Emmanuel Levinas

First published Sun Jul 23, 2006; substantive revision Mon Sep 29, 2025

Emmanuel Levinas’ (1905–1995) intellectual project was todevelop a first philosophy. Whereas traditionally first philosophydenoted either metaphysics or theology, only to be reconceived byHeidegger as fundamental ontology, Levinas argued that it is ethicsthat should be so conceived. But, rather than formulating an ethicaltheory, Levinas developed his philosophy in opposition toboth metaphysics and ontology. It takes the form of a description andinterpretation of the event of encountering another person.^[1] Giving rise to spontaneous acts of responsibility for others, theencounter unfolds, according to Levinas, at a precognitive level,thanks to what he called our embodied “sensibility”.^[2] That is why a phenomenology of intersubjective responsibility wouldbe ‘first’ philosophy; viz., in the sense ofinterpretively reconstructing a level of experience precursive to bothreflective activity and practical interests.

Some commentators have called Levinas’ work an ethics of ethics,others a meta-ethics, while still others have urged that his thoughtcan accommodate many ethical theories, from intuitionism torationalism (seeinfra). However that may be, his work is inongoing, critical dialogue with three philosophers: Husserl,Heidegger, and Hegel. Given these targets—as well asphilosophical interlocutors like Merleau-Ponty—Levinas’philosophy begins from an enlarged conception of lived embodiment anda powerful extension of Husserl’s technique of suspendingconceptualization to reveal experience as it comes to light. He isalso indebted to Heidegger for his hermeneutics ofbeing-in-the-world.

1. Life and Career

1905:: Born January 12 in Kaunas, Lithuania. The latter is a part ofpre-Revolutionary Russia and the surrounding culture“tolerates” Jews. He is the eldest child in a middle-classfamily and has two brothers, Boris and Aminadab.
1914:: In the wake of the War, Levinas’ family emigrates toKharkov, in the Ukraine. The family returns to Lithuania in 1920, twoyears after the country obtains independence from the Revolutionarygovernment.
1923:: Goes to study philosophy in Strasbourg (France). Levinas studiesphilosophy with Maurice Pradines, psychology with Charles Blondel, andsociology with Maurice Halbwachs. Meets Maurice Blanchot who willbecome a close friend.
1928–29:: Levinas travels to Freiburg to study with Edmund Husserl; heattends Heidegger’s seminar.
1930:: Publishes his thesis in French,La théorie del’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl[The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’sPhenomenology].
1931:: French translation, by Levinas, of Husserl’s Sorbonnelectures,Cartesian Meditations, in collaboration withGabrielle Peiffer.
1932:: Returns to Lithuania in order to marry Raïssa Levi, whom hehas known since childhood.
1934:: Levinas publishes a philosophical analysis of“Hitlerism”,Quelques réflexions sur laphilosophie de l’hitlérisme [Reflections on thePhilosophy of Hitlerism, RPH].
1935:: Levinas publishes an original essay in hermeneutic ontology,De l’évasion [On Escape], inÉmile Bréhier’s journalRecherchesphilosophiques (reprinted in 1982). He also publishes“L’actualité de Maïmonide” in thejournal of theAlliance Israëlite Universelle,Paixet Droit, commemorating the eight hundredth anniversary of thephilosopher’s birth.
1939:: Naturalized French; enlists in the French officer corps.
1940:: Captured by the Nazis; imprisoned inFallingbostel, alabor camp for officers. His Lithuanian family is murdered. His wife,Raïssa, and daughter, Simone, are hidden by nuns inOrléans.
1947:: Following the publication ofDe l’existence àl’existant [Existence and Existents] (whichLevinas began writing in captivity),Le temps etl’autre [Time and the Other], four lectures givenat the Collège Philosophique (founded by Jean Wahl), Levinasbecomes Director of the École Normale IsraéliteOrientale, Paris.
1949:: After the death of their second daughter, Andrée Éliane,Levinas and his wife have a son, Michael, who becomes a pianist and acomposer.
Levinas publishesEn découvrant l’existence avecHusserl et Heidegger (selections appear inDiscoveringExistence with Husserl, 1998).
1957:: He delivers his first Talmudic reading at theColloque desIntellectuels Juifs de Langue française, a colloquiumattended by Vladimir Jankélévitch, André Neher,and Jean Halperin, among others.
1961:: Publishes his State doctorate (Doctoratd’État),Totalité et infini: essai surl’extériorité [Totality and Infinity: AnEssay on Exteriority. Position at the Université dePoitiers.
1963:: PublishesDifficile liberté: essais sur lejudaïsme [Difficult Freedom: Essays onJudaism].
1967:: Professor at the Université de Paris, Nanterre, with PaulRicœur.
1968:: PublishesQuatre lectures talmudiques (Englishtranslation inNine Talmudic Readings).
1972:: L’humanisme de l’autre homme [Humanism ofthe Other].
1973:: Professorship at the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne. The1973–1974 lectures will be published asDieu, la mort et letemps [God, Death and Time].
1974:: Autrement qu’être ou au-delà del’essence [Otherwise than Being or BeyondEssence], the secondmagnum opus.
1975:: Sur Maurice Blanchot (English translation appended toProper Names).
1976:: Noms propres [Proper Names].
1977:: Du sacré au saint (English translation inNineTalmudic Readings).
1982:: De Dieu qui vient à l’idée [OfGod Who Comes to Mind],L’au-delà du verset[Beyond the Verse] and his radio conversations with PhilippeNemo,Éthique et infini [Ethics andInfinity].
1984:: Transcendance et Intelligibilité [Transcendenceand Intelligibility] (English translation inEmmanuelLevinas: Basic Philosophical Writings)
Éthique comme philosophie première [Ethicsas first philosophy]
1987:: Hors sujet [Outside the Subject], a collectionof texts, old and new on philosophers, language, and politics.
1988:: À l’heure des nations [In the Time of theNations].
1990:: De l’oblitération: Entretien avec FrançoiseArmengaud [On Obliteration: An Interview with FrançoiseArmengaud Concerning the Work of Sasha Sosno].
1991:: Entre Nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre[Entre Nous: Essays on Thinking-of-the-Other]. An issue ofthe prestigiousLes Cahiers de L’Herne is dedicated toLevinas’ work.
1993:: Sorbonne lectures, published asDieu, la mort et le temps[God, Death and Time]. The annual colloquium atCerisy-la-Salle publishes a volume devoted to him.
1994:: His wife Raïssa Levinas dies in September. Levinas publishesa collection of essays,Liberté et commandement (twoessays, “Freedom and Command” and “Transcendence andHeight”, published respectively inCollected PhilosophicalPapers andBasic Philosophical Writings) andLesimprévus de l’histoire [UnforeseenHistory], edited by Pierre Hayat.
1995:: Altérité et transcendance [Alterity andTranscendence].
Emmanuel Levinas dies in Paris, December 25.

Books published posthumously:

1996:: Nouvelles lectures talmudiques [New TalmudicReadings].
1998:: Éthique comme philosophie première[Ethics as First Philosophy; first published as an article in1984]

2. Thematic Exposition of Levinas’ Philosophy

This entry will follow Levinas’ career chronologically, as hisconcepts evolve. In what follows, we will emphasize the followingarguments and themes: (1) why Levinas’ is a unique firstphilosophy; (2) how he developed his investigation of the livedconditions of possibility of our concern with ethical reasoning; and(3) the originality of his adaptation of phenomenology and hisexistentialist hermeneutics of pre-intentional embodiedintersubjectivity. A leitmotif of this entry is the notion oftranscendence, in Levinas, as we will explain. We will pay attentionthroughout to the contribution of commentators, with a view toproviding a gateway to recent secondary literature.

2.1 Philosophical Beginnings:On Escape (1935) or Transcendence as the Need to Escape

Levinas published his thesis,The Theory of Intuition inHusserl’s Phenomenology, in 1930. It was the firstbook-length introduction to Edmund Husserl’s thought in French.By focusing on the theme of intuition, Levinas established whatphilosophical readers find notably in Husserl’sIdeas Iand II/III (published in 1913 and, forIdeas II/III,partially in 1930, and in different editions in 1952 and 2025): everyhuman experience is open to phenomenological description; every humanexperience carries meaning from the outset and can be examined as amode of intentionality (Ideas II, §56 h and§§57–61). The following year, he published hisco-translation of Husserl’sCartesian Meditations, inwhich Husserl had laid out a systematic presentation of transcendentalphenomenology. In the 1930s, Levinas continued to publish studies ofthe thought of his two principal teachers, Husserl and MartinHeidegger. These included the essays “Martin Heidegger andOntology” (1932, EDE 53–76) and the extensive “TheWork of Edmund Husserl” (1940, DEH 47–89). In the 1930sand 1940s, his philosophical project was influenced by Husserl’sphenomenologicalmethod, whose foundation arguably lay in thecentrality of the “transcendental ego” (Ideas I§49). However, suspicious of the intellectualism ofHusserl’s approach to essences (called phenomenological“eidetics”), Levinas gravitated toward Heidegger’smore worldly approach to existence inBeing and Time.^[3] Between 1930 and 1935, he will nevertheless turn away fromHeidegger’s approach to being and transcendence, and develop theoutlines of a distinct ontology. As we shall see, he will reconceivetranscendence as a need for escape from existence, and work out adifferent analysis of lived time inOn Escape (1935).

Levinas’ first original essay,Del’évasion, examined the relationship between theembodied (sentient) self and the intentional ego^[4] from the perspectives of physical and affective states includingneed, pleasure, shame, and nausea. In this succinct philosophicalwork, Levinas was less concerned than was Heidegger with the questionof existence as it opens up before us when we experience thedissolving of things in the world in anxiety (BT §40).^[5] Levinas’ question was not: “Why is there being instead ofsimply nothing?” His concern was to approach existencedifferently, through the human being as Heidegger had also done, butin light of more embodied experiences like the above-mentioned ones(OE §6). Enlarging Heidegger’s hermeneutics ofbeing-in-the-world, Levinas gave priority to lived moods and physicalstates that revealed existence as oppressive and indeterminate.Indeed, in escapism and its various aesthetic expressions, we discoverhumans’ failed attempts to get away from the being that theythemselves are. “Escape”, he wrote,

is the need to get out of oneself, that is, to break that most radicaland unalterably binding of chains, the fact that the I [moi]is oneself [soi-même].(OE §1)

In the two imbricated dimensions of human life, sentient-affective andintentional, our experience of being comes to pass in the relationshipbetween body and egoic consciousness.

Levinas’ youthful project approached transcendence secularly, inlight of humans’ irreducible urge to get past the limits oftheir physical and social circumstances. His transcendence is less aquestion of cognition reaching reality or humans seeking to pass‘beyond’ themselves (respectively BT §§43, 10)than transcendence, attempted through sensuous evasions. This approachto transcendence is nevertheless motivated by the question of ourmortality and finite being, but unlike Heidegger, it also examines theenigma called infinity.

Levinas thus accepted Heidegger’s arguments that a human beingexperiences itself as if thrown into its world (BT §38), withoutcognitive mastery over its birth and death. Heidegger’s humanbeing, orDa-sein (being-there), lives out its timeprojecting itself toward its diverse possibilities. It flees itsuncanny thrownness by distracting itself in social pursuits, aposition that Levinas will not adopt. On the other hand, theprojective element of transcendence, which Heidegger described inThe Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927 [1982])^[6] as merely a “stepping over to…as such”, was ofgreat interest to Levinas. But he would enquire: to what and from whatare we ‘stepping over’? Levinas then observed:

[M]odern sensibility wrestles with problems that indicate…theabandonment of this concern with transcendence. As if it had thecertainty that the idea of thelimit could not apply to theexistence of what is…and as if modern sensibilityperceived inbeing a defect still more profound. (OE §1,emph. added)

His argument here concerns a conceit of our ‘modern’sensibility (and philosophy); namely, that we presume we couldthoughtfully frame a better conception of being, wherein existence wasin some sense self-sufficient. What Levinas calls the“insufficiency of the human condition” (OE §1) simplydenotes the limitation of our existence, whose transcendence, whenunderstood as escape, promises that we might somehow surpass it, as ifthrough an infinite experience. When transcendence is removed fromtheological or metaphysical frameworks (i.e., secularized asHeidegger’s “stepping over”), then we grasp it inits historical context-dependency, as the illusions of a finite beingpondering pure self-sufficiency. Reconceived in this way, the entirequestion of transcendence changes, revealing the struggle to get outof our all too finite existence. That is why Levinas asks: “[Is]the need for escape not the exclusive matter of a finitebeing?…Would an infinite being have the need to take leave ofitself” (OE §2)? In short, is our first response tomortality not the urge to take leave of our existence, ifperiodically? This question is not so different from Heidegger’sconception of inauthenticity. But unlike Heidegger, true authenticitydoes not lie in securing our freedom for our most personalpossibility, death. Levinas argued that we can approach death aspossibility only through that of others and that we grasp being asfinite by way of their mortality. On the other hand, when secularized,the idea of infinity refers to something absolute in humanconsciousness (OE §1), which motivates our repeated efforts atescaping ourselves into various ecstasies. This is clearly aconception of being that is different from Heidegger’s. Later,of course, Levinas will attribute infinity to a different experience,that of the unbounded quality of the face of the other. However,intersubjective relationality is little discussed in the 1935 essay.The encounter with the other first comes into view as a theme in his1940s works (TO and EE). Significant here, nevertheless, are thefollowing two points: (1) Levinas’ argument thatHeidegger’s conception of existence is specific to a history,that of German thought and that of hermeneutics; (2) to be an embodiedpsyche is to struggle with the limits of one’s facticity orexistential situation, and it is there that the question of being asour existence initially arises.

Heidegger’sDa-sein confronted the questionof being when it found itself brought before itself in anxiety (BT§40). In contrast, Levinas proposed other ways by which the gapnarrows between being itself and the beings that we are. Following hisleitmotif of our recurrent urge to escape, Levinas examinedthe invariable disappointments following our attempts at transcendingour existence: the aforementioned states of need and pleasure give wayto a sobering up or disillusionment. In affective and physical stateslike shame and nausea, the bodily self is experienced as a substancetrapped in its stifling existence and desperate for a way out.Commentator Jacques Rolland has explored Levinas’ return to thebody, to concreteness, to the desire for escape, and the way in whichhe criticized Heidegger’s hermeneutics (OE 29–32). Rollandadds that this approach was inspired by Levinas’ criticalmeditation, published one year earlier (1934), on the “blood andsoil” philosophy popular with National Socialism (RPH). Asregards stifling existence, when Levinas refers to being, it is asongoing presence, rather than the event of disclosure that Heideggerdescribed. It remains a matter of debate whether this interpretationof being constitutes a step back to an older metaphysics, prior toHeidegger’s innovations, or not (Franck 2008: 31).

Whether we choose to take Levinas’ approach to being ascriticizing Heidegger’s conception of our existence or asinspired by him, commentators often underscore its fresh empiricism.Megan Craig compares the early works of Levinas with the“radical empiricism” of William James (2010: xv). LisaGuenther, in turn, has examined embodiment and the experience ofmaternity in the later Levinas (2006: 119–136, see §3.4.5).From the outset, the “fact of existing” refers to somephilosophically unexplored phenomena of our embodiment, ouraforementioned I-self (moi-soi) duality.

Polemically, Levinas urged that the most extreme state he described,nausea, amounts to being-there, what Husserl’s phenomenologycalled “self-positing”: “…nausea positsitself not only as something absolute, but as the very act ofself-positing: it is the affirmation itself of being” (OE§6). Other forms of self-positing occur, of course, as this eventrefers to the experience of unity between the lived corporeal self andthe formal ego of intentions. In a somewhat different vein, RaoulMoati will speak of the “first-” and the“third-person” perspectives (2012 [2017: 38–71]).Thus, in immediate experience, Iam my joy or my pain,provisionally, just as I may observe myself joyful, like a thirdperson. Nevertheless, our various efforts to get out of our concretesituations are not the same as what Heidegger deemed projectionstoward new possibilities, wherein our death lies at the end of all theothers, as the ultimate limit, or “possibility ofimpossibility” (BT §50). For Levinas, by contrast, escaperepresents a positive, dynamic need. In this youthful work, he alsorethinks need as fullness rather than as mere privation. As weindicated, he is working toward a different understanding of existenceitself. Whether it is characterized by pleasure or suffering, need isthe very ground of that existence. A secular transcendence responds toneed, promising a path toward “something other thanourselves” (OE §3), which is why the deep motivation ofneed is to get out of our finite condition. Already by 1935,Levinas’ ontology has displaced Heidegger’s being in lightof the dynamic relation between the sentient self and the intentional‘I’; it has refocused attention on the present overHeidegger’s emphasis on the future and explored new modes bywhich we experience the being that we are.

In this youthful essay, Levinas discusses three important themescritical for Heidegger: If being is disclosed only through the beingthat we are as humans (Da-sein), then any humanbeing that ongoingly strives to escape itself, because it feelstrapped in its own daily life, can be called a “creature”that carries “the stigmatum of [finite] existence” (OE§8). Second, nausea is not simply a physiological scourge,according to Levinas. It shows us dramatically how being can encircleus on all sides, to the point of submerging us. Social and politicallife, themselves, may thereby nauseate us, as Rolland observes. Third,if being or existence is experienced in its pure form as heavyindeterminacy, then we can neither bypass it (as expressed in the“aspirations of Idealism” [OE §8]) nor merelyaccepted like passive subjects. Being is existence, but it is firstlyour existence. The mark of creaturely existence is need and,by extension, a struggle with being. The crucial question that remainsis how we can best think through our sensuous need to transcend being.Embodied need is not an illusion, as we have seen. Is transcendence anillusion? Levinas answers this question more fully inTotality andInfinity (1961).

2.2 Middle Writings: Existence and Existents (1947) and Time and the Other (1947) or Inflections of Transcendence and Variations on Being

The 1940s writings extend Levinas’ innovations in ontology,always with recourse to interpretations of embodiment and againstHeidegger’s philosophy of existence which, for Levinas, entailsengagement with being as “participation” without alterity.^[7] These writings inflect his notion of transcendence, away from theimagined transcendence of evasion and pleasure, towarderosand the promise of the birth of a child.^[8] This requires that he explore alterity, understood here as thefeminine other (EE 86).

InExistence and Existents (1947) andTime and theOther (1947), being now has a dual aspect, of light and of darkindeterminacy. It is as though being were divided between the being ofa created world and the darkness out of which light was brought.^[9] This shifts phenomenological focus onto being as light andvisibility, wherein we constitute objects, and being as the darkturmoil that we experience in insomnia. Levinas’ attempt toexpand the sense of the embodiedDa-sein, and toreconceive the distinction between being andDa-sein(existence and the perceptual open that we are)has also changed. Following Husserl’s transcendentalphenomenology, in which a multi-layered “I” directsintentional focus like a center from which our attention radiates,Levinas’ embodied ego is neither preceded nor outstripped by itsworld. The corporeal self [soi], henceforth calledthe “hypostasis”, is its own ground; i.e., we awaken outof ourselves, into light; we proceed with our projects (EE61–86; TO 51–55). We fall asleep, curled about ourselves,thereby exiting our conscious existence. Embodied consciousness thusbegins and ends with itself. As such, it is both dependent on andindependent from its environment, and Levinas will urge that thesubject, upon awakening, uses and masters being.

In the middle period essays, the partial transcendences of pleasureand desire, already sketched in 1935, receive fuller development andvariations. The meaning of transcendence focuses on a new temporalitypromised by desire and “fecundity”, or the birth of theson (EE 100; TO 91–92). The son incarnates alterity in a curiousway. He is, in a sense, his father andnot his father.However, his birth opens a different focus on the future. No longerconceived as one of open possibilities, as Heidegger had argued, thetime opened by the son responds to two basic limitations on ourunderstanding and representation: death and the other person. Whilenot denying Heidegger’s intuition about death as the“possibility of impossibility”, Levinas repeats hisearlier argument that we witness death only in the death of the other.But even as such, it escapes everyday understanding. Hence, Levinaswill qualify death as an alterity as radical as that of the otherhuman being who confronts me.

In death the existing of the existent is alienated. To be sure, theother that is announced does not possess this existing as the subjectpossesses it; its hold over my existing is mysterious. It is notunknown but unknowable. (TO 75)

Of course, we can and do constitute the other as analterego. Yet such constitution by phenomenological apperception neverexhausts his fundamental difference (TO 78–79). In so arguing,Levinas proposes to enlarge Husserl’s “other”, ofwhom the latter said that he or she is “ananalogon ofmyself, [yet also]not ananalogon in the habitualsense” (CM §44).

Two reversals should be noted, here, relative to 1935. First, againstHegel’s conception of work as the dialectic of spirittransforming nature, Levinas describes labor phenomenologically aseffort and fatigue,^[10] again highlighting his distinction between the embodied, working selfand the cognitive ego. The second reversal concerns moods themselves.In Heidegger, anxiety, joy, and boredom were states of mind, withanxiety as the privileged mood by which humans are confronted withthemselves, their lack of ground, and with the question of theirexistence. In his middle period, Levinas will expand the experience ofbeing to moods now including horror. Nighttime being reveals anindeterminate dark presence that is not pure nothing. “Thehorror of the night, as an experience of the there-is, does not thenreveal to us a danger of death, nor even a danger of pain” (EE57). Therefore pure being can never be just Heidegger’s lightedclearing. And our existence in the world requires stronger embodimentthan an eye and a hand that reaches to grasp objects“ready-to-hand” (Heidegger). Once again, Levinas recurs tobodily states, this time including fatigue, indolence, insomnia, andawakening. In the first three, the aforementioned gap between theembodied self and the intentional I increases. Upon awakening, theembodied ego (soi-moi) reasserts its mastery overthings and even its own bodily torpor. But for Levinas being in theworld is less a matter of utility and Heidegger’s phenomenon of“falling” into distraction, than one of love of life andsheer enjoyment (BT 179).^[11] This, too, is part of Levinas’ critique of Heidegger, for whomour concern for the world often coexists with instrumentalistrelationships with things. In search of variations on being as a callor as revelation, and in privileging the basic subjectivity (or“hypostasis”) capable of raising itself above being (nowunderstood as the neutral “there is”), Levinas isenroute to his secular philosophy of alterity and transcendence.For further discussion of the middle works, seeSupplement S.1 on Transcendence and Being.

2.3 The “Treatise on Hospitality”: Totality and Infinity (1961) or Responsibility, Transcendence, and Justice

Totality and Infinity was written as Levinas’Doctorat d’État.^[12] His concept of transcendence provides us a useful point of departurefor readingTotality and Infinity. That is, so long as weconsider his debt to Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl understoodtranscendence in several ways, of which one dimension was that typicalof consciousness extending toward and encountering the worldly objects(noema) that offer themselves to it. After Husserl, Heidegger willdefine transcendence as the essence of our existing in the world.Da-seinis always already in the world among things,according to a worldly transcendence or being out-there. Jean-PaulSartre followed Heidegger in this, urging that “transcendence isa constitutive structure of consciousness” (EN 1943 [1992: 23]),and his concept of consciousness is similarly in the world andingredient in our actions.

