Emmanuel Levinas is now widely recognised alongside Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre as one of the most important Continental philosophers of the twentieth century. His abiding coneern was the Primacy of the ethical relation to the other person and his central thesis was that ethics is first philosophy. His workhas also had a profound impact on a number of fields outside philosophy such as theology, Jewish studies, literature and cultural theory, psychotherapy, sociology, political theory, international relations theory and critical legaltheory. This volume contains overviews of Levinas's contribution in a number of fields, and includes detailed discussions of his early and late work. His relation to Judaism and talmudic commentary, and his contributions to aestheties and the philosophy of religion.
1. Introduction
- Simon Critchley
2. Levinas and Judaism
- Hilary Putnam
3. Levinas and the face of the other
- Bernhard Waldenfels
4. Levinas's critique of Husserl
- Rudolf Bernet
5. Levinas and the Talmud
- Catherine Chalier
6. Levinas and language
- John Llewelyn
7. Levinas, feminism and the feminine
- Stella Sandford
8. Sincerity and the end of theodicy: three remarks on Levinas and Kant
- Paul Davies
9. Language and alterity in the thought of Levinas
- Edith Wyschogrod
10. The concepts of art and poetry in Emmanuel Levinas's Writings
- Gerald L. Bruns
11. What is the question to which 'substitution' is the answer?
- Robert Bernasconi
12. Evil and the temptation of theodicy
- Richard J. Bernstein