimony, or: How Might Testimony Testify?' by Jonathan L. Sherwood

Levinas Index to Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity compiled by Anthony F. Beavers

Levinas Index to Otherwise Than Being compiled by Gregory A. Clark

Art with Emmanuel Levinas as the theme by Eric Claus

Research Tool for Levinas and Phenomenology maintained by John Drabinski

Corrections to the second edition of Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence by Sidney (Michael) J. Mascarenhas

Textual Reasoning: Journal and discussions of the Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network

David Hansel (grandson of Emmanuel, physicist at the CNRS)

Michäel Levinas (son of Emmanuel, pianist and composer)

The New York Times obituary, December 27, 1995

OTHER PHILOSOPHY LINKS

Center for Advanced research in phenomenology

(Suber) Guide to philosophy on the net ("the most comprehensive collection of philosophy resources on the internet")

Journal Phaenomenologie

The Philosophers' Web Magazine

Philosophy at San Diego State University
 

Peter Atterton atterton@rohan.sdsu.edu

Copyright © August 1996 Peter Atterton. All rights reserved.