For Levinas, these senses of transcendence are acceptable but notprimary. Instead, he aligns transcendence with exteriority, in thesense of what lies outside myself but eludes my comprehensiveknowledge: the other person (TI 49).^[13] The encounter with the other is an encounter with a visible thing, ofcourse. Butthis other speaks to me, implores or commands me.In responding, I discover my responsibility to them. This is theground of ethics or indeed our concern with ethics as the good of theother person.

As Levinas argues, when ethics goes in search of its existentialground, before any consideration of utility, virtue, or duty, itdiscovers the relational enactment of responsibility, which resistsbeing integrated into accounts in which the other is a universalother to whom it is my duty, for example, to act ethically,or in the hope of increasing the happiness of the collectivity (Kant).To be sure, utility, virtue, and duty are crucial to ethical debates.Yet Levinas is pointing to their commonlived origin in theirreducibility of the face-to-face encounter.For a furtherdiscussion, seeSupplement S.2 on Levinas and Contemporary Ethics.

2.3.1 Structure of the Work

Totality and Infinity unfolds around phenomenologicaldescriptions of being, depicted initially as nature or forces inconflict (TI 21–22). However, our being in-the-world alsoentails the enjoyment of natural elements and love of life (TI110–115).

We live from ‘good soup’, air, light, spectacles, work,ideas, sleep, etc….These are not objects of representations. Welive from them. (TI 110)

Levinas also reframes labor as the creation of a store of goods thanksto which the other can be welcomed (TI 157–161, 205), ratherthan solely as the mastery or humanization of nature. Because we takejoy in living and in creating a home, our existence in the worldentails dimensions other than Heidegger’s “thrownpotentiality-for-Being-in-the-world”, which is based onDa-sein’s being abandoned to itself (BT 236). Consequently, ourlives do not consist in an isolated facticity, as Heidegger hadventured.

Life is not the naked will to be, an ontologicalSorge [care]for this life. Life’s relation with the very conditions of itslife becomes the nourishment and content of that life. (TI 112)

In being thus nourished, we can receive the other into our space.

On the basis of these descriptions, transcendence as defined abovecomes to pass in several stages. First, the onset of theother—as the expression of the face—interrupts our freeactivity (and willing) and calls us to account for ourselves (TI 198,291), something Levinas calls “goodness” (TI 200).^[14] Second, in responding, the subject approached by the other engages inan act that opens the possibility of dialogue. The unfolding ofdialogue expands the social relationship, and Levinas argues thatsocial life preserves a residue of the initial “ethical”encounter with the face. Intersubjective dialogue entailsconversation, teaching, and at a more general level, literary orphilosophical speech (TI 51, 57, 251–52, 295). As we will see,this is a dimension of human sociality that often goes unexplored inphenomenologies of intersubjectivity.

Over the course of the expansion of dialogue, the trace ofresponsibility is attenuated, and conundrums arise concerning thewell-being of others and conflicts within thecommunity. These require deliberation about justice andfairness. For instance: what does justice for the other(s) mean?Should it above all concern the reparation of wrongs? Canresponsibility for an other coexist with disinterested equity withinthe community? Or is justice in service to the stronger and ultimatelyopposed to responsibility? Now, because it can clearly be interpretedas all of these things, justice sometimes appears as intermediarybetween Levinas’ aforementioned ontology of worldly forces inconflict (or elementary being) and our acts of responsibility. Thiswould tally with Aristotle’s two conceptions of justice, firstas political and second, as unbidden ‘decency’,tò epiekes, meaning to accept receiving less thanone’s share. Aristotle himself defined the combination of thetwo ascomplete virtue (Nicomachean Ethics 1130a,119 and 1137b7–11).^[15] There would thus be an interesting precedent to Levinas’question of the relationship between responsibility and justice inAristotle’s virtue ethics.

Levinas’ argument inTotality and Infinity unfolds upto the question of justice and then takes an unanticipated tack.Rather than pursuing justice as it is refined through civil societyinto the State, Levinas focuses on a smaller-scale institution,: thefamily, which is arguably common to all humanity. It is presumably inthe family rather than in the State that the responsibility describedin the face-to-face encounter is most clearly enacted. If the familyis consolidated by the birth of the child, then, as Levinas puts it,it is the father who elects and calls the child to responsibility,just as the child grows up serving his siblings in a way more personalthan that prescribed by the impersonal justice of States. According toLevinas,this familial justice carries a specific temporalmodalization: “The unique child, as elected one, is accordinglyat the same time unique and non-unique. Paternity is produced as aninnumerable future”, as open posterity (TI 279). In thispenultimate section entitled “Beyond the Face”, thephenomenology of the family thus expands the responsibilityexperienced in the face-to-face into a micro-society, in whichquestions of justice may arise, but with a new emphasis on future time.^[16]

2.3.2 Time, Transcendence, and Sociality

Totality and Infinity does not devote attention to clock timeor to the time of universal history, in Hegel’s sense notably.Because Levinas begins his analyses with the concept of being asvirtually aligned with material causality and strife, the experienceof ‘subjective’ time as the interruption that occurs inthe encounter with the face is not yet social time. History, too,seems to be a metaphysician’s history. In his“Preface”, Levinas describes history as violence,punctuated by extremes of war and temporary peace (TI 21–23).Morgan has argued that this makes Levinas’ approach to ethicalintersubjectivity anti-naturalistic, at least to the degree thatnaturalism is tied to a Hobbesian mechanistic ontology (2011: 246).Levinas would be the last, however, to deny the self-interest of ourdrives and instincts. To the contrary, only an intersubjectivityinaugurated by the other’s summons interrupts these behaviors(Morgan 2011: 246). Yet Levinas also envisions an alternative historyin which it is possible to bear witness to wrongs undergone bypersons. These wrongs may not be recorded in the official history ofgovernments. But their attestation prolongs his discussion of humansensibility as invested by responsibility. Levinas writes,“[h]istory is worked over by the ruptures of history, in which ajudgment is borne upon it. When man truly approaches the Other he isuprooted from history” (TI 52).

Levinas’ phenomenological account of time contains three levels:an initial one equivalent to formal historicist time, a second levelcomparable to Husserl’s universal flow of immanent time-consciousness,^[17] and a third temporality that is episodic and affectively colored,which he calls an interruption.

[The] discontinuity of the inner life interrupts historical time[notably in the face-to-face encounter]. The thesis of the primacy ofhistory constitutes an option for the comprehension of being in whichinteriority is sacrificed. The present work proposes another option.(TI 57)

The aforementioned interruption of our immanent consciousness, quatime-flow, by the other, a rupture that Levinas says characterizes our“inner life”, is aligned with the experience oftranscendence.

Unlike Heidegger, who explained the subject in terms ofDa-sein—itselfan ongoing transcendence towardthe world in whichDa-sein “comes towarditself futurally” (BT §69)^[18] in facing the possibility of its death—Levinas situates hisvery concrete transcendence in theinterruption of the firsttwo temporal levels. Indeed, whereas Heidegger gradually translatedhis conception of the silent call of being (in and toDa-sein)into the notion of the event (Ereignis)in the 1930s, Levinas makeshisinterruption-event an intersubjective affair or rather, the basis ofethical relationality. For him, the encounter with the other isnot an ontological event in Heidegger’s sense. Neitheris it like an occurrence that breaks up the historicalstatusquo, modifying the course of history into a ‘before’and ‘after’, in function of its magnitude. Nevertheless,Levinas does argue that the encounter with alteritymay leavea trace in historical time.^[19] Now, because the interruption brings to light a basic personalresponsibility for an other, a host of responses are possiblepostfacto, from welcoming that other with hospitality to attemptingto get him out of our way. Be that as it may, a trace of theinterruption persists in the subject, like a grain of sand in anoyster or a preconscious motivation to bear witness to theother’s suffering. Jill Stauffer has recovered some of these‘traces’ in her research on the testimonies of thosedeprived of human rights (2015: 40–43, 56–58, 61–64,91inter alia). François-David Sebbah recalls that amemorial trace persists in my experience along with the hope or dreamthat somewhere I will find “other people who may not hear me forthe time being, but whom I might hope to rejoin”—this ishis version of the ambiguity of hope in the midst of desolation(Sebbah 2018a: 29).

Flowing out of the temporal interruptions that leave affectivemnemonic traces in persons, the ground of social existence in Levinasdoes not resemble the solipsism for which Heidegger was criticized.Our life with others is never akin to Heidegger’s“inauthenticity”, that flight from what should be theresolute assumption of our mortality, nor even to moments disappearingin a teleology of expanding socio-political collectivities thatculminate in the State (Hegel; sometimes Husserl, see Husserl 1973c:no. 23, 387–395). As individuals, we are always in socialrelations, marked by a remainder of responsibility. We have alreadybeen impacted by the expression (or “face”) of another.

Yet, because the immediacy of this impact resists conceptualization,we tend to overlook the force that the other’s address has on us(as facial expression or words addressed). We carry on, in ourrespective spheres, apparently motivated by desires and projects, someof which entail the kind of quests for mastery and recognition thatHegel described. InTotality and Infinity, nevertheless,these quests are as if undercut by “metaphysical desire”(TI 33–34, 114, 148ff.), which Levinas defines as “adesire [for the other] that cannot be satisfied”. As heexplains, “we speak lightly of desires satisfied, or of sexualneeds, or even of moral and religious needs” (TI 34). However,metaphysical desire “desires beyond everything that can simplycomplete it. It is like goodness—the Desired does not fulfillit, but deepens it” (TI 34). This under-layer of our everydaydesires comes to light in the faltering of our will to mastery asexperienced in the face-to-face encounter. The other’s facialexpression or bodily posture affects me before I begin to reflect onit. As indicated, the impact is dual: a command and a summons. Nakedand defenseless, the face signifies, with or without words, “Donot kill me”. It opposes a passive resistance to our desire formastery wherein our freedom asserts its sovereignty (TI 84). Levinasspeaks of the face of the other who is “widow, orphan, orstranger”. While these are Biblical figures, he argues that weencounter them concretely even before transcribing them into religiousallegory (TI 76–78). They invest our freedom as the possibilityof giving.

It is as summons and injunction that expression precipitatestranscendence. If I am self-sufficient in my everyday activities andperception, then this is because I am a being that inhabitsoverlapping worlds in which my sway is decisive for me. The passiveresistance of the face alters this sway through an affective mood notunlike one Levinas had explored inOn Escape (1935):shame. In shame, we experience our freedom as unjustifiable. In thusbeing lifted out of its concerns, the “I” offers anaccount to the other, who is thereby treated as if higher than that“I”, when considered in its personal sovereignty. For thatreason as well, the “I”, singled out and addressed by theother, is chosen or “elected” to respond (TI245–246, 279). It “transascends” (TI 35, 41) orrises to the other, answering “here I am” (EI 106). Asindicated, Levinas argues that this instant of “election”belongs to a temporal order different from that of everyday existence:it is the moment of enactment of a “good beyond Being” (TI80, 102–104, 292–293).

It is impossible to set up a simple temporal order of succession oralternation between being and the good beyond being. For humans, thegood comes to pass almost trivially and in everyday contexts. Ofcourse, as readily as responsibility and generosity may be glimpsed inhuman affairs, cruelty and competition are also obvious. Given this,Levinas seeks support for his intuition about the good in at least twomoments in the philosophical tradition, wherein its occurrence andirreducible value have been identified: Plato’s Idea of thegood, and Descartes’ infinite substance, which points beyonditself to an unknowable cause. However,that humansexperience moments of inexplicable generosity, even enact themspontaneously, is a fact that would remain enigmatic within anontology of competing drives or merely utilitarian desires. In thatrespect, the trace of the good is present within existence as thepossibility that something other than rivalries andinstrumentalization take place intersubjectively.

As Levinas understands it, transcendence has the non-metaphysicalcharacteristic of an interruption, a relationin nuce, andwhat he now calls “infinity”. Insofar as infinity denoteswhat is non-limited, uncircumscribable, it refers to the unpredictablequality of a face’s expression (TI 5). As he writes,

[t]o think the infinite, the transcendent, the Stranger, is hence notto think an object. But to think what does not have the outlines of anobject is in reality to do more or better than think. (TI 49)

So far as infinity has a positive sense, then, it has that sense asour unquenchable desire for sociality. Thus, before we interpret it as“God” or reify it as asummum ens, the idea ofinfinity is rooted in an everyday encounter whose implications areclearest at the sensuous-affective level, and even somewhat resembleHusserl’s explorations of spontaneous empathy (Einfühlungas expanded in the 1920s notes onintersubjectivity [Husserliana, Vols. 13–15]). Ratherthan Husserl, however, Levinas refers to the French phenomenologistMaurice Merleau-Ponty’s conception of lived intersubjectiveflesh, urging that this corporeal intertwinement is part of our“fundamental historicity”,^[20] that is, part of the sedimented experiences that contribute to ourgrasp of new situations. Sebbah also emphasizes that

the ethical imperative to respond to the command (the trial of theother person) in no way arises from a psychological process ofempathy or ofsympathy. (2018b, 49)

In short, in 1961, intersubjective sensibility is the locus oftranscendence outside psychological considerations.

In the fourteen years separatingExistence and Existents andTime and the Other fromTotality and Infinity, wesee both continuities and differences. If Heidegger had begun what heconceived to be a hermeneutic dismantling of Husserl’sphenomenological consciousness, seeking what “lies hidden”beneath phenomena (BT §7c), then Levinas extended thisdeformalizing gesture already in 1947, arguing that light itself isincipient meaning, suspending the opposition between theapriori and thea posteriori. By1961, it is the experience of the face-to-face encounter thatdestabilizes thea priori-aposteriori dichotomy by urging that, in the face-to-face, thethird party (humanity) looks at methrough the eyes of theother. This is because the non-spatial “proximity”(approach of the other) that is the interruption of our flowingtime-consciousness takes place with an unnoticed spontaneity, yetlikely leaves a trace. That is, consciousness always takes up afterthese instants of interruption and reconnects itself as a homogeneousflow.

InExistence and Existents, Levinas voiced “theprofound need to leave the climate of [Heidegger’s]philosophy” (EE 4). By 1961 he will have done so, albeit notwithout significantly reworking Heidegger’s fundamentalontology. As we have seen, Levinas envisions being as constant,neutral presence and, at times, like a Hobbesian state of nature.Jacques Derrida reminds us that this pre-Heideggerian conception isclose to Kant’s notion of existence, understood as intensitiesin conflict (1997 [1999: 49, 86]). That is why, in its naturalexpression, being takes on almost a mechanistic quality in Levinas. Inpolitical and institutional senses, being is conceived as theencompassing of individuals and communities by the State. On thelatter depend security and property, life and death. But in the“Preface” toTotality and Infinity, Levinascompares the State with systematic philosophy: as the‘organon’ of politics, the State manages commerceand conflicts, just as it declares wars. Similarly, Hegel’sidealist dialectics oversees and integrates sensibility and cognition,progressing from the individual to the collective, and expressing themovement ofGeist or Spirit (TI 21–23; 36–38;87–88).

Overall, Levinas’ most sustained criticisms target fundamental ontology.^[21] As we have seen, leaving the “atmosphere” ofHeidegger’s thought motivates his return to more traditionalconceptions of being. To be sure, Levinas was skeptical about derivingan ethics from ontology. Certainly, such an ethics could not limititself to Heidegger’sMitsein, that sociality intowhichDa-sein flees when troubled by its uncannygroundlessness (its being thrown into-the-world). Having attempted,from 1935 onward, to carry Heidegger’s being-there with itsstates of mind or moods (Befindlichkeiten), down tomoreembodied experiences of shame, desire, hunger, andnausea, Levinas’ conviction is thatDa-seinremains too formal an entity to exist in a world in which humanrelationality is more substantial than a mere refuge from the anxietyof groundlessness (BT 232).^[22] Although for HeideggerAngst individuates us and disclosesour possibility for “the freedom of choosing…and takinghold of [ourselves]” (BT 232), this process remains solipsisticin the sense that it isour freedom andourmortality that are in question. When intensified,Angstreveals the groundlessness of our being-there,ultimately freeing us (individually) for the question: why might there‘be’ anything at all? Against Heidegger, Levinasunderstands this framing as tantamount to a hermeneutic universe inwhich the idea of our authentic possibility concerns only our deathand underestimates the significance of the encounter with the otherperson. Only through a different hermeneutics, which reveals humanexistence as embodied andinterpersonal, can we conceptualizethe opening to responsibility that the encounter with the other personcreates.For further discussion seeSupplement S.3 on Levinas’ Hermeneutics.

Now, inTotality and Infinity, a further transition occurs,from the micro-sociality of the face-to-face encounter to socialexistence more broadly. This is possible thanks to language asteaching and dialogue (TI 194–197; 201–203), a claim thatMerleau-Ponty would have approved. As indicated, earlier on, Levinaswill open still another path to universalization—concerning thewhole of humanity—through the family, in his final section“Beyond the Face” (TI 267–280). Despite this secondpath, the question remains how it is that, for Levinas and through theeyes of the other, the whole of humanity looks at me (TI 213). GillianRose first criticized this limited universalization of responsibilityas lacking important socio-political mediations (1992). Elliot Wolfsonhas in turn questioned whether this lack is not based on “afalse dichotomy[,] as both [responsibility and socio-politicalmediations] are…indebted conceptually to a Kantian dualism thatneglects the middle” (Wolfson 2025: 109). Ernst Wolffinvestigated the passage toward universality in light ofLevinas’ evolving conception of liberal society, from thelatter’s skeptical stance toward a more positive appraisal(Wolff 2007). Finally, Elad Lapidot argues that through Levinas’hermeneutics of the family, we obtain a micro- or meta-politics,wherein “the family [operates] as a counter-figure to the state,[like] a collective subject against a total object” (Lapidot2021: 16). Lapidot adds arguments for a “völkisch”influence, borrowed here from Heidegger.^[23]

Levinas admits that

[t]he acuity of the problem [of universalization] lies in thenecessity of maintaining the I in the transcendence [of theface-to-face] with which it hitherto seemed incompatible [given itsself-interests]. (TI 276)

That is, although the face-to-face is a momentary interruption, thetrace of responsibility needs to be received and assured in a moredurable way. Thanks to his focus on the family, Levinas does provide apartial expansion of responsibility by weaving together theresponsibility of the father to his child and the micro-sociality offamily life, in which the trace of interruptive time is historicized.This choice works responsibility out in terms one might today considertraditional or patriarchal, i.e., through paternal election and theservice of the son to his brothers; something that, ironically,resembles the solidarity through intergenerational love found inHegel’s early theological writings. This leads Levinas to assertthat “the fecundity of the I is its very [temporal]transcendence” (TI 277). That is, through thetime ofgenerations, an ego surpasses itself through its children (TI 277).Thus, even as the time of generations “adds something new tobeing, something absolutely new” (TI 283), i.e., the child, italso provides a partial mediation between the affective instant ofresponsibility and the creation of institutions and practices apt toensure that the ethical trace has some potential for extension.

Rose (1992), Derrida (1964 [1978: 121, 133–136]), and DidierFranck (2008: 233–243) have discussed the difficulty ofmediations; viz., introducing ethics into questions of justice andpolitics. Part of the difficulty lies in the tension betweenuniversalization understood as the ethical cultivation of humanity,versus universalization understood as providing an ethical inflectionto justice broadly conceived. For Levinas, the passage ofresponsibility into politics is invariably fragile, because ethicallanguage is frequently imitated by political rhetoric. Yet, in 1961,the question of how responsibility and election experienced in thefamily passes into a vaster history and public space remainsunder-thematized, notably, as it concerns demands for social justiceand equality. Herzog has argued that politics in Levinas is firstly“defined as concern and care for people’s hunger”,even before it is interest in power or defense of political rights(2020: 40).

Levinas himself responds by urging that the notion of fraternity isfirstly hermeneutic, even before it is biological. Fraternity is anupshot of intersubjective relations. It flows out of face-to-faceencounters and what he calls the human kinship forged by“monotheism” (TI 214). By this Levinas means the ethicalcore or essence of Judaism. As he argues,

the very status of the human implies fraternity and the idea of thehuman race. Fraternity is radically opposed to the conception of ahumanity united by resemblance, a multiplicity of diverse familiesarisen from the stones cast behind by Deucalion, and which, across thestruggle of egoisms, results in a human city. (TI 214)

Unification in difference is thus created only when monotheism resultsin a law that equalizes those obliged by it. Levinas similarly traceswhat he calls originary “religion” to the face-to-face,following his phenomenological genealogy of it (TI 40). Commentatorshave nevertheless insisted that, unless ethics can correct or amendjustice on the basis of a subject’s experience ofresponsibility, the possibility its expansion remains open to doubt(Wolff 2007: 383–399). For many commentators, interpersonalresponsibility remains the exception not the rule (Froese 2020). Forhermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadamer), responsibility itself depends ondialogue and established tradition, not on the abstract call of theother. Responsibility may be subject to codification, though thatwould be the concern of ethical theory, which is not Levinas’priority (Morgan 2007: 238).

Two dilemmas thus arise inTotality and Infinity. It is anopen question whether they are laid to rest inOtherwise thanBeing. The first concerns the dichotomy between what wastraditionally called free will versus nature; the second, theaforementioned socio-cultural mediations between families and States.In the first case, it may be surprising that Levinas characterizeshuman existence in terms resembling those of physiologicaldeterminism, that is, in terms of drives and the interests flowing outof them. For him, the problem of reconciling freedom and nature wouldbe one of interrupting the activity of the drives, which is the bodilysubstrate of consciousness, and which contributes to its dynamictemporal unity. Understanding the will, then, does not begin withfreedom so much as with something closer toconatusessendi (i.e., with something “natural”).

Levinas proves close to Hobbes and Kant here. For the latter, themotivation todisregard one’s interests in favor of themoral law lies in the affect calledAchtung. Kanturged thatAchtung be considered in its negativeand positive aspects: negatively, as attention or freedomfrom sensuous distraction. In its positive sense,Achtungcorresponds toreverentia, respect,understood as the freedom to grasp the law as something eminentlyworthy of adherence, despite its imposed constraint. Moreover,

the presentation of something as [the]determining basis of ourwill humbles us in our self-consciousness when we compare it withthe sensible propensity of our nature. (Kant KPV 1788: Pt I bk Ich. 3, AA 5: 74 [2002: 98]; Nancy 1983 [2003: 142]; Basterra 2015:91–98)

As the focus of attention and motivation,Achtungis unique in that it is what Kant calls anintellectualaffect (Kant KPV 1788 [2002: 87 / AA: 66]). It has no direct relationshipto our bodily make-up, which, as we know also from Levinas, isindissociably tied up with drives and instincts. When thus motivated,practical reason determines itself to act out of respect for a lawindemonstrable by theoretical reason. Practical reason therebydiscovers freedom in theperformance of its moral act. It isonly then,post facto, that freedom is found tohave reality, through self-obedience.

