Emmanuel Levinas

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Emmanuel Levinas (12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work related to Jewish philosophy, existentialism, ethics, and ontology.

Biography

Emmanuel Levinas was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1906. His parents were Jewish, and in his youth, Levinas read the Bible in Hebrew. Russian was the language of his early education, though he was also fluent in German. His studies in philosophy began in 1923 in Strasbourg, where he met Charles Blondel, and his life-long companion Maurice Blanchot. Levinas attended Husserl's final lectures of 1928-9, and became influenced by Husserl's Logical Investigations, though he quickly became a follower of Heidegger's Being and Time, which was to have a profound effect on his thinking.

Levinas' later philosophy is directly related to his experiences during World War II. In 1939, he served as an officer in the French army, working as an interpreter of Russian and German. In 1940 he became a prisoner of war, and due to his officer status he was sent to a military prisoners' camp where he was put into forced labor. His wife and daughter managed to be kept hidden in a French monastery until his return, but the rest of his family were killed. This experience, coupled with Heidegger's affiliation to National Socialism during the war, led to a profound crisis in Levinas' enthusiasm for Heidegger.

Levinas' career after his confinement during the war was spent at the Alliance Israelite Universelle, where he was appointed the Director. The postwar years were marked by his meeting with the Talmudic scholar, Monsieur Chouchani, with whom Levinas studied.

His writing is reticent toward the privileging of drawing sameness between distinct phenomena, characteristic of much of Western thought. Even the definition of the Other could be considered an application of the rhetoric of the same, hence, Levinas went to great lengths to keep his texts flexible, changing and resistant to reification, a violence to the fragile concept of the alterity of the inassimilable Other. Levinas died in Paris, December 25, 1995 [1].

Literature

Books by Levinas

  • Théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl, 1930; Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1963; new edition J. Vrin, 2000.
  • with Heinz Erich Eisenhuth, Der Begriff des Irrationalen als philosophisches Problem, 1931 (in German)
  • Martin Heidegger et l'ontologie, 1932
  • Le Temps et l'autre, 1947; Fata Morgana, 1979; Presses Universitaires de France, 2004.
    • Time and the Other, trans. Richard A. Cohen, Duquesne University Press, 1987 (in English).
  • De l'existence ý l'existant, 1947.
    • Existence and Existent, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne University Press, 2001.
  • Difficile liberté: Essais sur le judaïsme, Editions Albin Michel, 1963, 1967; LGF - Livre de Poche, 2003.
  • Totalité et infini: Essai sur l'extériorité, 1961; Martinus Nijhoff, 1971; Livre de Poche, 2000.
    • Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis, The Hague/ Boston/ London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers & Duquesne University Press, 1969; 2nd edition, 1979; Springer, 1980 (in English) [2].
  • En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger 1949; revised edition 1967; Vrin, 2002.
  • Noms propres, Paris: Fata Morgana, 1976.
    • Proper Names, trans. Michael Smith, Stanford University Press, 1997.
  • Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence, Martinus Nijhoff & La Haye, 1974; Paris, LGF, Le Livre de Poche, 1990, 2004.
    • Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne University Press, 1998.
  • Humanisme de l'autre homme, Fata Morgana, 1972; LGF, 1987.
    • Humanism of the Other, trans. Nidra Poller, University of Illinois Press, 2005.
  • Quatre lectures talmudiques, 1968; Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 2005.
    • Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990; Midland Book Editions, 1994 (in English).
  • De Dieu qui vient ý l'idée, Paris: Vrin, 1982.
  • L'au-delà du verset: Lectures et Discours Talmudiques, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1982.
  • Du sacré au saint: Cinq nouvelles lectures talmudiques, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977.
  • Ethique et infini, Paris: Fayard, 1982; LGF, 1984
    • Ethics and Infinity, trans. Richard A. Cohen, Duquesne University Press, 1985.
  • Hors sujet, Paris: Fata Morgana, 1987.
    • Outside the Subject, trans. Michael Smith (editor), Stanford University Press.
  • A l'heure des nations, Editions de Minuit, 1988.
    • In the Time of Nations, trans. Michael B. Smith, The Athlone Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994; Continuum, 2007 (in English).
  • Entre nous, Livre de Poche, 1993.
  • Entre nous: Essais sur le penser-ý-l'autre, Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1991.
  • Altérité et transcendence, Paris: Fata Morgana,1995
    • Alterity and Transcendence, trans. Michael B. Smith, London: The Athlone Press, 1999; Columbia University Press, 2000 (in English).
  • Dieu, la mort et le temps, LGF, Le Livre de poche, 1995.
  • Nouvelles lectures talmudiques, Paris: Minuit, 1996.
  • Hors sujet, LGF, Le Livre de poche, 1997.
  • De l'évasion, Paris, LGF, Le Livre de poche, 1998.
  • Éthique comme philosophie première, Rivages poche/Petite Bibliothèque, 1998.
  • L'Éthique comme philosophie première, Paris: Rivages, 1998.
  • Positivité et transcendance, Paris: PUF, 2000.
  • Paul Celan. De l’être à l’autre, Paris: Fata Morgana, 2003.
  • Eros, littérature et philosophie, Paris, Grasset, 2013.

Books on Levinas

  • F. Laruelle (ed.), Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas, Paris: J.-M. Place, 1980.
  • Salomon Malka, Lire Levinas, Paris: Le Cerf, 1984 (in French).
  • Sean Hand (ed.), The Levinas Reader, Basil Blackwell, 1989.
  • Roger Burggraeve, Emmanuel Levinas. Une bibliographie primaire et secondaire (1929-1985), Leuven: the Centre for Metaphysics and Philosophy of God, 1986 (in French).
  • Robert Bernasconi and David Wood (eds.), The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, London and New York: Roudedge, 1988.
  • Francois Poirie, Emmanuel Levinas, Qui etes-vous?, Lyon: La Manufacture, 1987 (in French).
  • R. Cohen (ed.), Face to Face with Levinas, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986.
  • John Llewelyn, Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics, London: Routledge, 1995.
  • Jacques Derrida, Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas, Paris: Editions Galilée, 1997 (in French).
  • Tina Chanter (editor), Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.
  • Oona Ajzenstat, Driven Back to the Text: the Premodern Sources of Levinas's Postmodernism, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2001.
  • C. Fred Alford, Levinas, the Frankfurt School and Psychoanalysis, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002.
  • Alexandru Mărchidan, Obiectivarea fenomenologiei în etică în opera lui Emmanuel Levinas (PhD thesis), Piteşti: Tiparg, 2011 (in Romanian).
  • more

Selected articles

  • "Sur les “Ideen” de M. E. Husserl", Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, n°3-4, mars-avril, 1929, pp. 230-265.
  • "Is Ontology Fundamental?" (1951), trans. Peter Atterton, In: Philosophy Today, vol. 33 (Summer ‘89), pp. 121-129.
  • "Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism" (1934), trans. Sean Hand, In: Critical Inquiry, vol. 17 (Autumn 1990) pp. 62-71.

Collected works

  • Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. Alphonso Lingis, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987 (in English).
  • Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi (eds), Emmanuel Levinas: basic philosophical writings, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
  • Claire Katz with Lara Trout (eds.), Emmanuel Levinas: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, 4vols., New York: Routledge, 2005
  • Les œuvres complètes, Editions Grasset-IMEC, vol. 1, 2009; vol. 2, 2011 (in French).

Selected studies

  • Emanuel Levinas, La Huella del Otro, trans. Esther Cohen, Silvana Rabinovich and Manrico Montero, México: Taurus, 2000, 2001 (in Spanish).

Bibliography

Links

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