The thought of Emmanuel Levinas and the ethics of the Other

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), born in Kaunas in Lithuania and naturalized French, was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Trained in phenomenology under Husserl and Heidegger, whose thought he helped introduce to France, he distanced himself from it after the experience of war and captivity to develop a philosophy centered on ethics as "first philosophy." In his major works, Totalité et infini (1961) and Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence (1974), he developed the idea that the encounter with the face of the other imposes an infinite responsibility anterior to all freedom, escaping the totalizing grasp of ontology. Nourished by the Talmudic tradition, his thought was also expressed in Talmudic Readings, where he drew out a universal philosophical import from rabbinical texts. Deeply marked by the Shoah, which decimated his family, Levinas's work constitutes one of the most original contributions of Judaism to contemporary ethics.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