Basterra has argued that Kant’s ethics affords us an importantinsight into the question of nature versus freedom in Levinas. Whereasfor both, the will follows its natural course (desires and emotions),something outside itmay compel it toward ethical behavior orresponsibility. For Kant, the categorical imperative does not“belong” to the self-positing subject, but ratheraddresses them as iffrom without and elicits humility. ForLevinas, it is the face of the other that addresses us this way andfocuses our attention, prior to our considering that face’sempirical qualities (sex, ethnicity, etc.) (Basterra 2015:125–126). Recently, Wenjing Cai (2021) has observed thatBasterra’s arguments for a limited reconciliation between Kantand Levinas produce “an otherness or excess within thesubject”:

Basterra…argues that both the Kantian moral law andLevinas’s other indicate an otherness or excess within thesubject, thereby making the subject of freedom an auto-heteronomousone. (2021: 406)

For his part, Alexander Altonji (2023) argues that Levinas’concrete other is not only normative but that the command expressed inthe face (“you shall not kill”) provides the best answerto the skeptics’ problem of other minds and other existences(Altonji 2023: 67). So much for recent debates on Levinas’ 1961treatment of freedom and nature.

Let us turn now toward the second dilemma: the fraught relationshipbetween ethics and politics. In 1961, Levinas characterizes politicsand drives as unfolding in a similar fashion. Both are sites for themanifestation of the will to persist in existence. He doubts thatpolitics, when “left to itself”, can long remain ethical(TI 300; Wolff 2007: 129). However, he remarks that justice can beaddressed as an ethicaldemand posed to some States, notablyliberal ones.

This does not solve the problem of mediations yet suggests thatRose’s Hegelian objection may be misguided. After all, what dothe mediations ultimately serve, if not thefinality of theState as overarching protector and regulator?^[24] Levinas was aware of this. In 1951, in his first published article onthe State of Israel, he did not hesitate to forestall accusations ofidolatry even against a Jewish State. Arguing philosophically that the“State is not an idol because it precisely permits fullself-consciousness”, he added that modern humans“acknowledge [their] spiritual nature…when acting in theservice of the State and in their dignity as citizens”.^[25] This is indeed why, he added, the decline of organized religions istied to the advent of modern States. Here and elsewhere, he recognizedthat a State, and preeminently one founded on a religion, embodied aparadox whose solution—in Israel’s case atleast—could only be found in an approach to religion as thesymbolic pendant of ethical responsibility (DF 218). Hethereupon added the more existential claim that

the Jewish people craved their own land and their own State, notbecause of the abstract independence which they desired, but becausethey could then finally begin the work of their lives. (DF 218)

Clearly, this is not an exhaustive solution to the problem ofmediations between family (or ethnicity) and the State (or politics).We will return to this question in section 2.4.5.For a discussionof other commentators, seeSupplement S.4 on Commentators on Levinas’ Politics

2.4 Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (1974): Transcendence-in-Immanence

Otherwise than Being grew up around its core fourth chapter,entitled “Substitution” and first published in 1968 (OBBE99–129; also see Bernasconi 2002; see further Simon Critchley1999: 183–197). It is a justifiable simplification to say thatLevinas’ concept of substitution corresponds to that ofresponsibility, explored this time as relationality in immanencerather than as “my” response to the face, understood asexteriority. In this work, Levinas uses the term“intériorité” repeatedly, which thetranslator renders as “inwardness”, perhaps to avoidintroducing spatial binaries (OBBE 28, 87, 92, 108, 119). The work isnot about inner-outer dichotomies, much less cognitive operations, ormemories of events or things. It has little to do with thephenomenological discoveries emerging through what Husserl called“making present (Vergegenwärtigung)”.“Inwardness” denotes a bodily life as if haunted byothers, which is also now called “proximity” (OBBE81–94; Sebbah 2018b, 51–52 n. 17). Comparable in this toHusserl’s horizon of apperceptions, inwardness entails aspectrum of affective tones. Unlike Husserl, however, these tonesrequire recourse to discursive figures that Levinas now borrows frompsychology, poetics, hermeneutics, even theology and dogmatics (e.g.,“obsession”, “persecution”,“recurrence”, “too tight in its skin”,“exile”, “maternity”, “love”, andfinally “expiation” and “kenosis”).^[26] While thus concerned with intersubjectiveaffectivity in its immediate passive undergoing, substitution ismanifest in human practice, the domain in which we experience immediacy.^[27]By 1974, then, transcendence, understood as the other“outside” me, has become transcendence-in-immanence, in asense closer to Merleau-Ponty’s account of intercorporeity,which similarly urged that philosophies of embodiment should neveroppose the terms immanence and transcendence (PP 308). ForLevinas, the concept of the other would still refer to the face asexpression and exteriority, but it would denote principally the“inwardness” of memories that are not about objects yetwhoseaffective return or “recurrence” furthercomplexifies the linear time schema of Husserl’s earlyphenomenological consciousness (OBBE 88).

This insistence on living presence and practice, which representLevinas’ resistance to objectification, can also be found todayin phenomenologies that underscore the difference between athird-person perspective and a first-person one. Sebbah (2018a) hasargued this point in light of what he calls an ethics of the“survivor”. Some have objected that Levinas’ latework reflected a certain survivor’s guilt. Sebbah takes up thischarge resolutely, emphasizing that in Levinas’ philosophy thedead (those who did not survive) are not phantoms or even tracesconfined in archival documents. At the pre-reflective level, they donot belong to “the world”, or to an economy of being, somuch as they carry on as affective saliences—persistingunremarked in our intersubjective relations.

Hence, preserving traces without life (i.e., without a living face),or even more in “enclosing” them within the horizon of theWorld, like tools among tools…or again in enclosing them withinre-presentation through memory, ultimately comes down toendangering…the authentic [living] relation to the other.^[28]

According to Sebbah, only the lived immediacy of the face-to-faceholds the ontological order metaphorically open to transcendence. Thisfirst-person perspective is a theme that goes back toMaimonides’ negative theological critique of human language inlight of the divine attributes of practice. In short, transcendence,expressed as the Good, is an old theme in Judaism. Levinas adapts itto his hermeneutic phenomenology and, by 1974, the immediacy of theface-to-face will be extended into the immanence of lived memory, evenas these affective memories condition our interactions withothers.

2.4.1 The Structure of the Work

Otherwise than Being opens with a general overview of theargument, in which being and transcendence are also named“essence” and “disinterest”. Emphasizing theprocessual quality of being, Levinas will refer to it equivalently as“being”or “essence”, venturing thathe might even have used the dynamic form“essance” (OBBE 187 note 1). Responsibility willbe focused and discussed as the condition of possibility of all verbalsignification (OBBE 43–47).Totality andInfinity’s themes of conversation and teaching thus recedeinto the background. Levinas now makes a more strategic use of thebody as flesh, that is, as a locus with simultaneously an inside andan outside, as in Merleau-Ponty. Subjectivity is again framedaffectively as the coming to pass of responsibility, although thistime the phenomenological approach to intentionality is analyzed intoits basic layer of sensibility that Levinas calls“pre-originary susceptiveness [susceptionpré-originaire]” (OBBE 122, 136–138). For him, thatmeans that subjectivity always entails pre-cognitive dimensions thatare from the outset intersubjectively conditioned. The other hasbecome other-in-the-same, as indicated.

To be sure, the other-in-the-same is notobjectivelydifferent from the factical other who faces me, because neither one isan object and both are expressions or modes of alterity. As we willsee, the other-in-the-same describes a pre-thematic “call”or “investiture” (indeed I never know when Ifirst experienced this other in me) (OBBE 125). Levinasadopts the middle voice, of passivity-activity, here: “All myinwardness is invested [s’investit] in theform of a despite-me, for-another” (OBBE 11). Thus, inOtherwise than Being, Levinas has returned to Husserl’sinquiries into passive synthesis, to the latter’s perplexitiesabout the stretching of our retentions of experiences, about theunbidden spontaneity of our associations, and the near-infinity ofsensuous horizons—all part of a process unfolding passively inwhat Husserl called in 1926 “a phenomenology of the so-called unconscious”.^[29] In light of this return, we should not approach interiority andexteriority as opposed terms, but as felt dimensions ofintersubjectivity and the inhabitation of a self by alterity.

The second chapter approaches Heidegger’s discussion of languageas the way in which being becomes, the way it temporalizes (BT §44b).^[30] Levinas revisits Heidegger’s argument that thelogosgathers up being and makes possible being’s unveiling (alētheia).He will argue that the lapse of timebetween lived immediacy and its reflective representation isnever fully gathered by thelogos. Therefore, thetemporal lapse poses a challenge to language understood asHeidegger’s gathering. It falls, much the way that transcendenceas interruption did in 1961, outside the realm of being-as-gathering,even though Levinas still considers being and language as processes oftotalization, as an all-encompassing system. His rethinking of thelapse, with transcendence-in-immanence, will be Levinas’ultimate modification of Heidegger’s project. Together, thelapse and this new conception of transcendence do ultimately passthrough language, albeit as practice, as words addressed to someone. Iwill come back to this. For now, suffice it to say that it is theinhabitation of a self by alterity that forms the sensuous conditionsof possibility of speech. Thus it is not being that addresses usthrough language, it is quite different; it is human alterity.

Two additional innovations inOtherwise than Beinginclude:

the proposed phenomenological reduction to the birth of meaning ina bodily self that carries within itself what it cannot identifyas properly itself (the “other”, affectively).This appears to be a expansion of Husserl’s discussion of thepre-reflective ego inIdeas II (§58, “Supplement12” §§2–3). Whereas Husserl emphasized the basisof the ego in its ongoing flow of lived experience, a flowcharacterized as “lawful”, on the basis of its ownprinciples, Levinas focuses on discontinuities in time-consciousness(see also Franck 1981 [2013: 149–166]).
A hermeneutics of the self, emerging through intersubjectivecontact in which the “proximity” of the other elicitspassive “substitution” and opens onto spontaneousresponding (OBBE 113–121). In what suggests an attempt atdeepening Husserl’s concept of empathy (Einfühlung)(OBBE 125), the tropes of proximity,recurrence, and substitution characterize the pre-cognitiveintersubjective intertwining that makes communication possible:“Communication would be impossible if it should have to begin inthe ego, [in] a free subject, to whom every other would be only alimitation that invites war” (OBBE 119).

Indeed, prior to spoken or written language, prior to signsreciprocally exchanged, “we suppose that there is in thetranscendence involved in language a relationship that is notempirical speech, but responsibility” (OBBE 120). Levinas callsthis theme, inspired by Franz Rosenzweig’sStammwort(root-word), “my pre-originarysusceptiveness”.^[31] In Levinas, the nature of intersubjective sensibility shares itstime-structure with strong passions, sometimes indeed with trauma(OBBE 122–124). As Levinas writes:

[this susceptiveness] describes the suffering and vulnerability of thesensuous asthe other in me…. [T]he ipseity [alsoknown as embodied selfhood] has become at odds with itself in itsreturn to itself. The self-accusation of remorse gnaws away at theclosed and firm core of consciousness…fissioning it[in its temporal unity]. (OBBE 124–125)

Consequently, vulnerability and sensitivity to trauma not only provokeretreat into self but heighten our awareness, however tenuous, of ourconnection with the other. Thereupon they motivate verbal address andultimately, bearing witness. Thus, the affective in-habitation of myself by an other precedes formal speech-acts and speech-communities.If the reverse were the case, that is, if a sociological communitywere posited as prior to the event of the address, then this wouldpresuppose what it was meant to show: the affective genesis ofspeech-acts (OBBE 92). In other words, “beneath” wordsproffered lies a fundamental vulnerability that psychology mightinterpret as a tendency to witnessing, from oneself to the other.Levinas calls this vulnerability the “Saying” (OBBE149–152). It is the condition of possibility of words uttered inthe form of response (i.e., pre-linguistic), and it accompaniescommunication like its affective horizon. The duality of Saying andSaid, or words uttered, is a new concept in Levinas’ latework.

Building on the exploration of proximity begun in chapter three,chapters four and five evince a tone more somber than any foundhitherto in Levinas’œuvre. This is in keepingwith the dedications of the book, written in Hebrew and in French,which announce that it will be a work of mourning. While DerridacharacterizedTotality and Infinity as a phenomenology ofhospitality (Derrida 1997 [1999: 21]),Otherwise than Beingcommemorates the “victims of the…hatred of the otherman”. It develops the parallel between semiotic“substitution” of a word for a thing (the signifyingfunction of all language) and the affective substitution of myself foran other, extended through a spectrum of acts of self-sacrifice, fromdaily empathy to interventions enacted for the other. This is whatLevinas calls the one-for-the-other (OBBE 45–50, 70–74,119–129). Whereas Heidegger had explored the hermeneutics ofDa-sein,for whom communication unfolds thanks to our(asDa-sein) taking or equivalently offering“this [thing or word] as that [thing]” (BT §31),Levinas will arguably set Heidegger’s “as” into his “for”:^[32] Heidegger’s “thisas that” becomesLevinas’ “onefor the other” ofsubstitution. While responsibility expressed the unfolding of theintersubjective affects that Levinas compared to Plato’s“Good beyond Being” in 1961 (TI 292–293,304–307), the good of substitution is more ambiguous, occurring“on the brink of tears and laughter” (OBBE 18), yet also“glorious” (OBBE 94, 140–144).

The experience of time characteristic of trauma and mourning does nottake the place of Husserlian phenomenology’s flowing time-consciousness,^[33] any more than it replaces the succession and uninterruptedness ofclock time. If what-is results from the self-giving of things to thefocus of phenomenological attention, and if together they invariablyfind a place in the formal flow of time-consciousness, then even forHusserl what-is, i.e., being, temporalizes as consciousness. Husserlhad always urged that, insofar as there is appearing, there is anindication of being (CM §46; also see Heidegger, BT §7). ForHeidegger, being temporalizes throughDa-sein,which is out-ahead-of-itself or oriented toward its future. Yet if, inboth their cases, being unfolds temporally, then for Levinas, oursensibility shows a different temporal character, because thesensibility called the other-in-the-same returns and repeats ratherthan flows. In its new somber tones as trauma and mourning,responsibility recurs without definitively halting the flow oftime-consciousness. This is why Levinas referred to the cluster ofconcepts around substitution asadverbial: they inflect ormodalize being (understood as processual) and its time, therebytemporarily modifying it. Indeed, when being is understood as theverbal dynamism expressed by “essence”, thenresponsibility and substitution can only be compared to ad-verbs.Hence the title,autrement, other-wise (than being), whichitself is an adverb (OBBE 35). This is a kind of wager; it does notabrogate the ontological character of existence; rather, it suggestsinflections of it.

The final half of chapter five recurs to the performative register oflanguage. It seeks to convey the tension of a consciousness strivingto consolidate itself in the wake of alterity as affectiveinvestiture, by which its passivity slowly becomes active witnessing.This opening out of inward affects becoming gestures of generositymotivatesOtherwise than Being’s recourse to the newperformative language. Levinas adds,

and I still interrupt the ultimate discourse in which all thediscourses are stated, in saying it to one that listens…That istrue of the discussion I am elaborating at this very moment. (OBBE170; see Derrida’s commentary on this, 1980 [1991])

He is no doubt aware of the seemingly artificial quality of callinghis authorial witness “immediate”. But Levinas’claim is more than a literary artifice. Basterra compares it toKant’s idea of autonomy, which shows itself only when we followa law that “exceeds and addresses the subject”, motivatingits ethical act (Basterra 2015: 126). Earlier in herabove-mentioned study, she had argued that the intellectual affect ofAchtung was capable of focusing our attention andopening us to a respect comparable to Levinas’ Saying, which healso calls “sincerity”. For pure reason, autonomy“is therefore an illusion”, but it is one only insofar asthat which is not intrinsically part ofmy interests canstill motivate me to act. Thus pure reason erroneously supposes thatmy ethical gesture camefrom me (Basterra 2015: 129). Levinasprovides us a crucial hermeneutics of the intersubjective origin ofthis “illusion” denounced in the firstCritique.He sets the heteronomy of Kant’s practical reason into ahermeneutic register, referring to the sincerity underlying the wordswe offer: “It is in the risky uncovering of oneself, insincerity, the breaking up of inwardness…exposure to traumas,vulnerability” that I bear witness to and for another (OBBE 48).Again, this does not come from us. It arises from being faced by another, and it persists as affective memory in our lived body. Indeed,when asked, Levinas finds illustrations of such witnessing in manyplaces, from the justice imperative of the Biblical prophets to theconcern of Latin American clerics over the events unfolding in Chilein 1973 (OGCM 81–82).

2.4.2 New Existential Moods and Fleshly Memories

As in his 1935 discussion of need and nausea, Levinas argues inOtherwise than Being that lived sensibility often overflowsrepresentations of it. And again, he proposes sensuous modes differentfrom Heidegger’sBefindlichkeiten (see§2.2supra), in which all understanding takes place forhim (BT 17). Indeed, interwoven layers of affectivity are unfolded inOtherwise than Being. Levinas explores the sensuous-affectiveproto-experience of the other in light ofnew moods, writing:“Remorse is the trope of the literal sense of sensibility. Inits passivity is erased the distinction between being accused andaccusing oneself” (OBBE 125). UnlikeExistence andExistents, wherein light overcomes the distinction betweensubjects and objects, allowing the subject to make an objectintelligible for itself within the horizon of its appearing (EE 41),Otherwise than Being approaches transcendence in sensuous andtemporal terms, arguing for the insistence of a past that eludesthematization, what he calls the “immemorial” (OBBE122–123). Transcendence for an embodied being would always thusbe transcendence-in-immanence. The affective “experience”of my relations with particular others is preserved as a trace orpre-thematic reminiscence of the flesh, as “a relationship witha singularity without the mediation of any principle, anyideality” (OBBE 100). InvokingOtherwise than Being(OBBE 105–107), John Llewelyn called this affective dimension ofinvested selfhood, or “ipseity”, a“‘deep’ saying” that “bears witness towhat is neither recollected nor forgottenin the epistemicsense of these terms when [or once] it is represented as asign” (Llewelyn 2002: 135).^[34]

As indicated,Otherwise than Being problematizesLevinas’ earlier, more ontological approach inTotality andInfinity. He proceeds now on the basis of Husserl’sinquiries into passive syntheses, notes on intersubjectivity, andEinfühlung(empathy). There is good reason forthis. Responsibility denoted an event that repeats, and evenintensifies as it is assumed (already TI 100–101). InOtherwise than Being, however, the question of immanence andpassivity arises in regard to responsibility’s unremarkedpersistence and its affective upwellings in us. This is because thestatus of a memory of sensuous events, which may have affected usoutside of any representation we form, is elusive. For thephenomenologist, it might correspond to an apperception or horizon, inthe sense of something that conditions perception but is not directlyperceived. Thus Levinas also insists that, unlike the apperceptionsHusserl explored thanks to the reduction he set on memory,^[35]this affective past continues to escape thematizationbecause it was never intentional at all, and because“memories” of our lived flesh precede the consolidation ofour ego (OBBE 144–147).^[36] John Drabinski has explored this“pre-history” in light of Levinas’ reprise ofgenetic phenomenology (2001: 185–206). Theodor de Boerapproaches it as an echo of both Rosenzweig and Jewish prophetism(1997: 87–100). Sebbah (2018a, 39–57) argues that the“subject” of such “trials” must be thewitness; he argues that Levinas proposes auniqueepochē through which to approachaffective vulnerability.

Levinas is aware that a counter-temporality of the affects is open tocritique. He even reminds us that skepticism—even thatconcerning his hermeneutic wager—obeys an ethical imperative todeconstruct philosophy and with it, all totalizing discourses, whetherthey are logical or political (OBBE 168–170).

Unlike Husserl, Levinas does not theorize a system consisting oflevels of drives and affects intentionalized by higher egoic acts.^[37] He does exploit, however, a difficulty that beset Husserl’searly eidetic phenomenology. The difficulty concerns bodily sensationin relation to the flow of intentionality, as discussed by Husserl inAppendix 12 of his lectures on inner time-consciousness (PCIT 130–133).^[38] For Husserl, in order to be experienced, sensation had to beintentional. Whereas, ever for him, the bodilyorigins ofintentionality were the concern of physiological psychology, herecognized that the ongoing alterations in the body accounted for ourfeeling of temporal progression. In short, as theyintentionalized, sensuous changes were in fact responsible for theexperience of the flow of inner time, the same flow precisely thatconferred temporal order upon conscious sensations. Phenomenologythereby remained consistent with itself as the eidetics ofconsciousness. But it did so at the price of disregarding preconsciousprocesses, like what Husserl later calledaffektiveKräfte (affective forces) that would only be explored laterin phenomenology’s genetic period starting around 1918.

Levinas first addressed Husserl’s difficulty in his 1965 essay,“Intentionality and Sensation” (DEH 135–150).Intentionalizing sensation was, he said, “[t]he original mark ofHusserlian idealism” (DEH 141). Unlike Husserl, who addressedthe problem with his speculative use of concepts like “affectiveforces” (affektive Kräfte), Levinasdeveloped his conception of “diachrony” 1974, OBBE9–10, 52), that is, the sensuous interruption that he equatedwith transcendence-in-immanence. Levinas focused on the gap (i.e.,diachrony) between bodily sensation entering intentionality andsensation as pre-conscious processes occurring at the intersubjectivelevel.

Levinas thus compared the duality of sensibility as consciousand preconscious to his idea of a pre-intentional“receptivity of an ‘other’ penetrating into the‘same’, [in sum, into our intersubjective] life and not[into] ‘thought’” (DEH 144). This sensuous alteritywill support two important claims; i.e., that intersubjective affectsoverflow the framework of representational consciousness, and thataffective interruptions can obtrude on the even flow of time-consciousness.^[39] Similarly, Sophie Veulemans has compared Levinas’ diachronywith Bergson’s approach to the “new” (sensuousmodification) in the midst of duration (Veulemans 2008). RudolfBernet, in turn, equates the newness of the phenomenological instantwith “the root of all alterity and all difference” inLevinas. This allows Bernet to urge that the intersubjectiveinvestiture of the subject “will always [prove] unthinkable in aphilosophy of consciousness” (Bernet 2002: 93; also see OBBE124). Following his argument, classical phenomenology would not haveadequately thought through the sensuous way “in which the otherliberates the subject from its captivity within …[its own]immanence” (Bernet 2002: 93).

2.4.3 The Saying and the Said

Otherwise than Being involves an innovative discussion ofsignification. Given Levinas’ hermeneutic insight that languageis not merely a system of words paired up with pre-existing objectiverealities, but instead brings reality to light, language and time willhave analogous functions.^[40] That is, both make meaning possible as the realization of ourselvesin the world. Indeed, while Heidegger had argued that being resonatesin (poetic) language as the verb “to be”, Levinascounter-argued for an otherwise than being that glimmered inad-verbial meaning, opening to transcendence. Yet, if the relationshipbetween language and being is fully encompassing, as it is forHeidegger, then either Levinas’ otherwise than being looks likemere speculation, or it simply inheres in being or participates in itsverb-like dynamism. Either way, fundamental ontology thereby provesprimordial and weakens Levinas’ claims. That being said, forhim, the transcendence indicated by the adverbial points toward atemporality that differs both from the flow of time-consciousness astheorized by Husserl and from the self-temporalization characteristicofDa-sein in Heidegger (i.e., asout-ahead-of-itself toward its ownmost possibility) (OBBE169–170, 178–182).

The lapse of time between the pre-intentional sensuous moment and itsintentionalization in consciousness corresponds to what Levinas callsthe “Saying” (OBBE 37–55), the condition ofpossibility of words addressed. His discussion of the Sayingcorrelates with his treatment of sincerity, introduced already inExistence and Existents.Otherwise than Beingradicalizes this notion, insisting that the structure of sensibilityis always as if punctuated by sensuous lapses. It is thanks to suchtemporal lapses that we are open and able to communicate because, aswe have seen, proximity is an affective mode that motivates dialogue.Whileall sensuous lapses are not necessarily openings tointersubjective relationality, proximity and vulnerability are theloci of transcendence-in-immanence and the birth ofsignification (whether words are actually uttered or not). ForLevinas, there is more in living affectivity than in whatHeidegger’s conception of being speaking through language hadcaptured. This becomes clear the moment we understand significationoriginally as an affective pre-intentionality and not as some thought,already formulated, that the I thereupon chooses to communicate to another (OBBE 43).

Levinas thus conceives language as more than denotation anddescription. Already verbs escape the coupling of words with thingsthat we find in the case of the noun. “In the verb of apophansis[predication], which is the verb properly so called, [i.e.,] the verb‘to be’, essence resounds and is heard” (OBBE 41).“Red reddens” without requiring conversion intopropositions; sounds resound in music and poetry. Nevertheless, a verbcan be converted into a noun, thereby losing its processualquality.

Through the ambiguousness of the logos…the verb par excellence[“being”] in which essence resounds…is nominalized,becomes a word designating and sanctioning identities, assemblingtime…into a conjuncture;

or situation (OBBE 42). Hence, even the verbality or event-likequality of being can take on a nominal form, such as in“a being”. Levinas calls this convertibility“the amphibology of being and entities [beings]” (OBBE43). While this reciprocal reference expresses the danger of takingbeing for a thing—a danger about which Heidegger warnedus—what Levinas calls the amphibology neglects a unique aspectof some verbs: their reflexive quality.

Thus verbs likese dire, understood as “tosay” but in a reflexive sense, are determined by the “se”or self, as though one were thereby sayingoneself, self-communicating. Levinas now setshisethical-hermeneutic reduction on the reflexive particlese,urging that, although being “speaks”through thelogos, thesepoints toward a mode of our embodied sensuous passivity (OBBE43–45). In short, Levinas accepts the Heideggerian claim aboutbeing expressing itself through language, but he adds the observationthat reflexive verbs bespeak a subjective giving that is not found inverbs, transitive or intransitive. The “se”is not itself a verb, it corresponds to thepassive pre-condition of communication, the way a self would also do.This passivity is enigmatic because these isneither a verb nor even a noun; it is considered a particle or areflexive pronoun. Yet this particle is indispensable to the middlevoice of a host of verbs in many Latin languages. It is thanks to itsenigmatic function that our subjective vulnerability to the othergrounds the dynamics of words said to that other. To this reflexivese corresponds our passivity as it comes to lightin the temporal lapse called “diachrony”. Diachronythereby expresses our sincerity toward the other and transcendence,understood in a practical sense: “[T]he spirit hears the echo oftheotherwise” (OBBE 44) in the words we offer andperform, and thus not merelyas the words we offer. With theadverb (“otherwise”), a modalization of fleshlyinvestiture momentarily escapes the nominalization available to manyverbs, including that of being (i.e., between being andabeing). As indicated, we find here the practical sense oftranscendence, which Levinas compares with Merleau-Ponty’s“fundamental historicity”, those unremarked, passivebodily sedimentations that make up our selfhood (OBBE 45).

2.4.4 Hermeneutics and Jewish Philosophy

Levinas’ later work, notablyOtherwise than Being, hasbeen characterized as hermeneutical. Focusing on the discussions ofthe other-in-the-same and passivity in that work, commentator GiuseppeLissa provides an apt description of Levinas’ interpretiveproject. By investigating the depths of consciousness, by comparingits passivity to the process of ageing, Levinas investigates a

reality unknowable, but perhaps interpretable by a thinking that nolonger claims to be an exercise in knowledge…because thisthinking is engaged in the search for a meaning that precedes allknowledge.

Lissa concludes that Levinas intimates a meaning that, in“preceding [knowledge], founds it, orients it, and to somedegree justifies it” (Lissa 2002: 227). For him, Levinas’turn to hermeneutics largely dates from his abandonment of thephenomenology of “exteriority”, as the subtitle ofTotality and Infinity indicates:An Essay onExteriority. As we have seen, insofar as the search for meaningunderlying all manner of intentional constitution and other modes ofintentionality presupposes a meaning only incipientlygrasped—something that corresponds to Heidegger’srethinking of hermeneutics in light ofDa-sein’sbasic understanding—Levinasappears to owe a debt to two forms of hermeneutic practice. On the onehand, to Heidegger’s existential hermeneutics;^[41] on the other, to a much older, polyphonic practice of reading. Thisis Talmudic thought interpretively elaborating Jewish law(Halakhah) and recounting and parsing narratives(Aggadah). Lapidot (2021) refers to this dualism as an“inter-epistemic” divide, which is sometimes carried inphilosophy as an “inner-philosophical drama” (2021: 5).According to Lapidot, this divide between “Athens” and“Jerusalem” is fecund, as it permits Levinas to mobilizeJewish traditions to interrupt the tendency of systematic epistemologyto conceptualize the world (cf. “ontological imperialism”,as Lapidot writes, citingTotality and Infinity). To be sure,a significant difference between this hermeneutics and that ofChristian theology lies in its giving less weight to philosophicaljustifications offaith. Let us turn briefly to thishermeneutics.

Levinas presented twenty-three Talmudic readings in the context of theColloques des intellectuels juifs de langue française.Ethan Kleinberg has recently discussed four of these readings withacute attention to the growth of Jewish themes in Levinas’philosophical project (Kleinberg 2021). It bears noting that, in 1957,at the first meeting of the colloquium, Levinas merely participated inthe debates. Salomon Malka reminds us of one of his profoundlyhermeneutic observations around that time:

Judaism is not a religion, the word doesn’t exist in Hebrew; itis much more than that, it is anunderstanding of being. TheJews introduced into history the idea of hope and that of afuture…. Moreover, Jews have the sentiment that theirobligations toward the other person come before their obligations inregard to God. (Malka 2002: 42, my trans., emph. added)

This remark already shows us three important things. First, thatJudaism might be an “understanding of being” implies thatit can encompasse ontology. Second, that Judaism was profoundly awareof finitude as both precarity and mortality. By extension, thehermeneutic life of Jewish traditions is an unfinished, ongoingprocess. Third, that our obligations to other persons come beforeduties toward God (from rituals to norms), and occasionally abrogatethese duties, denotes a secularizingélan,or better, a human-oriented dimension within Judaism. This helps usgrasp how it is that Levinas found resources in Heidegger’shermeneutics, both utilizing and criticizing its concepts andmethod.

The relationship between Levinas’ thought, its Jewishinfluences, and phenomenological philosophy has given rise to multipleevaluations. Martin Kavka argues that “Levinas understood bothJudaism and Western philosophy as engaging in structurally similarforms of thinking” (Kavka 2010: 20–21). He situates thestructural similarity in that “both [these intellectualcorpuses] consist of texts that point to what cannot be brought topresence” and consequently work between the dimensions ofreference, explanation, and hermeneutic pre-comprehension (cf. Ouaknin1993: 225 [1995: 155–156]).^[42] To be sure, for European philosophy, the transcendence of the Good isoften integrated into epistemological projects (e.g., Descartes).Against Kavka’s claim, Lapidot emphasizes foundationaldifferences: a method that departs decisively “fromvision-based, objectifying thought ‘reveal[s] it as implantedin…a forgotten experience from which it lives’”(2021: 8). Moreover, a foundation in axiology, or a thinking ofrelational values, is a notable Jewish contribution to philosophies oflanguage and intersubjectivity. However, this foundation arises firstas voice—as teaching. That means that the tradition unfoldsaround the auditory register rather than the visual one, the way Icarry a voice within me as opposed to constituting something visually,at a distance.

Kavka and Michael Fagenblat certainly recognize the profoundhistoricity of this dimension of Jewish thought: indeed, “it isnot clear…that…a ‘new direction’ in Jewishphilosophy is [ever] really new” (Kavka 2010: 21). Fagenblatexamines the hermeneutic extension thatOtherwise than Beinggives toTotality and Infinity, and both commentators arguethat Levinas’ increasingly critical stance toward theepistemological and foundationalist aspects of Husserlianphenomenology motivated him to expand his hermeneutic recourse both toHeidegger’sExistenzphilosophie and towardJewish thought, including Neo-Platonic currents and Maimonides(Fagenblat 2010: 97–110).^[43] But it should be emphasized that Levinas’ hermeneutics beginswell beforeOtherwise than Being. His reinterpretation ofbeing-in-the-world, the meaning of facticity, the creation of adwelling, and even his reading oferos and thefamily in 1961 entail interpretive choices, indebted to at least twosignificant hermeneutic themes: Heidegger’s interpretation ofour pre-comprehension of existence and Rosenzweig’s approach toJewish life inThe Star of Redemption (SE 1921 [2005]).

In 1961, Levinas wrote that Rosenzweig’sStar ofRedemption was “too often present in this book[Totality and Infinity] to be cited” (TI 28), andnumerous are the commentaries on the presence of Rosenzweig inLevinas’ work.^[44] It is important to recall that Rosenzweig had been a scholar of Hegeluntil the experience of the trenches in World War I motivated hissubstituting the limited community forged bySprachdenkenfor Hegel’s idealist politicalphilosophy; universalizing dialectics gave way to an existentialrelationality that preserved singularity through dialogue. TheStar of Redemption is a complex work analyzing the livedtimes of Jews and Christians, with a view to conceiving a certainextension of Judaism via Christianity over the course of theirhistories. At the core of each one lay a task and a profound, ifdisparate, intuition: aSprachdenken (dialogicalthinking) engendered by a revelation. Peter Eli Gordon has argued thatRosenzweig is “a post-Nietzschean philosopher”, apost-death of God thinker who thereby opened this “God” torelationality, however enigmatic. Gordon observes that,

like Heidegger, Rosenzweig’s new thinking denies that humanmeaning is intelligible independent of a life- and other-context.Temporal hermeneutics thus replaces the transcendental search foressence. (Gordon 2003: 185)

The same could be said of Levinas. Since he conceives temporality inhuman terms (as opposed to eternity orstasis), meaningitself can only be approached in light of time. Readers familiar withRosenzweig’s “neues Denken” mayknow that he situated one of the principal hermeneutic differencesbetween Judaism and Christianity in the way their theologies“temporalized”, with Christianity being oriented aroundthe life and death of the incarnate God, an event whose occurrencelies in the historic past, and Judaism, as historicallyfuture-oriented, i.e., ongoingly awaiting the messiah.

Levinas took up the question of meaning and temporality in a waysomewhat different from both Rosenzweig and Heidegger. In 1961, as wehave seen, his phenomenology of hospitality proceeded on thepresent-time of love of life in the world and the momentary encountercalled the face-to-face. However, the place where he explicitly usesthe term “phenomenology” therein concerns precisely asecularized messianic future. This is the chapter entitled“Phenomenology of Eros”, which deploys “aphenomenological model for the ultimate term of our desire”, asFagenblat puts it (2010: 93). To this Lapidot adds, the family flowingout oferos would be “beyond the finiteindividual…the infinite individual being the ‘ultimatestructure’ of being, ‘produced as multiple and as splitinto Same and Other’ (TI 308)”—this would be the weof the family (Lapidot 2021: 15).

The argument would be this: beforeeros issublimated in civil society,eros and the familybring to light our concern with others in their particularity anddifference, independently of their biological or social roles. We cantake the family as a “model” here, in the FrankfurtSchool’s sense of “an intellectualconstruction…[whose elements] are borrowed from empiricalexperiences that have already shown their worth” (Broch 2008:43). The phenomenology oferos opens a future of“election” within the family and perhaps beyondit. Despite the apparent heterosexism of his formulations, Levinasintroduces an abiding concern for singularity and uniqueness bydefining the figure of paternity as the possibility of electing eachson in his specificity, just as the latter may serve (and clash with)his brothers. Consistent with a model, the family is both figure andreality. It serves Levinas’ hermeneutic secularization ofmessianic future-time, inspired by Rosenzweig, through the successionof generations. Interestingly,eros unfolds“phenomenologically” in much the same way eas did theproto-experience of the “there is” (il ya). That is, it unfolds in a darkness overlooked byphenomenologies that rely on light and the universal evidence thatlight enables (TI 256). There would consequently be a neglectedunderside to the phenomenological account of constitution, whichprecedes and accompanies intentionality’s encounter with objectsand world. Andthat requires hermeneutics, as Moati observesinLevinas and the Night of Being (2012 [2017]).Forfurther discussion of Jewish hermeneutics, seeSupplement S.5 on Hermeneutics and Jewish Philosophy.

Like Fagenblat, scholars from David Banon to Marc-Alain Ouaknin toSebbah have explored the hermeneutic dimension of Levinas’thought, even beyond his Talmudic readings that delve into themany-voiced debates between the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Gemara(the oldest and subsequent transcriptions of Jewish oral traditions)(Banon 1987).^[45] As Ouaknin points out, in the case of Talmudic and Biblicalhermeneutics, Levinas always considered the eminence of abook—what defines it as “the Book”—to be lessits themes than itsstructure. Levinas focuses “on thestructure of the Book of books inasmuch as it allows for exegesis[hermeneutics], and on its unique status of containing more than it contains”.^[46]

Hermeneutics is thusengendered by excesses of potentialmeaning over senses already printed on the page, or even discerned bythe reception traditions of the work. It would thus be the specificarchitecture of the book that conditions its reception. Moreover, theparallelisms that we have seen—between the Saying and the Saidand between temporal diachrony and synchrony—are alsofound at the literary level in Biblical and Talmudic texts, with theiropenness to ongoing interpretation. Levinas even equates“revelation” with the call of the text toeachreader or listener, who thereby becomes responsible for itsinterpretation. “The Revelation as calling to the unique withinme is the significance particular to the signifying of theRevelation” of the text, which is understood as dialogical toits core. Here we see the structural analogy between the call of theother and my response that begins as Saying, as opening to wordsaddressed. Levinas adds,

the totality of the true is constituted from the contribution ofmultiple people, the uniqueness of each act of listening carrying thesecret of the text; the voice of the Revelation, asinflected…by each person’s ear, would be necessary to the‘Whole’ of the truth. (BTV 133–134)

Hermeneutic truth here becomes the responsibility of anopencommunity, as much as an invitation to participation extended to eachpossible listener. That is why Levinas could urge that Scripture beunderstood as summoning the reader to respond as readily as thesubject was called to respond, i.e., through situations ofresponsibility. All of these express an ethical investiture thatresults in words offered. The here and now of scriptural voices andreading stands analogous to the here and now of the face-to-faceencounter and the fact that memory occurs by definition in thepresent.

Levinas’ hermeneutics might nevertheless be deemed immanent,i.e., concerning one book and one community. Although commentatorslike Leora Batnitzky find in Levinas a project for a modern politics,and thus for universality, others are skeptical about her claim.Trigano objects that Levinas’ ethics unfolds out of a sort ofnon-site, starting with the category of the singular. “ForLevinas”, he argues,

it is ethically imperative to think the singular in order that thehorizon of the other person arise. The universal is, in effect, adangerous game that can lead to totality and to the negation of theother person. To decide in favor of the singular is to avoid such adevelopment

and with it, a closed politics (Trigano 2002: 173). Froese (2020)argues that we can derive a utopian politics from Levinas’hermeneutics, provided that we understand the levels of subjectivityhe explores, including the affective and pre-conscious level in whichoriginal intersubjectivity is born. This requires mobilizing a geneticphenomenological method. And perhaps for that reason, it has beenlargely missed by left and liberal readers who see in Levinas “apure ideological fantasy” (Froese 2020: 4), one that readilyaligns with neoliberalism. As Froese insists, however,

the social bond between subjects is not predicated on a commonexperience or shared horizon of meaning, but simply [on] theexperience of the self, as a self is necessarily mediated in andthrough others. (2020: 12)

Without this understanding, there is little way to mobilizeLevinas’ philosophy as a critique of politics.

In sum, the hermeneutic and phenomenological turn that Levinas givesto Husserl and Heidegger has led to debates about the relationshipbetween an immanent hermeneutics and one concerned with politics asthe sphere of the universal. Herzog argues in the same vein as Froese,for a Jewish and Levinasian universalism, provided we accept herthesis that ethics and politics mutually interrupt eachother—with ethics urging us toward a “surplus ofresponsibility” and politics representing the inescapablecontext and risk that besets responsibility. To demonstrate her claim,Herzog engages an extensive study of the politics of the law asdebated in the Talmud and presented in Levinas’ Talmudicreadings (Herzog 2020: 38–57, 94–119). These questionsimply discussions about politicsin our time from whichLevinas might have refrained in his time, in the wake of the Shoah,when politics seemed less important than questions of the future ofJewish communities. Be that as it may, even objections that claim tobe phenomenological andnot ideological (Drabinski 2011: 41)fail to emphasize that phenomenology itself contains a Cartesianegology, with transcendental and lifeworld egoic layers, as well as apsychological level derived from the embodied experience ofaffectivity, including intersubjective affects.

Much of the debate about Levinas’ politics unfolded successivelyin France and then in the English-speaking world. Michel Haar (1991:530) asked of Levinas whether his ethics could really unfold outsideof any site, outside of any positive reciprocity, and outside allobjectivation (cited by Trigano 2002: 175, note 79). Triganocriticized Levinas, urging that the dialectical relationship betweensingular experience and universal meaning (and institutions) impliesthat philosophy should have a minimal relationship to politics(Trigano 2002: 176). On Trigano’s account, it follows thatLevinas’ hermeneutics only partly responded to Jews’post-war need for the universalization of their experience, at a humanlevel encompassing both theory and political practice (Trigano 2002:176). This does not contradict Batnitzky’s reading, whichconsiders Levinas’œuvre as a whole. But it canbe argued that universalization in Levinas’ ethics remainslargely formal. On this question turns the important matter of what itmeans to develop a Jewishphilosophy today.

Numerous are the objections to what we could call Levinas’“genetic hermeneutics”. Terry Eagleton (2009), SlavojŽižek (2005), and Simon Critchley (2004), among others, haveread Levinas as though the face-to-face encounter represented aretreat into private life, without reference to or concern for socialand political existence. Froese speaks, by contrast, in terms of“entanglement” (2020: 11), echoing Levinas’ ownarguments that the social-structural dimension of our relationship toalterity is itself impoverished when we neglect the“pre-subjective plane of analysis”, made possible throughgenetic phenomenology (2020: 11). Sebbah (2018a, 40–46) alsoemphasizes Levinas’ hermeneutic argument for the“separation” that defines the subject in the world; thismust be taken seriously throughout. Stated otherwise, the subject isin the world yet not wholly of the world:

the true interiority is nothing of the world and certainly not as an“inside” that would be “situatable” in thatworld. Hope and responsibility—when nothing of the world remainsstanding, or only remains standing in the crude light ofwretchedness—resist because they are neither of the world, norof being. Hope and responsibility whereby, in a sense, interiority isevasion or escape itself. (Sebbah 2018a, 31)

2.4.5 The Third Party, Illeity, and Politics

Derrida once calledTotality and Infinity a “treatiseon hospitality” (1997 [1999: 21]). As we have seen,Levinas’ 1961 work approached being as the conflict of willsthat persist in their existence, like the philosophicaltradition’s concept ofconatus essendi (the will topersist in being). Neutral existence or thethere-is (ily a) denoted indeterminate nocturnal being, whichgives way to the diurnal being called “the elemental”(sunlight, winds, rain). As noted, being in Levinas thus entails bothdynamic forces and a conception of natural processes. Hospitality,also called “metaphysical desire” (TI 33), cannot begrounded on such forces, much less on a conception of the will,whether based on drives of self-preservation or self-enhancement. And,because hospitality is elicited by the other—and isnon-reciprocal—it does not presuppose a prior social-contractualexchange, much less moral sentiments or innate emotive capacities forempathy or compassion. If it did, there would be no question ofescaping a so-called natural order of existence.

That is why Levinas—aware that the concept of nature itself hasa debated history—characterizes our response to the other, whichby 1974 is also called “pre-natural signification” (OBBE68). He now argues in phenomenological terms,

[i]n renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward theeidos[formal structure] of the psyche…ouranalysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification tothe maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself],signification signifiesbefore it gets bent intoperseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE 68,emph. added)

“The maternal”, here, is a figure for the affectiveexperience of bearing within oneself what is not solely oneself. Thepoint is ultimately that intersubjective sensibility, inaugurated bythe approach of the other person, eludes the “mechanisticcausality” observed in natural processes, as well as the“natural necessity” attributed to instincts. We shall seeshortly what this implies for the famous “Thirdparty”.

In order to develop further the idea of signification as pre-natural,as pre-conative, Levinas found himself compelled to develop furtherconcepts. In 1961, he had referred to our desire for the other as“religion” (“the bond…established between thesame and the other” ) and as “transascendence”.“Transcendence, like desire and inadequation, is necessarily atransascendence” (respectively TI 41, 35), which underscores theimmediacy and even sensuousness of the response. By 1974, Levinascalls the value and dignity of responding to another person,“illeity”. He defines illeity as “a neologism formedwithil (he) orille, [whereby alterity] indicates away of concerning me without entering into conjunction withme”—without conjunction with me, whether in thought or inact (OBBE 12; also 13–16, 147–162). Beyond the concept ofthe third party introduced already inTotality and Infinity,“illeity” also refers to something absolute, even divine,in the other person. We can see here how our responsibility to theother thus stands in the place of our responsibility to God, or simplyevokes it, which is a crucial hermeneutic dimension of Judaism.

The question remains, as it did already inTotality andInfinity: how does an investiture of this affective intensitypass into rationality? Consequently, how does embodied affectivityplay a transcendental role, as condition of possibility, in theexperience of temporal interruption, also known as responsibility,i.e., the moment of my responding? Would responsibility andtranscendence not thereupon enter the ongoing flow of time(transcendental consciousness) and be confounded with being astotality? The relationship between the transcendental and theempirical has caused much ink to flow. For example, some have arguedthat Kant’s late-publishedDoctrine of Virtue (1797)set forth avenues for empirical illustrations of the transcendental,categorial imperative (see for example Smit & Timmons2013). Indeed, ongoing debates have not decided the question ofwhether the Husserlian temporal transcendental, called innertime-consciousness, is or is not open in its purity to description. Tobe sure, the transcendental flow is a condition of possibility ofempirical experience in Husserl. As to Levinas, in both the 1961 workand that of 1974, we find that the “thirdparty”—denoting both other people and the reprise ofintentionality—similarly “looks at me through the eyes ofthe other” (TI 213). Here the passage to reason, socialexistence, and objective time occurs because the temporal lapseLevinas calls “diachrony” is invariably resorbed, if inpart, by intentional consciousness. Intersubjective affectivity and,in a sense, the body itself thus play the role of a transcendental inLevinas, who also recognizes that affects are always on the verge ofbecoming intentional (PCIT Appendix 12); in short, objects ofempirical consciousness.

In like manner, responsibility and fraternity, which are formulated by1974 as the other-in-the-same, stillleave a trace in socialrelations. The trace is mnemonic and bodily, as indicated, and itemerges from affective relationality, its condition of possibility. Wefind it in our concern for restorative justice, even for a more modestequity. This empirical concern for justice does not erase theHobbesian conception of drives in human collectivities. The traceintroduces ambiguity into existence or being; it allows exceptionalacts of generosity to phenomenalize. In temporal terms, diachronycrosses through synchrony. Or, as Herzog puts it, the world, althoughchaotic, is also the site in which responsibility proves visible(Herzog 2020: 40–42).

By 1974, then, the ambiguity of the passive temporality that Levinaslikens to ageing and describes as “diachrony” (OBBE 54)relative to the all-structuring flow of time-consciousness has becomemore marked. Levinas inquires, “[d]oes a face abide inrepresentationand in proximity; is it communityanddifference?” (OBBE 154, emph. added). The answer appears to be“yes”, albeit at two metaphoric levels. The face,conceived as representation,fixes the dynamism of the faceas expression; representationfixes the dynamism of affectiveinvestiture that arises from the aforementioned intersubjectivetranscendental. Adopting a different terminology, Levinas writes,

[t]he third party introduces a contradiction into the Saying whosesignification before the other until then went in one direction[toward the singular other]. [The third] is of itself the limit ofresponsibility and the birth of the question: What do I have to dowith justice? A question of consciousness. (OBBE 157)

When we return to a philosophy of consciousness and representation,the indispensable figure of the trace that Levinas has introducedbecomes attenuated, if not suspect. As we have seen, in order toconfront eventual skepticism about the trace, heenacts hiswitness in a literary here and now. His figural performance points nottoward another world or to a being different from that discussed byHeidegger, so much as to the intensities and vulnerability ofpre-conscious affectivity. By textually enacting the immediacy ofsuffering, Levinas appears to offer a poetics of the inexpressible(Anckaert 2020: 66–68). Nevertheless, since he also demands thatwe reflect on intersubjectivity from a standpoint outside theface-to-face encounter, his work gives us a double task: the as-if ofhis enacted here-and-nowand the development ofconceptualization. Justice similarly opens to the question,“what have I to do with justice?” and even to therepresentation of justice. To be sure, this two-sided justice entailsan additional explanatory move that Levinascannot make. Thismove would have to account for why third parties insist that“I” also receive just treatment. That is a questionrequiring the systems perspective, outside the now-moment in which“I” emerge and enact my witness, affectively invested byalterity (OBBE 158). “[I]t is only thanks to God that as asubject in incomparable with the other, I am approached as an other bythe others, that is ‘for myself’” (OBBE 158, transmodified for fluency with the French).

The equalizing situation from which comparison, justice, andnormativity can bededuced is thus beyond Levinas’immediate concern (Herzog 2020, 42–44). Such a situation is thatof objective, or third-person, consciousness. This is, for example,the approach adopted by Hegel in thePhenomenology of Spirit,which he calls the “for-us” as readers, or the externaliststandpoint (Hegel PG §25). Levinas simply marks thisstandpoint, with his expression “thanks to God”, where itis already obvious that “God” is not a being. Althoughcommentators differ on the interpretation of the phrase “thanksto God”, it is repeated in the liturgy, “BaruchhaShem” or “Baruch atah Adonai (blessed bethe Name or blessed beAdonai)”. Like other terms andexpressions, Levinas “translates” the externaliststandpoint into the language of prayer and liturgy. In his subsequentuse of the expression, Levinas sets these words between quotationmarks.

Franck interprets the 1974 figure of illeity as bespeaking theforce and value of proximity. It is the sheer distance of a“God” that is never a being but “in whose trace theThou or the face that intends and assigns me signifies” (Franck2008: 109, my trans.). Marc Faessler ties the word “God”together with the Saying because it is the trace of an excess thatLevinas also calls “glory (kavod)”. Thismaintains human practice as an open system: “the anarchy of Godthus opens to a ‘saying God otherwise [Autrement direDieu]’” (Faessler 2021: 21).

When conceived spatially, illeity points to an indeterminate place orsource, the other always already motivating my saying. Taking afurther step, Levinasextends illeity to the possibility ofmy receiving justice from other people. He writes, “thanks toGod [Il]…I am approached as an other by theothers” (OBBE 158). But, again, even if universal justice is“thanks to God”,this Godis not part ofbeing (OBBE 162)—a claim familiar to both negative theology andto Maimonides’ approach to God through human action. Levinas isaware of the paradox of human justice being a gift from that whichcannot be part of being, in which that justice nevertheless occurs. Heknows the theological reversion topraxis toward whichMaimonides gestures at the end of hisGuide of the Perplexed:“The only positive knowledge of Godof which man iscapable is knowledge of the attributes of action”(Fagenblat 2010: 113),^[47] and this is not ultimately knowledge. As Levinas puts it, “toknow God is to know what must be done” (DF 17). It is thus notto know some being or even to erect a regulative idea (Froese 2020:10). The dignity and force of illeity share an important connectionwith what we might call ourenacting God throughresponsibility to the other and through justice. Another word for thisis “holiness”, whether this comes from me in the form ofthe Saying or from the others as justice toward me.

Here lies the point at which a reading begins that bridges thephilosophical and the religious dimensions of Levinas’ thought.Indeed, as he put it in his 1966 article “Infinity” (AT53–76):

An entire strain of contemporary philosophy, setting out from theirreducibility of the interpersonal to relations of objectivity,thematization, and knowledge, is situated in the religious traditionof the idea of the infinite…even when it expresses itself in adeliberately and rigorouslyatheistic way. (AT 76, emph.added)

This suggests that, whether we approach it atheistically orreligiously, the tension between interpersonal relations andobjectivity implies the third party and by extension a socialrelationality that is indissociable from justice and politics. But itis not clear that Levinas ever decided whether politics implied aboveall war or the means toward a peaceable State. In his late essay“Peace and Proximity” (1984 [1996: 161–169]),Levinas expressed an attitude surprisingly favorable to the idea ofthe politics which, when the State is a liberal one, evinces palpableaspects of the trace of responsibility in its policies.

It is not without importance to know—and this is perhaps theEuropean experience of the twentieth century—whether theegalitarian and just State [and its politics] in which the European isfulfilled…proceeds from a war of all against all—or fromthe irreducible responsibility of the one for the other. (in Rolland[ed.] 1984: 346, my trans.)

Jared Highlen (2021) develops a coherent argument on the basis of thedistinction, introduced in the same 1984 article, between “thepeace of the State” and a peace founded on separation—theseparation-participation of the subject in its world but not reducibleto it. Highlen, like Herzog, argues that, because the third looks atme through the eyes of the other, “politics is involved from thevery beginning” (Highlen 2021: 326). With this claim, theface-to-face entails a measure of violence, by excluding other othersfor whom I may be responsible. But this violence is transitional, justas the violence of politics, which shows itself when “politics[is] left to itself” (2021: 328). Highlen concludes that on itsown terms “the political appears not as thenecessary…dilution of the ethical obligation, but rather as itsfulfillment” (2021: 329).SeeSupplement S.6 on Politics and the State for further discussion

Herzog (2020) has recently strengthened this argument, urging thatLevinas’ Talmudic readings provide the indispensable connectionto what would be his politics. She points out that politics providehis proto-ethics with its visibility and with historic sites.Consequently, politics may be criticized in the name ofresponsibility, or ethics, but politics also moderates the radicalityof ethical responsibility. Although Talmudic politics concerns Jewishcommunities, it often focuses on relations with other nations, as wellas economic issues, from property disputes to equitable salaries. AsLevinas himself observes,

the Rabbis cannot forget the organizing principle of Rome and its law[pluralism under Empire]! They therefore anticipate, with remarkableindependence of spirit, modern political philosophy [including thephilosophy of colonized states against imperial ones]. Whatever itsorder, the City already insures the rights of human beings againsttheir fellow men. (BTV 183)

Key here are the words “whatever its order”. In theconcept of order is already included a minimal protection of rights ofhuman persons with regard to their fellows. This is a universalprinciple with specific instantiations in function of the State. Wefind such pluralism in the Talmud, which also carries the“secular” intuition that it is thehuman tribunalthat should replace divine justice, which is not forthcoming (Herzog2020: 44). That does not mean that Talmudic justice is not itself acollection of varied responses to what is a just action or law. Herzognevertheless adds the insight that, in the Talmud,

politics is not defined by its modern philosophical attributes, it isneither a monopoly of power, nor the guardian of individuals’natural rights, nor a natural expression of the people. [Politics] isdefined [above all] as concern and care for the peoples’ hunger.(Herzog 2020: 40)

This neither denies the plurality of voices nor the potentialuniversality of the singular in the Talmud. It emphasizes the“original peace”, or intersubjective responsibility thatgives rise to good politics. To be sure, Levinas is aware that any“organized political order…can become unjust and evenviolent for its subjects” (Anckaert 2020: 72). This includesliberal orders based on contractualism. Again, Levinas is ultimatelyneither a liberal nor a conservative; insofar as Talmudic debateprovides him material for a situated politics, the latter proves bothpluralistic and context-dependent.SeeSupplement S.7 on Justice and the State for further discussion.

The dual preoccupation with justice, understood as righteousness, andjustice understood as civic virtue, suggests that together Athens andJerusalem give us a comprehensive approach to politics, as bothpractice and ideal. Drabinski and Fred Moten have questioned thisclaim to universality (Drabinski 2011: 165–196), and with it thecategory of “being-Jewish”, in favor of an emphasis on thepassivity intrinsic to amultiplicity of human situations,including race, ethnicity, and gender. Yet, again, it is fair to arguethat Levinas is primarily concerned with embodied passivity, which heapproaches as a transcendental condition of possibility, as we haveseen. Moten takes a different, Sartrean tack, emphasizing thatpassivity has multiple meanings. It is notably observed in ourrelations tothings rather than to persons, therebyspontaneously diminishing their humanity. He adds that the Bible andthe Greeks, when presented as “the whole world”, carrythought toward a teleological reflection that expresses anunacknowledged Europeanmalaise, wherein the non-Europeanprecisely receives the status of object (2018: 9, 11).

Mendel Kranz has recently traced Levinas’ relationship to thismalaise, as also to the evolving Zionist project. He observes,

[W]hat these documents [studies] suggest, is that Levinas wassimultaneously waging an ideological battle against the territorialand national codes of the Zionist project and attempting to articulatesomething of an alternative. (Kranz 2019: 316)

In a different vein, Ephraim Meir proposes a“trans-different” conversation between Gandhi and Levinas,acknowledging that the latter would not unequivocally embraceahimse, non-violence—including in post-colonialsituations. Meir cites Judith Butler’s Levinas-inspired claimthat all lives should be seen as grievable (Butler 2020), whichentails in its specific way a serious concern with humaninterdependence (Meir 2021: 10–12).SeeSupplement S.8 on Essays after Otherwise than Being.

3. Recent Developments: Humanism and Education

3.1 Humanism and Education

A unique feature of Levinas’ thought consists in his nuancedreturn to a humanism—“of the other person”.Extending his conception of humanism past what Levinas defined as itsfour-part nature—“respect for the person…; ablossoming of human nature, of intelligence in science, creativity inArt, and pleasure in daily life” (DF 277)—toward a Jewishhumanism, Claire Katz raises the question of education. In her book,Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism, Katz discusses themultiple senses of this “other” humanism in light of thedecline of classical (Christian) humanism, and given the challengesposed to it by both structuralism and poststructuralism. FollowingLevinas’ 1973 “Antihumanism and Education” (Levinas1973 [DF 277–288]), Katz traces a dual genealogy, that of theloss of legitimacy of Western humanism as philosophy and ethos andthat, in a sense more significant, of the demise of “socialeffectiveness and its intellectual meaning” (Katz 2013:117).

Robin Podolsky has extended the question of an education inresponsibility, to the creation in 2017 of “Sumud[steadfastness] Camp”. This site in the Hebron hills wasconceived as a locus regrouping diaspora Jews, Israeli Jews, andPalestinians in a community designed as “a kind of Levinasianspace” (Podolsky 2019: 1). As Podolsky emphasizes, suchprojects

are experiments in building a political program from the grass rootsup, based on…investments in one another’s well-being thatcross national and religious divides. Theirpraxis beginswith the face-to-face. (2019: 3)

3.2 Levinas’ Philosophy and Enactivism

The term “enactivism” denotes developments inphenomenology and those cognitive sciences that together date largelyfrom the work of Francesco Varela and Evan Thompson in the 1990s(1991, 2001). Indebted to the evolving reception of the work of theFrench philosopher Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), enactivismconjoins phenomenology as first-person experience with third-persondescriptions from the cognitive sciences. It accepts Heidegger andMerleau-Ponty’s conceptions of bodies being already in a world,their world. It takes seriously the existential quality of embodimentand has recently been interested in embodied intersubjectivity(Thompson 2001). Whereas many from the school of enactivism haveapproached the work of Levinas with skepticism (Koubová 2014;Di Paolo et al. 2018), deeming it dualistic and doubting thatencounters with others might escape cognition and unfold at a purelyaffective level, enactivists have nevertheless not engaged Levinasextensively. One of the exceptions to this is Sarah Pawlett-Jackson(2021), who argues that singular experiences of the approach of theother—as can be found in both Sartre and Levinas—areinsufficient to clarifying intersubjectivity among three or morepeople (Pawlett-Jackson 2021).

At the same time, Fabrice Métais and Mario Villalobos havecountered that Levinas’ work can be instrumental in developing abona fide enactivist, embodied ethics (Métais &Villalobos 2021, 2022). Close to the work of cognitivist, Tom Froese(2009), Métais and Villalobos argue that enactivism has falleninto the trap of a third-person intersubjectivity (2022: 327). Thelatter consists in focusing on intersubjectivity as a socialaggregate, a site of shared existence invariably tied up with ontologyor groups describable in neutral rather than ethical language. Theauthors define this as an approach to “distinctionalotherness”—the way natural language speaks in thethird-person of “the one and the other” as though theywere objects (2022: 329). A different modality of otherness focuses onthe second-person (thou, you), and thus on “the differencesbetween agents orsubjects” (2022: 329).

All these conceptions of otherness have value and find their use inenactivist cognitive science. Levinas’ philosophy offers a wayto expand this approach. His conception of otherness is ethical,practical, and therefore “neither an ontological category nor anepistemic limitation in the realm of beings” (Métais& Villalobos 2022: 330). This distinction undergirds whatenactivists call “participatory sense-making”, whichinclude phenomena flowing from the face-to-face relation and networksof enactive agents. Their argument thus addressesPawlett-Jackson’s objection concerning interconnected selves andothers.

Considered together, Pawlett-Jackson, Métais and Villalobosarguably represent a new direction for enactivism, which has alreadyshown important potential for self-correction and expansion. Theyargue that second-person perspectives on sociality are oftenpresupposed even before the question of otherness arises, including interms of ethics. This maintains alterity at one remove from theencounters that Levinas describes, and which come to light in theapproach and call of another person. The upshot of more traditionalenactivism is a horizontal conception of sociality, often limited toepistemic questions. As Métais and Villalobos see it,

the way they [enactivists] use the concept of irreducible otherness,as the otherness of the othersubject, does not imply anymodification of the process through which sense is produced(sense-making) and thusdoes not indicate any breach [ofself-contained consciousness] beyond the sphere of constitution andontology. (2022: 331)

As indicated, this concept of otherness overlooks the ethicaldimension of sense-making, which arises, for Levinas, in the immediateencounter with an other, who is both embodied and carries their ownperspective. Métais and Villalobos argue that enactivists havetreated the pair, knowability and unknowability, in light of a moreconventional object- versus subject-otherness.

4. Concluding Remarks

Commentators have differed on the comparative importance ofLevinas’ major works,Totality and Infinity andOtherwise than Being. Some have urged that we see in them twosides of a single coin: that of responsibility experienced in theface-to-face encounter and that of the insistence of an affectivetrace that interrupts flowing time as conceived by classicalphenomenology (Peperzak 1993: 7). Other commentators have argued thatOtherwise than Being is Levinas’magnum opus,^[48] a study on the relational pre-conditions of language indebted to, yetdiverging from, Heidegger’s investigations of the poeticlogos (Heidegger 1936–1968 [2000: 59–64]). As wehave seen, Derrida calledTotality and Infinity a“treatise on hospitality” (see§2.4.1,supra) and devoted, in sum, more attention to itthan toOtherwise than Being, although the latter work was inpart a response to Derrida’s criticisms in “Violence andMetaphysics” (Derrida 1964 [1978]). It remainsthatOtherwise than Being reprises elements of Levinas’early research into metaphor as the performative basis of language, aswell as his engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s culturalsignifications, both of which are responsible for a distinctconception of existence. For Levinas, beneath cultures andsignifications, there remains a trace of a non-relative meaning(sens), which includes “the absoluteness of thepresence of the other” (Levinas 1964 [1987b: 106]).

In this regard, the publication ofTotality and Infinity wasfollowed closely by two essays. A talk intitled “Lamétaphore” presented at Jean Wahl’sCollège philosophique, dates from February 1962.^[49] The article “Meaning and Sense” (La signification etle sens) first appeared in 1964 (Levinas 1964). As much as thelatter article placed Heidegger’s fundamental ontology withinhistorically specific cultures and privileged “sense” overbeing, “La métaphore” returned to aMaimonidean conception of human language as allegory and expressingmore than the words said therein. Given these preparations, there islittle question that the novelty ofOtherwise than Being liesin its three innovations: (1) the tropes (metaphors) fortranscendence-in-immanence (i.e., recurrence, proximity, obsession,persecution, and substitution); (2) the deconstruction of languageunderstood as the site in which existence is stated as an address-,and (3) Levinas’ “wager” of stepping out ofphilosophical reasoning to envision a trace encountered in aperformative register that both “says” and“unsays” itself by turns (OBBE 167).

Despite these innovations, Levinas’ philosophical projectremains largely constant:to rethink the meaning of existence interms of the transcendence of the other and its meaning forethics. To that end, he consistently revisited Husserl’sphenomenological method. He reconceived Heidegger’s ontologicaldifference as an irreducible separation between being and the good weenact. He had extensive, often undeclared recourse to the profound,anti-totalizing intuitions of religious life, as found inRosenzweig’s new thinking and indirectly in Maimonides’apophaticism. By reason of his opposition to systems-thought, Levinasnever adhered uncritically to any one philosophy.

A common thread runs through his philosophy and his Talmudic readings.Transcendence is one of his words for the spontaneity ofresponsibility for another person. Responsibility is experienced inconcrete life and is variously expressed, from words like “hereI am” to apologies and self-accounting. This is the case,Levinas argues, even before ade facto command is heard orreflected upon. This surprising proposition hearkens to the debatedmeaning of Jews “receiving the Torah before knowing what waswritten in it” (NTR 42–43). Levinas names thisresponsiveness Platonically, as the “Good beyond being”.Weperform that good, that trace of the infinite, becauseinstances of answering to or for another are everyday events, eventhough they do not appear typical of self-interested behaviors.

Above all, we donot choose to be responsible. Responsibilityarises as if elicited, before we begin to think about it, by theapproach of the other person. Because this theme is found in hisphilosophy as well as in his interpretations of Talmudic passages,Levinas’ thought has, at times, left both Talmud scholars andphilosophers dissatisfied. For some Talmudists, his thought seemssecularly humanistic, with “infinity” suggesting aclandestine concept of divinity. No stranger to Mishnah and Gemara(Talmud), his interpretations are less preoccupied with traditionalinter- and intra-textuality than with theethical content ofthe teachings therein. To philosophers skeptical of him,Levinas’ thought reinterprets Heidegger’s in-the-worldfacticity in a metaphysical vein. Indeed, its anti-foundationalistapproach to responsibility, as the pre-reflective structure of theembodied, relational “self” (soi),appears to these critics to move inconsistently between phenomenologyand religious thought, despite its lack of dogmatic commitments. As wehave seen, in his later philosophy, the seemingly metaphysical conceptof illeity expresses my emotive experience of an affective excessgreater than that which I can contain. In this way, it also resemblesDescartes’ “light so resplendent”(Med. III [1911: 171]). But it is precisely in thesetensions, between the Jewish religious and philosophical traditions,on the one hand,and his phenomenological-existentialthinking-of-the-other, on the other hand, that Levinas’originality lies.

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A. Works by Levinas

A.1 Cited Works by Levinas

[TOI]

La théorie de l’intuition dans laphénoménologie de Husserl, Paris: Vrin, 1970.Levinas’ doctoral dissertation, first published in 1930;

The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology,second edition, André Orianne (trans.), Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 1995. First edition in 1975. Pagenumbers from the 1995 English edition.

[RPH]

“Quelques réflexions sur la philosophie del’Hitlérisme”,Esprit, 1934, 3(26):199–208. Collected inQuelques réflexions sur laphilosophie de l’hitlérisme, Miguel Abensour (ed.),Paris: Rivages, 1997.

“Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism”, SeánHand (trans.),Critical Inquiry, 1990, 17(1): 63–71.doi:10.1086/448574

[OE]

De l’évasion (Essais), notes by Jacques Rolland,Paris: Fata Morgana, 1982. First published in 1935 inRecherchesphilosophiques.

On Escape / De l’évasion, Bettina Bergo(trans.), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

[EE]

De l’existence à l’existant, secondedition, Paris: Vrin, 1986. First published in 1947.

Existence and Existents, Alphonso Lingis (trans.), The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff, 1978.

[TO]

Le temps et l’autre, Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1979.First published in Jean Wahl (ed.)Le choix, le monde,l’existence, Grenoble: Arthaud, 1947.

Time and the Other: and Other Esssays, Richard A. Cohen(trans.), Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987.

[EDE]

En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl etHeidegger. Reprinted with new essays, Paris: Vrin, 1982. Firstpublished in 1949. Includes

“L’œuvre d’Edmond Husserl”. Firstpublished in, 1940,Revue Philosophique de la France et del’Étranger, 129(1/2): 33–85. Translated as“The Work of Edmund Husserl” in DEH 47–89.
“Martin Heidegger et l’ontologie” (MartinHeidegger and Ontology). First published in, 1932,RevuePhilosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, 113:395–431.
“Intentionalité et Sensation”, first publishedin, 1965,Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 19(71/72(1/2)): 34–54. In the 1982 edition only. Translated as“Intentionality and Sensation” in DEH 135–150.

[DEH]

Discovering Existence with Husserl. Richard A. Cohen andMichael B. Smith (trans), Evanston: Northwestern University Press,1998.

[TI]

Totalité et Infini: Essais surl’Extériorité (Phænomenologica 8), TheHague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961.

Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (DuquesneStudies. Philosophical Series 24), Alphonso Lingis (trans.),Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.

[DF]

Difficile liberté: Essais sur le judaïsme, thirdedition revised, Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1976. Firstpublished in 1963.

Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, Seán Hand(trans.), London: Athlone, 1990.

[NTR]

Quatre lectures talmudiques, Paris: Les Éditions deMinuit, 1968.

Du sacré au saint: cinq nouvelles lecturestalmudiques, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1977.

Nine Talmudic Readings, Annette Aronowicz (trans.),Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. This translation regroupsreadings between 1968 and 1977.

[OBBE]

Autrement qu’être; ou, au-delà del’essence (Phaenomenologica 54), La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff,1974. Second edition, 1978.

Otherwise than Being: Or, Beyond Essence (Martinus NijhoffPhilosophy Texts 3), Alphonso Lingis (trans.),Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1981.

[BTV]

L’au-delà du verset: lectures et discourstalmudiques, Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1982.

Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, Gary D.Mole (trans.), London: Athlone Press, 1994.

[OGCM]

De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, secondedition corrected and enlarged, Paris: Vrin, 1986. First published in1982.

Of God Who Comes to Mind (Meridian, Crossing Aesthetics),Bettina Bergo (trans.), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,1998.

[EI]

Éthique et infini: Dialogues avec Philippe Nemo,Paris: France Culture Radio broadcast, 1982. Paris: Livre de Poche,1982.

Ethics and Infinity, Richard A. Cohen (trans.), Pittsburgh:Duquesne University Press, 1985.

[TEI]

Transcendance et intelligibilité: Suivi d’unentretien (Lieux théologiques), Genève: Labor etFides, 1984.

“Transcendance and Intelligibility”, Simon Critchley andTamra Wright (trans), inPeperzak, Critchley, and Bernasconi 1996: 149–160 (ch. 9).

[ITN]

À l’heure des nations, Paris: LesÉditions de Minuit, 1988.

In the Time of the Nations, Michael B. Smith (trans.),London: Athlone Press, 1994.

[EN]

Entre Nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre.Paris: Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1991.

Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other (European Perspectives),Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (trans), New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1998.

[AT]

Altérité et transcendance,Saint-Clément-de-Rivière: Fata Morgana, 1995.

Alterity and Transcendence, Michael B. Smith (trans.), NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1999.

[LO1]

Levinas Œuvres I: Carnets de captivité et autresécrits, Rodolphe Calin and Catherine Chalier (eds), Paris:Grasset, 2009.

[LO2]

Levinas Œuvres II: Parole et silence et autresconférences inédites au Collègephilosophique, Rodolphe Calin (ed.) Paris: Grasset,2009.

Levinas, Emmanuel, 1935, “L’actualité deMaïmonide”,Paix et Droit (journal of the AllianceIsraëlite Universelle), 1935(4/April): 6–7. Republished inCahiers de l’Herne: Levinas, Catherine Chalier andMiguel Abensour (eds), Paris: Éditions de l’Herne,1991.
–––, 1964 [1987], “La signification et lesens”,Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale,69(2): 125–156. Republished inHumanisme de l’autrehomme.Translated asMeaning and Sense inLingis 1987: 75-108.
–––, 1973, “Antihumanisme etéducation”,Bulletin intérieur du ConsistoireCentral des Israélites de France, 1973(2): 17–28.Translated as “Antihumanism and Education”, in DF277–288.
–––, 1979, “Les villes-refuges”.Translated as “Cities of Refuge”. Collected in BTV51–70 [34–52].
–––, 1984 [1996], “Paix etproximité” inLes cahiers de la nuitsurveillée, 1984(3): 339–346. Translated as “Peaceand Proximity”, Peter Atterton and Simon Critchley (trans), inPeperzak, Critchley, and Bernasconi 1996: 162–169 (ch. 10).
–––, 2008, “The Contemporary Relevance ofMaimonides (1935)”, Michael Fagenblat (trans.),The Journalof Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 16(1): 91–94.doi:10.1163/105369908785822142

A.2 Other Philosophical Works by Levinas

Sur Maurice Blanchot. Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1976.Translated inProper Names, Michael B. Smith (trans.),London: Athlone Press, 1996.
Levinas Œuvres III: Éros, littérature etphilosophie, Jean-Luc Nancy et Danielle Cohen-Levinas (eds),Paris: Grasset, 2013.
Levinas Œuvres IV: Dossier Totalité etinfiniinédits, Dan Arbib et Danielle Cohen-Levinas(eds), Paris: Grasset, 2024.

A.3 Collections of Philosophical Essays and Lectures

Humanisme de l’autre Homme (Essais 6), Montpellier:Fata Morgana, 1972. Translated asHumanism of the Other,Nidra Poller (trans.), introduction by Richard A. Cohen, Urbana, IL:University of Illinois Press, 2003.
“Jean Wahl sans avoir ni être”, inJean Wahlet Gabriel Marcel (Bibliotheque des Archives de philosophie,nouv. ser., 21), by Emmanuel Lévinas, Xavier Tilliette, andPaul Ricœur, Paris: Beauchesne, 1976.
Noms Propres: Agnon, Buber, Celan, Delhomme, Derrida,Jabès, Kierkegaard, Lacroix, Laporte, Picard, Proust, VanBreda, Wahl (Essais), Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1976. TranslatedasProper Names, Michael B. Smith (trans.), London: AthlonePress, 1996.
Hors Sujet, Paris: Fata Morgana, 1987a. Translated asOutside the Subject, Michael B. Smith (trans.), London:Athlone Press, 1993.
De l’oblitération: entretien avecFrançoise Armengaud à propos de l’œuvre deSosno (Le Miroir oblique), Paris: Editions de laDifférence, 1990. Republished in 1998. Translated asOnObliteration: An Interview with Françoise Armengaud Concerningthe Work of Sacha Sosno (Think Art), Richard A. Cohen (trans.),Zurich/Berlin: DIAPHANES, 2019.
La mort et le temps, Paris: Éditions del’Herne, 1991. Lectures presented 1975–76.
Dieu, La Mort et Le Temps, Jacques Rolland (ed.), Paris:Bernard Grasset, 1993. Translated asGod, Death, and Time(Meridian), Bettina Bergo (trans.), preface by Jacques Rolland,Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Les imprévus de l’histoire, preface byPierre Hayat, Saint-Clément-la-Rivière: Fata Morgana,1994. Translated asUnforeseen History, Nidra Poller(trans.), introduction by Richard A. Cohen, foreword by Don Ihde,Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Liberté et commandement, preface by Pierre Hayat,Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1994.
Ethique comme philosophie première (Rivagespoche/petite bibliothèque 254), Jacques Rolland (ed.), Paris:Payot & Rivages, 1998.

A.4 Other Talmudic Writings and Studies on Judaism by Levinas

Nouvelles lectures talmudiques, Paris: LesÉditions de Minuit, 1995.New Talmudic Readings,Richard A. Cohen (trans.), Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press,1999.
L’au-delà du verset: lectures et discourstalmudiques (Collection Critique), Paris: Éditions deminuit, 1982.Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings andLectures, Gary D. Mole (trans.), London: Athlone Press,1994.

A.5 Other Collections of Works by Levinas in English

Hand, Seán (ed.), 1989,The Levinas Reader,Oxford/Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell.
Lingis, Alphonso (trans.), 1987b,CollectedPhilosophical Papers (Phaenomenologica 100), Dordrecht/Boston:Martinus Nijhoff.
Peperzak, Adriaan Theodoor, Simon Critchley, and RobertBernasconi (eds), 1996,Emmanuel Levinas: Basic PhilosophicalWritings (Studies in Continental Thought), Bloomington, IN:Indiana University Press.
Robbins, Jill (ed.), 2001,Is It Righteous to Be? Interviewswith Emmanuel Lévinas (Meridian), Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press.

B. Cited Works by Major Philosophical Influences

[Med.]: Descartes, René, 1641 [1911],Meditationes de primaphilosophia, Paris: Michel Soly. Translated as “Meditationson First Philosophy”, inThe Philosophical Works ofDescartes, Volume 1, Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane and G. R. T.Ross (trans), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,131–200.
[PG]: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1807 [1977],Phänomenologie des Geistes, Bamberg und Würzburg:Goebbardt. Translated asPhenomenology of Spirit, Arnold V.Miller (trans.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
[BT]: Heidegger, Martin, 1927,Sein und Zeit, Halle: M.Niemeyer. Seventh edition (1946) translated asBeing andTime, John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (trans), New York:Harper, 1962. Page numbers from the 1962 translation.
[CM]: Husserl, Edmund,Cartesianische Meditationen eine Einleitungin die Phänomenologie (Husserliana 1). Based on 2 lecturesdelivered at the Sorbonne in 1929, translated asCartesianMeditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, Dorion Cairns(trans.), The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1960. Reprinted 1973. Note:Husserliana refers to the text critical edition ofHusserl’s work and is cited with volume numbers.
[GDP]: –––,Grenzprobleme des Phänomenologie:Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte; Metaphysik; SpäteEthik (Texte aus dem Nachlass, 1908–1937) (Husserliana 42),Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr (eds) Dordrecht: Springer, 2014.doi:10.1007/978-94-007-6801-7
[Ideas I]: –––,Ideen zu einer reinenPhänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, ErstesBuch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reinePhänomenologie, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1913. Collected inHusserliana 2. Translated asIdeas Pertaining to a PurePhenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy—First Book:General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, Fred Kersten(trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1982.
[Ideas II]: –––.Ideen zu einer reinenPhänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. ZweitesBuch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution(Husserliana 4), Marly Biemel (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952[Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991]. Unpublished in Husserl’s lifetime.Translated asIdeas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to aPhenomenological Philosophy—Second Book: Studies in thePhenomenology of Constitution, Richard Rojcewiz and AndréSchuwer (trans), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.
[PCIT]: –––,Zur Phänomenologie des innerenZeitbewusstseins (1893–1917) (Husserliana 10), Rudolf Boehm(ed.), 1969. Translated asOn the Phenomenology of theConsciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), John BarnettBrough (trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991.
[APS]: –––, 1966 [2001],Analysen zur passivenSynthesis: Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten1918–1926 (Husserliana 11), H. L. van Breda (ed.), DenHaag: M. Nijhoff, 1966. Translated asAnalyses Concerning Passiveand Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic (EdmundHusserl Collected Works 9), Anthony J. Steinbeck (trans.),Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
[KPV]: Kant, Immanuel, 1788 [2002],Kritik der praktischenVernunft, Riga: Hartknoch. Akademie Ausgabe [AA] 5: 1–164.Translated asCritique of Practical Reason, Werner S. Pluhar(trans.), Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 2002.
[PP]: Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1945 [2012],Phénoménologie de la perception(Bibliothèque des idées), Paris: Gallimard. TranslatedasPhenomenology of Perception, Donald A. Landes (trans.),London/New York: Routledge, 2012. doi:10.4324/9780203720714
[SE]: Rosenzweig, Franz, 1921 [2005],Der Stern derErlösung, Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann. Translated asThe Star of Redemption (Modern Jewish Philosophy andReligion. Translations and Critical Studies), Barbara E. Galli(trans.), Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001.
[EN]: Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1943 [1992],L’être et lenéant: essai d’ontologiephénoménologique (Bibliothèque desidées), Paris: Gallimard. Translated asBeing andNothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, Hazel E.Barnes (trans.), New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. Reprinted NewYork: Washington Square Press/Pocket Books, 1992.

C. Secondary Literature

C.1 Monographs on Levinas

Ajzenstat [Eisenstadt], Oona, 2001,Driven Back to the Text:The Premodern Sources of Levinas’ Postmodernism,Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Alford, C. Fred, 2002,Levinas, the Frankfurt School, andPsychoanalysis (Disseminations), Middletown, CT: WesleyanUniversity Press.
Allen, Sarah, 2009,The Philosophical Sense of Transcendence:Levinas and Plato on Loving beyond Being, Pittsburgh, PA:Duquesne University Press.
Arnett, Ronald C., 2017,Levinas’s Rhetorical Demand:The Unending Obligation of Communication Ethics, Carbondale, IL:Southern Illinois University Press.
Awerkamp, Don, 1977,Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics andPolitics (Studies in Modern Philosophy), New York: RevisionistPress.
Bailhache, Gérard, 1994,Le sujet chez EmmanuelLevinas: fragilité et subjectivité (Philosophied’aujourd’hui), Paris: Presses universitaires deFrance.
Banon, David, 2022,De l’être à la lettre:philosophie et judaïsme dans l’œuvre d’EmmanuelLevinas (Collection “Le bel aujourd’hui”),Paris: Hermann.
Basterra, Gabriela, 2015,The Subject of Freedom: Kant,Levinas, New York: Fordham University Press.doi:10.5422/fordham/9780823265145.001.0001
Batnitzky, Leora, 2006,Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas:Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation, Cambridge/New York:Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511499050
Bauman, Zygmunt, 1993,Postmodern Ethics,Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Benso, Silvia, 2000,The Face of Things: A Different Side ofEthics (SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy),Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Bensussan, Gérard, 2008,Éthique etexpérience: Levinas politique (Philosophie, d’autrepart), Strasbourg: Phocide.
Bergo, Bettina, 1999,Levinas between Ethics and Politics: Forthe Beauty That Adorns the Earth (Phaenomenologica 152),Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-2077-9
–––, 2025,Emmanual Levinas: Essays onPhenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Jewish Thought (SupplementstoThe Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 40), Leiden:Brill Publishers.
Bloechl, Jeffrey, 2000,Liturgy of the Neighbor: EmmanuelLevinas and the Religion of Responsibility, Pittsburgh, PA:Duquesne University Press.
–––, 2022,Levinas and the Primacy of theEthical: Philosophy as Prophecy, Evanston, IL: NorthwesternUniversity Press.
Botwinick, Aryeh, 2014,Emmanuel Lévinas and the Limitsto Ethics: A Critique and a Re-Appropriation (Routledge JewishStudies Series), London/New York: Routledge.doi:10.4324/9781315879918
Brezis, David, 2012,Levinas et le tournant sacrificiel(Le Bel aujourd’hui), Paris: Hermann.
Burggraeve, Roger, 1985,From Self-Development to Solidarity:An Ethical Reading of Human Desire in Its Socio-Political RelevanceAccording to Emmanuel Levinas, Leuven: Peeters.
–––, 1990 [2002],Levinas over vrede enmensenrechten: met vier essays van Emmanuel Levinas vertaald doorGertrude Schellens, Leuven: Acco. Translated asThe Wisdom ofLove in the Service of Love: Emmanuel Levinas on Justice, Peace, andHuman Rights (Marquette Studies in Philosophy 29), JeffreyBloechl (trans.), Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2002.
Calin, Rodolphe and François-David Sebbah, 2002,Levocabulaire de Lévinas, Paris: Ellipses.
Caputo, John D., 1993,Against Ethics: Contributions to aPoetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction(Studies in Continental Thought), Bloomington, IN: Indiana UniversityPress.
Caygill, Howard, 2002,Levinas and the Political(Thinking the Political), London/New York: Routledge.doi:10.4324/9780203994573
Cederberg, Carl, 2010,Resaying the Human: Levinas beyondHumanism and Antihumanism, PhD thesis, Södertörn,(Sweden): Södertörns högskola.
Chalier, Catherine, 1982,Judaïsme etAltérité (Collection “Les DixParoles”), Lagrasse: Verdier.
–––, 1987,La persévérance dumal (Nuit surveillée), Paris: Editions du Cerf.
–––, 1993,Lévinas: l’utopie del’humain (Présence du judaïsme), Paris:Éditions Albin Michel.
–––, 1998 [2002],Pour une moraleau-delà du savoir: Kant et Levinas (BibliothèqueAlbin Michel idées), Paris: Albin Michel. Translated asWhat Ought I to Do? Morality in Kant and Levinas, Jane MarieTodd (trans.), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
–––, 2002,La trace de l’infini:Emmanuel Levinas et la source hébraïque (Philosophie& théologie), Paris: Cerf.
Champagne, Roland A., 1998,The Ethics of Reading According toEmmanuel Levinas (Chiasma 7), Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Chanter, Tina, 2001,Time, Death, and the Feminine: Levinaswith Heidegger, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ciaramelli, Fabio, 1989,Transcendance et éthique:essai sur Lévinas, Brussels: Éditions Ousia.
Coe, Cynthia D., 2018,Levinas and the Trauma ofResponsibility: The Ethical Significance of Time (Studies inContinental Thought), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Cohen, Richard A., 1994,Elevations: The Height of the Good inRosenzweig and Lévinas (Chicago Studies in the History ofJudaism), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
–––, 2001,Ethics, Exegesis, and Philosophy:Interpretation after Levinas, Cambridge/New York: CambridgeUniversity Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511488238
–––, 2016,Out of Control: Confrontationsbetween Spinoza and Levinas (SUNY Series in Contemporary JewishThought), New York: State University of New York Press.
Craig, Megan, 2010,Levinas and James: Toward a PragmaticPhenomenology (American Philosophy), Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity Press.
Critchley, Simon, 1992,The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derridaand Levinas, Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Second edition,Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
–––, 1999a,Ethics,Politics, Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas and ContemporaryFrench Thought, London/New York: Verso.
–––, 2015,The Problem with Levinas,Alexis Dianda (ed.), Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198738763.001.0001
Davis, Colin, 1996,Levinas: An Introduction, Notre Dame,IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
De Bauw, Christine, 1997,L’envers du sujet: Lireautrement Emmanuel Levinas, Paris: Vrin, ÉditionsOusia.
De Boer, Theo, 1997,The Rationality of Transcendence: Studiesin the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Amsterdam Studies inJewish Thought 4), Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.
De Vries, Hent, 1989 [2005],Theologie im pianissimo: ZurAktualität der Denkfiguren Adornos und Levinas (Studies inphilosophical theology), Kampen: J.H. Kok. Translated asMinimalTheologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Adorno and Levinas,Geoffrey Hale (trans.), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,2005. doi:10.1353/book.72145
Derrida, Jacques, 1997 [1999],Adieu à EmmanuelLévinas (Incises), Paris: Galilée. Translated asAdieu to Emmanuel Levinas (Meridian, Crossing Aesthetics),Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (trans), Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1999.
Diprose, Rosalyn, 2002,Corporeal Generosity: On Giving withNietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas (SUNY Series in GenderTheory), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Drabinski, John E., 2001,Sensibility and Singularity: TheProblem of Phenomenology in Levinas (SUNY Series in ContemporaryContinental Philosophy), Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress.
–––, 2011,Levinas and the Postcolonial:Race, Nation, Other, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Dudiak, Jeffrey, 2001,The Intrigue of Ethics: A Reading ofthe Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Lévinas(Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, 18), New York: FordhamUniversity Press. doi:10.5422/fso/9780823220922.001.0001
Duncan, Diane Moira, 2001,The Pre-Text of Ethics: On Derridaand Levinas (Studies in Theoretical and Applied Ethics 4), NewYork: Peter Lang.
Eaglestone, Robert, 1997,Ethical Criticism: Reading afterLevinas, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Eskin, Michael, 2000,Ethics and Dialogue: In the Works ofLevinas, Bakhtin, Mandel’shtam, and Celan, New York: OxfordUniversity Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198159926.001.0001
Faessler, Marc, 2021,L’anarchie de Dieu: dans les pasd’Emmanuel Levinas (Collection “Le belaujourd’hui”), Paris: Hermann.
Fagenblat, Michael, 2010,A Covenant of Creatures:Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism (Cultural Memory in thePresent), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Feron, Etienne, 1992,De l’idée de transcendanceà la question du langage: l’itinérairephilosophique de Levinas (Collection Krisis), Grenoble:Éditions Jérôme Millon.
Finkielkraut, Alain, 1984,La sagesse de l’amour:essai, Paris: Gallimard.
Forthomme, Bernard, 1979,Une philosophie de la transcendance:la métaphysique d’Emmanuel Lévinas, Paris:Pensée universelle.
Forthomme, Bernard and Jad Hatem, 1996,Affectivité etaltérité selon Lévinas et Henry, Paris:Cariscript.
Franck, Didier, 2008,L’un-pour-l’autre: Levinaset la signification (Epiméthée), Paris: Pressesuniversitaires de France.
Frost, Tom, 2022,Law, Relationality and the Ethical Life:Agamben and Levinas (Law and Politics: Continental Perspectives),Abingdon/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315191447
Fryer, David Ross, 2020,Intervention of the Other, NewYork: Other Press.
Gaston, Sean, 2005,Derrida and Disinterest (ContinuumStudies in Continental Philosophy), London/New York: Continuum.doi:10.5040/9781472546364
Gauthier, David J., 2011,Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas,and the Politics of Dwelling, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Gibbs, Robert, 1992,Correlations in Rosenzweig andLevinas, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
–––, 2000,Why Ethics? Signs ofResponsibilities, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Goldwyn, Elisabeth, 2011 [2015],Reṿaḥ BenHa-Otiyot: Shiʻuraṿ Ha-Talmudiyim Shel Leṿinas,Hatʼamah Ben Tsurah Ṿe-Tokhen (Sifriyat “HelalBen-Ḥayim”. Le-Madaʻe Ha-Yahadut), Bene Beraḳ:ha-Ḳibuts ha-meʼuḥad. Translated asReadingbetween the Lines: Form and Content in Levinas’s TalmudicReadings, Rachel Kessel (trans.), Pittsburgh, PA: DuquesneUniversity Press, 2015.
Guenther, Lisa, 2006,The Gift of the Other: Levinas and thePolitics of Reproduction (SUNY Series in Gender Theory), Albany,NY: State University of New York Press.
Guibal, Francis and Stanislas Breton (eds), 1986,Altérités: Jacques Derrida et Pierre-JeanLabarrière, Paris: Éditions Osiris.
Habib, Stéphane, 1998,La responsabilité chezSartre et Lévinas (Collection L’ouverturephilosophique), Paris: L’Harmattan.
–––, 2005,Levinas et Rosenzweig:philosophies de la révélation (Philosophied’aujourd’hui), Paris: Presses universitaires deFrance.
Hammerschlag, Sarah, 2010,The Figural Jew: Politics andIdentity in Postwar French Thought (Religion and Postmodernism),Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
–––, 2016,Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida,and the Literary Afterlife of Religion, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press.
Hand, Seán, 2009,Emmanuel Levinas (RoutledgeCritical Thinkers), London/New York: Routledge.doi:10.4324/9780203888056
Handelman, Susan A., 1991,Fragments of Redemption: JewishThought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Levinas(Jewish Literature and Culture), Bloomington, IN: Indiana UniversityPress.
Hayat, Pierre, 1995,Emmanuel Levinas, éthique etsociété (Collection Philosophie,épistémologie), Paris: Editions Kimé.
–––, 1997,Individualisme éthique etphilosophie chez Levinas (Collection Philosophie,épistémologie), Paris: Editions Kimé.
Hendley, Steve, 2000,From Communicative Action to the Face ofthe Other: Levinas and Habermas on Language, Obligation, andCommunity, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Herzog, Annabel, 2020,Levinas’s Politics: Justice,Mercy, Universality (Haney Foundation Series), Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press. doi:10.9783/9780812296808
Hutchens, Benjamin C., 2004,Levinas: A Guide for thePerplexed, New York/London: Continuum.
Hyde, Michael J., 2001,The Call of Conscience: Heidegger andLevinas: Rhetoric and the Euthanasia Debate (Studies inRhetoric/Communication), Columbia, SC: University of South CarolinaPress.
Katz, Claire Elise, 2003,Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine:The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca (Indiana Series in the Philosophyof Religion), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Kavka, Martin, 2004,Jewish Messianism and the History ofPhilosophy, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511499098
Kayser, Paulette, 2000,Emmanuel Levinas: la trace duféminin (Philosophie d’aujourd’hui), Paris:Presses universitaires de France.
Kearney, Richard, 1984,Dialogues with ContemporaryContinental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage: Paul Ricoeur,Emmanuel Levinas, Herbert Marcuse, Stanislas Breton, JacquesDerrida, Manchester, UK/Dover, NH: Manchester UniversityPress.
Keenan, Dennis King, 1999,Death and Responsibility: The“Work” of Levinas (SUNY Series in ContemporaryContinental Philosophy), Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress.
Kenaan, Hagi, 2012,Visage(s): une autre éthique duregard après Levinas (Philosophie imaginaire), ColetteSalem (trans.), Paris: Éditions de l’Éclat.
Kleinberg, Ethan, 2021,Emmanuel Levinas’s TalmudicTurn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought (Cultural Memory in thePresent), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kosky, Jeffrey L., 2001,Levinas and the Philosophy ofReligion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion),Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Krewani, Wolfgang Nikolaus, 1992,Emmanuel Lévinas:Denker des Anderen (Kolleg Philosophie), Freiburg (Breisgau):Alber.
Kunz, George, 1998,The Paradox of Power and Weakness: Levinasand an Alternative Paradigm for Psychology (SUNY Series,Alternatives in Psychology), Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress.
Large, William, 2015,Levinas’ ‘Totality andInfinity’ (Reader’s Guides), London: BloomsburyAcademic.
Laruelle, François, 1986,Les philosophies de ladiffʹerence: introduction critique (Philosophied’aujourd’hui), Paris: Presses Universitaires deFrance.
Lazaroff, Alan, 2002,Nietzsche, Buber, Levinas: Judaism asRelational Religion (Occasional Papers in Jewish History andThought, 23),, New York: Hunter College of the City University of NewYork / Temple Israel.
Lescourret, Marie-Anne, 1994,Emmanuel Levinas, Paris:Flammarion.
Llewelyn, John, 1991,The Middle Voice of EcologicalConscience: A Chiasmic Reading of Responsibility in the Neighbourhoodof Levinas, Heidegger, and Others, New York: St. Martin’sPress.
–––, 1995,Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogyof Ethics (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy), New York:Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203426821
–––, 2000,The Hypocritical Imagination:Between Kant and Levinas (Warwick Studies in EuropeanPhilosophy), New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203187777
–––, 2002,Appositions of Jacques Derridaand Emmanuel Levinas (Studies in Continental Thought),Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Libertson, Joseph, 1982,Proximity, Levinas, Blanchot,Bataille, and Communication (Phaenomenologica 87), TheHague/Boston: M. Nijhoff.
Malka, Salomon, 2002,Emmanuel Lévinas: la vie et latrace, Paris: JC Lattès.
Manning, Robert John Sheffler, 1993,Interpreting Otherwisethan Heidegger: Emmanuel Levinas’s Ethics as FirstPhilosophy, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Marcus, Paul, 2008,Being for the Other: Emmanuel Levinas,Ethical Living and Psychoanalysis (Marquette Studies inPhilosophy, 65), Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
Marion, Jean-Luc, 1986,Prolégomènes à lacharité, second edition, Paris: Éditions laDifférence. Translated asProlegomena to Charity(Perspectives in Continental Philosophy 24), Stephen E. Lewis(trans.), New York: Fordham University Press, 2002.
–––, 1989,Réduction et donation:recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et laphénoménologie, Paris: Presses universitaires deFrance. Translated asReduction and Givenness: Investigations ofHusserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (Northwestern UniversityStudies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Thomas A.Carlson (trans.), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,1998.
Mensch, James R., 2015,Levinas’s Existential Analytic:A Commentary on Totality and Infinity (Studies in Phenomenologyand Existential Philosophy), Chicago: Northwestern UniversityPress.
Messina, Aïcha Liviana, 2018,L’anarchie de lapaix: Levinas et la philosophie politique (CNRS philosophie),Paris: CNRS éditions.
Moati, Raoul, 2012 [2017],Evénements nocturnes: essaisur Totalité et Infini (Le bel aujourd’hui), Paris:Hermann. Translated asLevinas and the Night of Being: A Guide toTotality and Infinity, Daniel Wyche (trans.), New York: FordhamUniversity Press, 2017.
Mole, Gary D., 1997,Lévinas, Blanchot, Jabès:Figures of Estrangement (Crosscurrents : ComparativeStudies in European Literature and Philosophy), Gainesville, FL:University Press of Florida.
Morgan, Michael L., 2007,Discovering Levinas,Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511805240
–––, 2011,The Cambridge Introduction toEmmanuel Levinas, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511921551
–––, 2016,Levinas’s EthicalPolitics (The Helen and Martin Schwartz Lectures in JewishStudies), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Morrison, Glenn, 2013,A Theology of Alterity: Levinas, VonBalthasar, and Trinitarian Praxis, Pittsburgh, PA: DuquesneUniversity Press.
Moten, Fred, 2018,The Universal Machine (Consent Not toBe a Single Being 3), Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Murray, Jeffrey W., 2003,Face to Face in Dialogue: EmmanuelLeninas and (the) Communication (of) Ethics, Lanham, MD:University Press of America.
Ndayizigiye, Thaddée, 1997,Réexamenéthique des droits de l’homme sousl’éclairage de la pensée d’EmmanuelLevinas (Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe 23, Theologie= Théologie = Theology 607), Bern: Lang.
Neendoor, Thomas, 1998,Communion: An Ecclesiological Analysisof the Concept of Communion of the Thomas Christians in the Light ofthe Idea of Self in Emmanuel Levinas (Pontifical OrientalInstitute of Religious Studies 205), Kattayam, Kerala, India:Pontifical Oriental Institute of religious studies.
Newton, Adam Zachary, 2001,The Fence and the Neighbor:Emmanuel Levinas, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and Israel among theNations (SUNY Series in Jewish Philosophy), Albany, NY: StateUniversity of New York Press.
Nordmann, Sophie, 2017,Levinas et la philosophiejudéo-allemande (Bibliothèque d’histoire dela philosophie. Nouvelle série), Paris: Librairie philosophiqueJ. Vrin.
Oppenheim, Michael D., 1997,Speaking/Writing of God: JewishPhilosophical Reflections on the Life with Others (SUNY Series inJewish Philosophy), Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress.
Peperzak, Adriaan Theodoor, 1993,To the Other: AnIntroduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (PurdueUniversity Series in the History of Philosophy), West Lafayette, IN:Purdue University Press.
–––, 1997,Beyond: The Philosophy ofEmmanuel Levinas (Northwestern University Studies inPhenomenology & Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press.
Perez, Félix, 2016,Apprendre à philosopher avecLevinas (Apprendre à philosopher avec), Paris:Ellipses.
Perpich, Diane, 2008,The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas(Cultural Memory in the Present), Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress.
Petrosino, Silvano and Jacques Rolland, 1984,Lavérité nomade: introduction à EmmanuelLévinas (Armillaire), Paris: Découverte.
Plant, Bob, 2005,Wittgenstein and Levinas: Ethical andReligious Thought, London/New York: Routledge.doi:10.4324/9780203023112
Plourde, Simonne, 1996,Emmanuel Lévinas,altérité et responsabilité: guide de lecture(La Nuit surveillée), Paris: Cerf.
Poirié, François, 1992,,EmmanuelLévinas (Qui êtes-vous? 20), Lyon: LaManufacture.
Ponzio, Augusto, 1996,Sujet et altérité surEmmanuel Lévinas: suivi de deux dialogues avec EmmanuelLévinas (Philosophie en commun), Paris:L’Harmattan.
Puntel, Lorenz B., 2010 [2011],Sein und Gott: einsystematischer Ansatz in Auseinandersetzung mit M. Heidegger, E.Lévinas und J.-L. Marion (Philosophische Untersuchungen26), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Translated asBeing and God: ASystematic Approach in Confrontation with Martin Heidegger, EmmanuelLevinas, and Jean-Luc Marion, Alan White (trans.), Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2011.
Purcell, Michael, 1998,Mystery and Method: The Other inRahner and Levinas, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette UniversityPress.
Putnam, Hilary, 2008,Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life:Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein (The Helen and MartinSchwartz Lectures in Jewish Studies), Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity Press.
Rabinovich, Silvana, 2003,La trace dans le palimpseste:lectures de Levinas (La philosophie en commun), Paris:L’Harmattan.
Rae, Gavin, 2016,The Problem of Political Foundations in CarlSchmitt and Emmanuel Levinas, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.doi:10.1057/978-1-137-59168-5
Ricœur, Paul, 1990 [1992],Soi-même comme unautre (Ordre philosophique), Paris: Seuil. Translated asOneself as Another, Kathleen Blamey (trans.), Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1992.
–––, 1997,Autrement: lectured’Autrement qu’être, ou, au-delà del’essence d’Emmanuel Levinas (Collection Les essaisdu Collège international de philosophie), Paris: Pressesuniversitaires de France.
Robbins, Jill, 1991,Prodigal Son/Elder Brother:Interpretation and Alterity in Augustine, Petrarch, Kafka,Levinas (Religion and Postmodernism), Chicago: University ofChicago Press.
–––, 1999,Altered Reading: Levinas andLiterature, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rolland, Jacques, 2000,Parcours de l’autrement: lectured’Emmanuel Lévinas (Epiméthée), Paris:Presses universitaires de France.
Rose, Gillian, 1992,The Broken Middle: Out of Our AncientSociety, Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
–––, 1993,Judaism and Modernity:Philosophical Essays, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Rychter, Ewa, 2004,(Un)Saying the Other: Allegory and Ironyin Emmanuel Levinas’s Ethical Language (Literary andCultural Theory 17), New York: Lang.
Saint-Cheron, Michaël de, 2006 [2010],Entretiens avecEmmanuel Levinas, 1992–1994: suivis de, Levinas entrephilosophie et pensée juive, Paris, France: Livre depoche. Translated asConversations with Emmanuel Levinas,1983–1994, Gary D. Mole (trans.), Pittsburgh, PA: DuquesneUniversity Press, 2010.
Salanskis, Jean-Michel, 2006,Levinas vivant(L’arbre de Judée 13), Paris: Belles lettres.
Saracino, Michele, 2003,On Being Human: A Conversation withLonergan and Levinas (Marquette Studies in Theology 35),Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
Schroeder, Brian, 1996,Altared Ground: : Levinas,History, and Violence, 0 edition, New York/London: Routledge.doi:10.4324/9780203760529
Sealey, Kris, 2013,Moments of Disruption: Levinas, Sartre,and the Question of Transcendence, Albany, NY: State Universityof New York Press.
Sebbah, François-David, 2000,Lévinas:ambiguïtés de l’altérité (Figuresdu savoir 28), Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
–––, 2001 [2012],L’épreuve dela limite: Derrida, Henry, Levinas et laphénoménologie (Bibliothèque duCollège international de philosophie), Paris: Pressesuniversitaires de France. Translated asTesting the Limit:Derrida, Henry, Levinas, and the Phenomenological Tradition(Cultural Memory in the Present), Stephen Barker (trans.), Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press.
–––, 2009,Lévinas et lecontemporain: les préoccupations de l’heure,Besançon: Solitaires intempestifs.
–––, 2018a,L’éthique dusurvivant: Levinas, une philosophie de la débâcle(Collection Humanités-hominités), Nanterre: Pressesuniversitaires de Paris Nanterre. [Sebbah 2018 available online]
–––, 2018b, “L’éthique commeculpabilité du survivant”, in Sebbah 2018a: 39–57(ch. 2).
Seong, ShinHyung, 2018,Otherness and Ethics: An EthicalDiscourse of Levinas and Confucius (Kongzi), Eugene, OR: Wipf& Stock.
Severson, Eric R., 2013,Levinas’s Philosophy of Time:Gift, Responsibility, Diachrony, Hope, Pittsburgh, PA: DuquesneUniversity Press.
Shepherd, Andrew, 2014,The Gift of the Other: Levinas,Derrida, and a Theology of Hospitality (Princeton TheologicalMonographs Series 207), Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications.
Simmons, William Paul, 2003,An-Archy and Justice: AnIntroduction to Emmanuel Levinas’s Political Thought,Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Smith, Michael B., 2005,Toward the Outside: Concepts andThemes in Emmanuel Levinas, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne UniversityPress.
Smith, Steven G., 1983,The Argument to the Other: Reasonbeyond Reason in the Thought of Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas(American Academy of Religion Academy Series 42), Chico, CA: ScholarsPress.
Sparrow, Tom, 2013,Levinas Unhinged, Alresford, Hants:Zero Books/John Hunt Publishing.
Srajek, Martin C., 1998,In the Margins of Deconstruction:Jewish Conceptions of Ethics in Emmanuel Levinas and JacquesDerrida (Contributions to Phenomenology 32), Dordrecht/Boston:Kluwer Academic Publishers. doi:10.1007/978-94-011-5198-6
Sandford, Stella, 2000,The Metaphysics of Love: Gender andTranscendence in Levinas, New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press.
Stone, Ira F., 1998,Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud: AnIntroduction, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
Stone, Matthew, 2016,Levinas, Ethics and Law, Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press.
Strasser, Stephan, 1978,Jenseits von Sein und Zeit: eineEinführung in Emmanuel Levinas’ Philosophie(Phaenomenologica 78), Den Haag: M. Nijhoff.
Strasser, Stephan, 1983, “Emmanuel Levinas: Ethik als erstePhilosophie”, in Bernhard Waldenfels’Phänomenologie in Frankreich (Suhrkamp taschenbuchwissenschaft 644), Berlin: Suhrkamp, 218–265 (ch. 4).
Theunissen, Michael, 1965 [1984],Der Andere: Studien zurSozialontologie der Gegenwart, Berlin: de Gruyter. Second edition1977. Translated asThe Other: Studies in the Social Ontology ofHusserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber (Studies in ContemporaryGerman Social Thought), Christopher Macann (trans.), Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 1984.
Tahmasebi-Birgani, Victoria, 2014,Emmanuel Levinas and thePolitics of Non-Violence, Toronto: University of TorontoPress.
Thomas, Elisabeth Louise, 2004,Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics,Justice, and the Human beyond Being (Studies in Philosophy),London/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203504970
Todd, Sharon, 2003,Learning from the Other: Levinas,Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education (SUNYSeries, Second Thoughts), Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress.
Topolski, Anya, 2015,Arendt, Levinas and a Politics ofRelationality (Reframing the Boundaries), London: Rowman &Littlefield International. doi:10.5040/9798881809720
Toumayan, Alain P., 2004,Encountering the Other: The Artworkand the Problem of Difference in Blanchot and Levinas,Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Vasseleu, Cathryn, 1998,Textures of Light: Vision and Touchin Irigaray, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty (Warwick Studies inEuropean Philosophy), London/New York: Routledge.doi:10.4324/9780203047705
Veling, Terry A., 2014,For You Alone: Emmanuel Levinas andthe Answerable Life, Eugene, OR: Cascade Books.
Wall, Thomas Carl, 1999,Radical Passivity: Lévinas,Blanchot, and Agamben, New York: State University of New YorkPress.
Wehrs, Donald R., 2013,Levinas and Twentieth-CenturyLiterature: Ethics and the Reconstitution of Subjectivity,Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press.
Westphal, Merold, 2008,Levinas and Kierkegaard inDialogue (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion),Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Winkler, Rafael, 2018,Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger,Levinas, and Nietzsche, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Wolff, Ernst, 2007,De l’ethique à la justice:langage et politique dans la philosophie de Lévinas(Phaenomenologica 183), Dordrecht: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6122-6
Wolfson, Elliot R., 2014,Giving beyond the Gift: Apophasisand Overcoming Theomania, New York: Fordham University Press.doi:10.5422/fordham/9780823255702.001.0001
–––, 2025,Nocturnal Seeing: Hopelessness ofHope and Philosophical Gnosis in Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and EdithWyschogrod (Cultural Memory in the Present book series),Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.doi:10.1515/9781503640979
Wyschogrod, Edith, 1974 [2000],Emmanuel Levinas: The Problemof Ethical Metaphysics, The Hague: Nijhoff. Second edition, NewYork: Fordham University Press, 2000.
Zielinski, Agata, 2002,Lecture de Merleau-Ponty et Levinas:le corps, le monde, l’autre (Philosophied’aujourd’hui), Paris: Presses universitaires deFrance.
Zimmermann, Nigel, 2013,Levinas and Theology (Philosophyand Theology Series), London ; New York: Bloomsbury.

C.2 Articles, Journals and Edited Volumes on Levinas

Aeschlimann, Jean-Christophe (ed.), 1989,Répondred’autrui. Emmanuel Lévinas (Langages),Neuchâtel: à la Baconnière.
Alexander, Hanan, 2014, “Education in Nonviolence:Levinas’ Talmudic Readings and the Study of Sacred Texts”,Ethics and Education, 9(1): 58–68.doi:10.1080/17449642.2014.890273
Altonji, Alexander, 2023, “Must Skepticism Remain Refuted?Inheriting Skepticism with Cavell and Levinas”,Topoi,42(1): 61–72. doi:10.1007/s11245-022-09849-3
Anckaert, Luc, 2020, “Ethics of Responsibility and Ambiguityof Politics in Levinas’s Philosophy”,Problemos,97: 61–74. doi:10.15388/Problemos.97.5
Atterton, Peter, Matthew Calarco, and Maurice S. Friedman (eds),2004,Levinas & Buber: Dialogue & Difference,Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Atterton, Peter and Matthew Calarco (eds), 2010,RadicalizingLevinas (SUNY Series in Radical Social and Political Theory),Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Bernasconi, Robert, 1982, “Levinas Face to Face—withHegel”,Journal of the British Society forPhenomenology, 13(3): 267–276.doi:10.1080/00071773.1982.11007593
–––, 1986, “Hegel and Levinas: ThePossibility of Reconciliation and Forgiveness”,Archivio difilosofia, 54: 325–346.
–––, 1987, “Deconstruction and thePossibility of Ethics”, inDeconstruction and Philosophy:The Texts of Jacques Derrida, John Sallis (ed.), Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 122–139 (ch. 10).
–––, 1988, “Levinas: Philosophy andBeyond”, inPhilosophy and Non-Philosophy sinceMerleau-Ponty (Continental Philosophy 1), Hugh J. Silverman(ed.), New York: Routledge, 232–258.
–––, 1988, “The Silent Anarchic World ofthe Evil Genius”, inThe Collegium Phaenomenologicum, TheFirst Ten Years (Phaenomenologica 105), John C. Sallis,Giuseppina Moneta, and Jacques Taminiaux (eds), Dordrecht/Boston:Kluwer, 257–272. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-2805-3_14
–––, 2002, “What Is the Question to Which‘substitution’ Is the Answer?”, inCritchley and Bernasconi 2002: 234–251 (ch. 11). doi:10.1017/CCOL0521662060.011
Bernasconi, Robert and Simon Critchley (eds), 1991,Re-Reading Levinas (Studies in Continental Thought),Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Bernasconi, Robert and David Wood (eds), 1988,The Provocationof Levinas: Rethinking the Other (Warwick Studies in Philosophyand Literature), London/New York: Routledge.doi:10.4324/9780203402047
Bernet, Rudolf, 2002, “Levinas’s Critique ofHusserl”, inCritchley and Bernasconi 2002: 82–99 (ch. 4). doi:10.1017/CCOL0521662060.004
Bloechl, Jeffrey (ed.), 2000,The Face of the Other and theTrace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas(Perspectives in Continental Philosophy 10). New York: FordhamUniversity Press.
Burggraeve, Roger (ed.), 2008,The Awakening to the Other: AProvocative Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas, Leuven/Dudley, MA:Peeters.
Butler, Judith, 2020,The Force of Nonviolence: AnEthico-Political Bind, London/New York: Verso.
Cahiers d’études lévinassiennes,2002-present, an annual book series, Arcueil (originally Jerusalem):Institut d’études lévinassiennes.
Cai, Wenjing, 2021, “Freedom, Normativity and Finitude:Between Heidegger and Levinas”,Human Studies: A Journal forPhilosophy and the Social Sciences, 44(3): 397–411.doi:10.1007/s10746-021-09580-9
Chalier, Catherine and Miguel Abensour (eds), 1991,Emmanuel Lévinas (Cahier de L’Herne 60), Paris:Editions de l’Herne.
Chanter, Tina (ed.), 2001,Feminist Interpretations ofEmmanuel Levinas (Re-Reading the Canon), University Park, PA:Pennsylvania State University Press.
Cohen, Richard A. (ed.), 1986,Face to Face with Levinas(SUNY Series in Philosophy), Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress.
––– (ed.), 2009,Cahiersd’études lévinassiennes No. 8:Lévinas-Rosenzweig, Arcueil: Institutd’Études Lévinassiennes.
Cohen-Levinas, Danielle (ed.), 1998,Emmanuel Levinas(Rue Descartes 19), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
–––, 2006,Levinas, Paris: Bayard.
–––, 2010,Le souci de l’art chezEmmanuel Levinas (Le marteau sans maître), Houilles:Manucius.
–––, 2011,Lire “Totalité etinfini” d’Emmanuel Levinas: Études etinterprétations (Rue de la Sorbonne), Paris: Hermann.
––– (ed.), 2015,Emmanuel Levinas: “Être juif” suivi d’une Lettre àMaurice Blanchot (Rivages poche), Paris: Éditions Payot& Rivages.
Cohen-Lévinas, Danielle and Marc Crépon (eds), 2015,Lévinas, Derrida: Lire Ensemble (Rue de La Sorbonne),Paris: Hermann.
Cohen-Levinas, Danielle and Alexander Schnell (eds), 2015,Relire “Totalité et infini” d’EmmanuelLevinas (Problèmes et controverses), Paris: Vrin.
––– (eds), 2016,Relire “Autrementqu’être, ou, au-delà de l’essence”d’Emmanuel Levinas (Problèmes et controverses),Paris: J. Vrin.
––– (eds), 2021,Levinas lecteurde Heidegger (Problèmes & controverses), Paris:Librairie philosophique J. Vrin.
Cohen-Levinas, Danielle and Shmuel Trigano (eds), 2002,Emmanuel Levinas, philosophie et judaïsme (CollectionLettres promises), Paris: In press.
––– (eds), 2007,Emmanuel Lévinas etles théologies (Pardès : études etcultures juives 42), Paris: In press.
Critchley, Simon, 1999b, “The Original Traumatism: Levinasand Psychoanalysis”, inCritchley 1999a: 183–197 (ch. 8).
–––, 2004, “Five Problems inLevinas’s View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution toThem”,Political Theory, 32(2): 172–185.doi:10.1177/0090591703261771
Critchley, Simon and Robert Bernasconi (eds), 2002,The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, Cambridge/New York:Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521662060
Crowell, Steven, 2015, “Why Is Ethics First Philosophy?Levinas in Phenomenological Context: Why Is Ethics FirstPhilosophy?”,European Journal of Philosophy, 23(3):564–588. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0378.2012.00550.x
De Vries, Hent, 1998, “Levinas”, inA Companion toContinental Philosophy, Simon Critchley and William R. Schroeder(eds), Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell, 245–255 (ch. 20).doi:10.1002/9781405164542.ch20
Derrida, Jacques, 1964 [1978], “Violence etmétaphysique: essai sur la pensée d’EmmanuelLevinas”, in two parts in theRevue de Métaphysiqueet de Morale, 69(3): 322–354 and 69(4): 425–473.Collected inL’Écriture et la différence(Collection Tel quel), Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967, ch. 4.Translated “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought ofEmmanuel Levinas”, inWriting and Difference, Alan Bass(trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 79–153(ch. 4).
–––, 1980 [1991], “En ce moment mêmedans cet ouvrage me voici”, inTextes pour EmmanuelLévinas (Collection Surfaces 2), François Laruelle(ed.), Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 21–60. Translated as “AtThis Very Moment in This Work Here I Am”, Ruben Berezdivin(trans.), inRe-Reading Levinas (Studies in ContinentalThought), Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (eds), Bloomington,IN: Indiana University Press, 11–49 (ch. 2).
Desmond, William, 1994, “Philosophies of Religion: Marcel,Jaspers, Levinas”, inRoutledge History of Philosophy VolumeVIII: Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy, Richard Kearney(ed.), London/New York: Routledge, 131-174 (ch. 5).
Dimitrova, Maria (ed.), 2011,In Levinas’ Trace,Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Drabinski, John E. and Eric Sean Nelson (eds), 2014,BetweenLevinas and Heidegger (SUNY Series in Contemporary ContinentalPhilosophy), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Dupuis, Michel (ed.), 1994,Levinas en contrastes (Pointphilosophique), Bruxelles: De Boeck-Wesmael.
Edelglass, William, James Hatley, and Christian Diehm (eds), 2012,Facing Nature: Levinas and Environmental Thought, Pittsburgh,PA: Duquesne University Press.
Eisenstadt, Oona, 2003, “The Problem of the Promise: Derridaon Levinas on the Cities of Refuge”,CrossCurrents,52(4): 474–482.
–––, 2019, “Rhetorical Subterfuge: AReading of Levinas’s ‘Promised Land or PermittedLand’”,Levinas Studies, 13: 27–42.doi:10.5840/levinas20207146
Eisenstadt, Oona and Claire Elise Katz, 2016, “The FacelessPalestinian: A History of an Error”,Telos, 174:9–32. doi:10.3817/0316174009
Eskenazi, Tamara Cohn, Gary A. Philips, and David Jobling (eds),2003,Levinas and Biblical Studies (Society of BiblicalLiterature Semeia Studies 43), Atlanta, GA: Society of BiblicalLiterature.
Fagenblat, Michael, 2015, “‘The Passion ofIsrael’: The True Israel According to Levinas, or Judaism‘as a Category of Being’”,Sophia, 54(3):297–320. doi:10.1007/s11841-015-0463-3
Faulconer, James, 2004, “Emmanuel Lévinas(1906–1995)”, inTwentieth-Century European CulturalTheorists. Second Series (Dictionary of Literary Biography 296),Paul Hansom (ed.), Detroit, MI: Gale, 285–295.
Feron, Étienne (ed.), 1990,EmmanuelLévinas, issue ofÉtudesphénoménologiques, 6(12).
Froese, Robert, 2020, “Levinas and the Question ofPolitics”,Contemporary Political Theory, 19(1):1–19. doi:10.1057/s41296-019-00320-4
Frogneux, Nathalie and Françoise Mies (eds), 1998,Emmanuel Lévinas et l’histoire: actes du colloqueinternational des Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix(20 – 21 – 22 mai 1997) (Collection“Philosophie” 5), Paris: Cerf/Presses universitaires deNamur.
Gantt, Edwin E. and Richard N. Williams (eds), 2002,Psychology for the Other: Levinas, Ethics and the Practice ofPsychology, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Glass, Jordan, 2018, “Education as Ethics: Emmanuel Levinason Jewish Schooling”,Continental Philosophy Review,51(4): 481–505. doi:10.1007/s11007-018-9440-1
Gold, Moshe and Sandor Goodhart (eds), 2018,Of Levinas andShakespeare: “To See Another Thus”, West Lafayette,IN: Purdue University Press.
Greisch, Jean and Jacques Rolland (eds), 1993,EmmanuelLévinas: l’éthique comme philosophiepremière: actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 23 août-2septembre 1986 (Nuit surveillée), Paris: Cerf.
Guenther, Lisa, 2018, “Dwelling in Carceral Space”,Levinas Studies, 12: 61–82.doi:10.5840/levinas20197101
Gutting, Gary, 2001, “Fin-de-Siècle Again: ‘LeTemps Retrouvé’? Levinas”, in hisFrenchPhilosophy in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 353–363. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511806902.014
Haar, Michel, 1991, “L’obsession de l’autre:l’éthique comme traumatisme”, inChalier and Abensour 1991: 525–538.
Halpérin, Jean and Nelly Hansson (eds), 1998,Difficilejustice: dans la trace d’Emmanuel Lévinas: actes duXXXVIe Colloque des intellectuels juifs de languefrançaise (Présences du judaïsme), Paris: A.Michel.
Hammerschlag, Sarah, 2012, “‘A Splinter in theFlesh’: Levinas and the Resignification of Jewish Suffering,1928–1947”,International Journal of PhilosophicalStudies, 20(3): 389–419.doi:10.1080/09672559.2012.699273
Hand, Seán (ed.), 1996,Facing the Other: The Ethics ofEmmanuel Lévinas (Curzon Jewish Philosophy Series),Richmond, Surrey: Curzon.
Harasym, Sarah (ed.), 1998,Levinas and Lacan: The MissedEncounter (SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture), Albany,NY: State University of New York Press.
Highlen, Jared, 2021, “Levinas and the Political Problem ofOriginal Peace”,Continental Philosophy Review, 54(3):319–330. doi:10.1007/s11007-021-09536-x
Horowitz, Asher and Gad Horowitz (eds), 2006,DifficultJustice: Commentaries on Levinas and Politics, Toronto:University of Toronto Press.
Janicaud, Dominique (ed.), 2000,La métaphysiqued’Emmanuel Levinas, special issue ofNoesis, 3. [Janicaud 2000 available online]
Jospe, Raphael (ed.), 1997,Paradigms in JewishPhilosophy, London: Associated University Presses.
Kalmanson, Leah, Frank Garrett, and Sarah A. Mattice (eds), 2013,Levinas and Asian Thought, Pittsburgh, PA: DuquesneUniversity Press.
Katz, Claire Elise, 2012,Levinas and the Crisis ofHumanism, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Katz, Claire Elise with Lara Trout (eds), 2005,EmmanuelLevinas (Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers), 4 vols.,London: Routledge.
Kavka, Martin, 2010, “Screening the Canon: Levinas andMedieval Jewish Philosophy”, inNew Directions in JewishPhilosophy, Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson (eds),Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 19–51 (ch. 1).
Kranz, Mendel, 2019, “Postcolonial Zionism:Theological-Political Paradigms in Levinas and Memmi”,Hebrew Studies, 60(1): 293–321.doi:10.1353/hbr.2019.0011
Lapidot, Elad, 2021, “Heidegger as Levinas’s Guide toJudaism beyond Philosophy”,Religions, 12(7): article477. doi:10.3390/rel12070477
Laruelle, François (ed.), 1980,Textespour Emmanuel Lévinas (Collection Surfaces 2), Paris:Jean-Michel Place.
Levinas Studies: An Annual Review, Robert Bernasconi(ed.), started 2005, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press (17 volumesto date).
Llewelyn, John, 2002, “Levinas and Language”, inCritchley and Bernasconi 2002: 119–138 (ch. 6). doi:10.1017/CCOL0521662060.006
Lin, Yael (ed.), 2014,Levinas Faces Biblical Figures,Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Lissa, Giuseppe, 2002, “Phénoménologie et/ouherméneutique chez Emmanuel Levinas”, inCohen-Levinas and Trigano 2002: 195–234.
Marion, Jean-Luc (ed.), 2000,Positivité ettranscendance: suivi de Lévinas et laphénoménologie (Epiméthée), Paris:Presses universitaires de France.
Matthews, Eric, 1996, “After Structuralism: Lévinas,Derrida, and Lyotard”, in hisTwentieth-Century FrenchPhilosophy, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press,157–186 (ch. 8).
McGettigan, Andrew, 2006, “The Philosopher’s Fear ofAlterity: Levinas, Europe and Humanities ‘without SacredHistory’”,Radical Philosophy, 140: 15–25. [McGettigan 2006 available online]
Meir, Ephraim, 2021, “A Virtual Dialogue between Gandhi andLevinas”,Religions, 12(6): article 422.doi:10.3390/rel12060422
Métais, Fabrice and Mario Villalobos, 2021, “EmbodiedEthics: Levinas’ Gift for Enactivism”,Phenomenologyand the Cognitive Sciences, 20(1): 169–190.doi:10.1007/s11097-020-09692-0
–––, 2022, “Levinas’ Otherness: AnEthical Dimension for Enactive Sociality”,Topoi,41(2): 327–339. doi:10.1007/s11245-021-09772-z
Mongin, Olivier (ed.), 1997,Lectures d’EmmanuelLevinas, several articles inEsprit, 234(7):112–172.
New, Melvyn, Robert Bernasconi, and Richard A. Cohen (eds), 2001,In Proximity: Emmanuel Levinas and the Eighteenth Century,Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press.
Ouaknin, Marc-Alain, 1993 [1995],Le livre brûlé:philospie du Talmud (Points Sagesses 52), Nouv. éd. rev.et corr, Paris: Lieu Commun. Translated asThe Burnt Book: Readingthe Talmud, Llewellyn Brown (trans.), Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1995.
Pawlett-Jackson, Sarah, 2021, “Many Faces, Plural Looks:Enactive Intersubjectivity Contra Sartre and Levinas”,Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 21(4):903–925. doi:10.1007/s11097-021-09766-7
Peperzak, Adriaan Theodoor (ed.), 1995,Ethics as FirstPhilosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy,Literature, and Religion, New York: Routledge.doi:10.4324/9781315822228
Podolsky, Robin, 2019, “Sumud Freedom Camp: Levinas’Face-to-Face in Praxis”,Religions, 10(4): article 256.doi:10.3390/rel10040256
Rolland, Jacques (ed.), 1984,Emmanuel Lévinas(Les Cahiers de La nuit surveillée 3), Lagrasse: Verdier.Annual, special issue devoted to Levinas.
Sallis, John, Giuseppina Moneta, and Jacques Taminiaux (ed.),1988,The Collegium Phaenomenologicum: The First Ten Years,Berlin: Springer.
Shankman, Steven and Massimo Lollini (eds), 2002,Who,Exactly, Is The Other? Western and Transcultural Perspectives,Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Books.
Simmons, J. Aaron and David Wood (eds), 2008,Kierkegaard andLevinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion (Indiana Series in thePhilosophy of Religion), Bloomington, IN: Indiana UniversityPress.
Trigano, Shmuel (ed.), 1997,L’école depensée juive de Paris (Pardès 23), Paris: InPress.
–––, 2002, “Levinas et le projet de laphilosophie juive”,Cohen-Levinas and Trigano 2002: 145–178.
Veulemans, Sophie, 2008, “On Time: Levinas’Appropriation of Bergson”, in Burggraeve (ed.) 2008,279–302.
Villevieille, Laurent, 2021, “La déformalisationselon Heidegger et Levinas”, inCohen-Lévinas and Schnell 2021, 167–182.
Włodarczyk, Rafał, 2021, “Hospitality, Asylum andEducation: Around Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic Readings”,Ethics and Education, 16(3): 355–374.doi:10.1080/17449642.2021.1927318
Wolosky, Shira, 2017, “Two Types of Negative Theology; Or,What Does Negative Theology Negate?”, inNegative Theologyas Jewish Modernity (New Jewish Philosophy and Thought), MichaelFagenblat (ed.), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,161–179 (ch. 7).
Wood, David and Robert Bernasconi (eds), 1982,Time andMetaphysics: A Collection of Original Papers, Coventry, UK:Parousia Press, University of Warwick.,
––– (eds), 1985,Derrida and“Différance”, Coventry, UK: Parousia Press,University of Warwick. Reprinted Evanston, IL: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1988.

C.3 Other Works Cited

Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics, Terence Irwin (trans.),second revised edition, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2000.
Banon, David, 1987,La lecture infinie: les voies del’interprétation midrachique, Paris: Seuil. Prefaceby Emmanuel Levinas.
–––, 2008,Entrelacs: la lettre et le sensdans l’exégèse juive (La nuitsurveillée), Paris: Cerf.
Broch, Hermann, 1979,Massenwahntheorie, Frankfurt:Suhrkamp Verlag. Translated into French asThéorie de lafolie des masses, Pierre Rusch and Didier Renault (trans.),Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, 2008.
Butler, Judith, 2005,Giving an Account of Oneself, NewYork: Fordham University Press.
Cohen, Hermann, 1915,Der Begriff der Religion im System derPhilosophie (Philosophische Arbeiten, 10. Bd., 1. Heft), Giessen:A. Töpelmann.
Critchley, Simon, 2007,Infinitely Demanding: Ethics ofCommitment, Politics of Resistance, London/New York: Verso.
Di Paolo, Ezequiel A., Elena Clare Cuffari, and Hanne De Jaegher,2018,Linguistic Bodies: The Continuity between Life andLanguage, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Doyon, Maxime and Thiemo Breyer (eds), 2015,Normativity inPerception, London: Palgrave Macmillan.doi:10.1057/9781137377920
Eagleton, Terry, 2009,Trouble with Strangers: A Study ofEthics, Chichester, UK/Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.doi:10.1002/9781444304633
Franck, Didier, 1981 [2013],Chair et corps: sur laphénoménologie de Husserl (Arguments), Paris:Editions de Minuit. Translated asFlesh and Body: On thePhenomenology of Husserl, Joseph Rivera and Scott Davidson(trans), New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Froese, Tom and Ezequiel Di Paolo, 2009, “Sociality and theLife-Mind Continuity Thesis”,Phenomenology and theCognitive Sciences, 8(4):439–463. doi:10.1007/s11097-009-9140-8.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1960,Wahrheit und Methode,Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Translated asTruth and Method,Hans-Georg Gadamer (trans.), New York: Continuum, 1980.
Gordon, Peter Eli, 2003,Rosenzweig and Heidegger: BetweenJudaism and German Philosophy (Weimar and Now 33), Berkeley, CA:University of California Press.
Heidegger, Martin, 1927 [1982],Die Grundprobleme derPhänomenologie, lecture series 1927, first published 1975.Translated asThe Basic Problems of Phenomenology, AlbertHofstadter (trans.), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,1982.
–––, 1929–1930 [1995],DieGrundbegriffe der Metaphysik:Welt—Endlichkeit—Einsamkeit, lecture series1929–1930, published 1983. Translated asThe FundamentalConcepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, WilliamMcNeill and Nicholas Walker (trans), Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity Press, 1995.
–––, 1929 [1997],Kant und das Problem derMetaphysik, first published 1929. Translated asKant and theProblem of Metaphysics, Richard Taft (trans.), Bloomington, IN:Indiana University Press, 1997.
–––, 1923 [1999],Ontologie, Hermeneutik derFaktizität, lecture series 1923, published 1988. TranslatedasOntology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity, John vanBuren (trans.), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999.
–––, 1936–1968 [2000],Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, lecturesgiven between 1936 and 1968, first published between 1936 and 1971,collected 1971. Translated asElucidations ofHölderlin’s Poetry, Keith Hoeller (trans), Amherst,NY: Humanity Books, 2000.
–––, 1921–1922 [2001],Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles:Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, lectureseries 1921–1922, published 1985. Translated asPhenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation intoPhenomenological Research, Richard Rojcewicz (trans.),Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Husserl, Edmund, 1935 [1970], “The Vienna Lecture”.Translated inThe Crisis of European Sciences and TranscendentalPhenomenology, David Carr (trans.), Evanston: NorthwesternUniversity Press, 1970, Appendix A.
–––, 1973a,Zur Phänomenologie derIntersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil1905–1920 (Husserliana 13). Iso von Kern (ed.), The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff.
–––, 1973b,Zur Phänomenologie derIntersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil:1921–1928 (Husserliana 14), Iso von Kern (ed.), The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff.
–––, 1973c,Zur Phänomenologie derIntersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil:1929–1935 (Husserliana 15), Iso von Kern (ed.), The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff.
Kant, Immanuel, 1797,Die Metaphysik der Sitten, Riga:Hartknoch. Akademie Ausgabe [AA] 6. Translated asThe Metaphysicsof Morals, Mary Gregor (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1996, 139–232.
Kavka, Martin, 2015, “Reading Messianically with GershomScholem”, inRethinking the Messianic Idea in Judaism,Michael L. Morgan and Steven Weitzman (eds), Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity Press, 404–418.
Koubová, Alice, 2014, “Invisible Excess of Sense inSocial Interaction”,Frontiers in Psychology, 5:article 1081. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01081
Liska, Vivian, 2017,German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife:A Tenuous Legacy (Jewish Literature and Culture), Bloomington,IN: Indiana University Press.
McDowell, John, 1998,Mind, Value, and Reality,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1964 [1968],Le visible etl’invisible: suivi de notes de travail (Bibliothèquedes idées), Claude Lefort (ed.), Paris: Gallimard. TranslatedasThe Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & ExistentialPhilosophy), Claude Lefort (ed.) Alphonso Lingis (trans.), Evanston,IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968.
Nancy, Jean-Luc, 1982,Le partage des voix(Débats), Paris: Galilée.
–––, 1983 [2003], “Le kategorein del’excès” inL’impératifcatégorique, Paris: Flammarion, 5–32. Translated as“TheKategorein of Excess”, in hisA FiniteThinking (Cultural Memory in the Present), Simon Sparks (ed.),Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 133–151.
O’Neill, Onora, 1996,Towards Justice and Virtue: AConstructive Account of Practical Reasoning, Cambridge/New York:Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511621239
Salanskis, Jean-Michel, 2017,Le fait juif, Paris: LesBelles Lettres.
Shapiro, Lawrence A., 2011,Embodied Cognition (NewProblems of Philosophy), London/New York: Routledge. Second edition,2019. doi:10.4324/9781315180380
Smit, Houston and Mark Timmons, 2013, “Kant’sGrounding Project inThe Doctrine of Virtue”, inKant on Practical Justification: Interpretive Essays, MarkTimmons and Sorin Baiasu (eds), Oxford/New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 229–268 (ch. 10).doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395686.003.0011
Stauffer, Jill, 2015,Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of NotBeing Heard, New York: Columbia University Press.
Thompson, Evan (ed.), 2001,Between Ourselves: Second-Person Issues in the Study of Consciousness,Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic.
–––, 2007,Mind in Life: Biology,Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, Cambridge, MA: BelknapPress of Harvard University Press.
Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, 1991,The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/6730.001.0001
Wiggins, David, 1987 [1998],Needs, Values, Truth: Essays inthe Philosophy of Value (Aristotelian Society Series, 6),Oxford/New York: Blackwell. Second edition Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1998. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198237198.001.0001
Žižek, Slavoj, 2005, “Neighbors and OtherMonsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence”, inThe Neighbor:Three Inquiries in Political Theology (Religion andPostmodernism), by Slavoj Žižek, Eric L. Santner, andKenneth Reinhard, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

C.4 Bibliographies and Concordance

Burggraeve, Roger, 1990,Emmanuel Levinas: Une bibliographieprimaire et secondaire, Leuven: Éditions Peeters. (Acomprehensive bibliography of works on Levinas from 1929 to 1989 inseveral languages.)
Ciocan, Cristian and Georges Hansel, 2005,LevinasConcordance, Dordrecht: Springer. doi:10.1007/1-4020-4125-X
Nordquist, Joan, 1997,Emmanuel Levinas: A Bibliography,Santa Cruz: Reference and Research Services.

Other Internet Resources

Centers and Sites

Levinas Research Center, Israel: Institut d’études lévinassiennes.

Personal Websites

Mythos and Logos—Levinas, Brent Dean Robbins.
Espacethique: l’aventure éthique de la responsabilité, Gérard Schaefer (In French).

Video and Sound Documents

Absent God—Emmanuel Levinas and the Humanism of the Other, Director Yoram Ron. Israel: Noprocess films and Arnavaz Productions,2015.
Interview Levinas. Director Deodaat Visser. Netherlands: IKON/Levinas Studiekring, 1986(Dutch and French).

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