Emmanuel Levinas was a significant contributor to the field of philosophy, phenomenology and religion. A key interpreter of Husserl, he stressed the importance of attitudes to other people in any philosophical system. For Levinas, to be a subject is to take responsibility for others as well as yourself and therefore responsibility for the one leads to justice for the many. He regarded ethics as the foundation for all other philosophy, but later admitted it could also be the foundation for theology. Michael Purcell outlines the basic themes of Levinas' thought and the ways in which they might be deployed in fundamental and practical theology, and the study of the phenomenon of religion. This book will be useful for undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, theology and religious studies, as well as those with a theological background who are approaching Levinas for the first time.

The thirteen essays collected in this volume investigate the possibility that the word "God" can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. Nine of the essays appear in English translation for the first time. Among Levinas's writings, this volume distinguishes itself, both for students of his thought and for a wider audience, by the range of issues it addresses. Levinas not only rehearses the ethical themes that have led him to be regarded as one of the most original thinkers working out of the phenomenological tradition, but he also takes up philosophical questions concerning politics, language, and religion. The volume situates his thought in a broader intellectual context than have his previous works. In these essays, alongside the detailed investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, Rosenzweig, and Buber that characterize all his writings, Levinas also addresses the thought of Kierkegaard, Marx, Bloch, and Derrida. Some essays provide lucid expositions not available elsewhere to key areas of Levinas's thought. "God and Philosophy" is perhaps the single most important text for understanding Levinas and is in many respects the best introduction to his works. "From Consciousness to Wakefulness" illuminates Levinas's relation to Husserl and thus to phenomenology, which is always his starting point, even if he never abides by the limits it imposes. In "The Thinking of Being and the Question of the Other," Levinas not only addresses Derrida's Speech and Phenomenon but also develops an answer to the later Heidegger's account of the history of Being by suggesting another way of reading that history. Among the other topics examined in the essays are the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding.

Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky Reveals the interplay of phenomenology and religion in Levinas's thought. "Kosky examines Levinas's thought from the perspective of the philosophy of religion and he does so in a way that is attentive to the philosophical nuances of Levinas's argument.... an insightful, well written, and carefully documented study... that uniquely illuminates Levinas's work." -- John D. Caputo For readers who suspect there is no place for religion and morality in postmodern philosophy, Jeffrey L. Kosky suggests otherwise in this skillful interpretation of the ethical and religious dimensions of Emmanuel Levinas's thought. Placing Levinas in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida and Marion, Kosky develops religious themes found in Levinas's work and offers a way to think and speak about ethics and morality within the horizons of contemporary philosophy of religion. Kosky embraces the entire scope of Levinas's writings, from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being, contrasting Levinas's early religious and moral thought with that of his later works while exploring the nature of phenomenological reduction, the relation of religion and philosophy, the question of whether Levinas can be considered a Jewish thinker, and the religious and theological import of Levinas's phenomenology. Kosky stresses that Levinas is first and foremost a phenomenologist and that the relationship between religion and philosophy in his ethics should cast doubt on the assumption that a natural or inevitable link exists between deconstruction and atheism. Jeffrey L. Kosky is translator of On Descartes' Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought by Jean-Luc Marion. He has taught at Williams College. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion -- Merold Westphal, general editor May 2001 272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index, append. cloth 0-253-33925-1 $39.95 s / £30.50

"I am not a particularly Jewish thinker," said Emmanuel Levinas, "I am just a thinker." This book argues against the idea, affirmed by Levinas himself, that Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being separate philosophy from Judaism. By reading Levinas's philosophical works through the prism of Judaic texts and ideas, Michael Fagenblat argues that what Levinas called "ethics" is as much a hermeneutical product wrought from the Judaic heritage as a series of phenomenological observations. Decoding the Levinas's philosophy of Judaism within a Heideggerian and Pauline framework, Fagenblat uses biblical, rabbinic, and Maimonidean texts to provide sustained interpretations of the philosopher's work. Ultimately he calls for a reconsideration of the relation between tradition and philosophy, and of the meaning of faith after the death of epistemology.

Emmanuel Levinas' Conceptual Affinities with Liberation Theology analyzes Levinas' work in relation to two important liberation theologians, Gustavo Gutiérrez and Jon Sobrino, whose scholarship, like his, needs to be brought into greater contemporary debate about the subject's encounter with the other. More specifically, this book argues that for Levinas, Gutiérrez, and Sobrino, commitment to the neighbor is the necessary context for «understanding» God. They posit the human other as the possibility of the subject's subjectivity. To be human is to act with love toward one's neighbor. Thus, the author articulates the possibility of reading Levinas' philosophy as a revalidation of one of the truths of Christianity: the concern for the humanity of every human person as expressed in Christian theology in general and liberation theology in particular. In order to show the relevance of Levinas' philosophy for Christian theology in general, the author discusses three Christian scholars, Enrique Dussel, Jean-Luc Marion, and Michael Purcell. Although they challenge some aspects of Levinas' philosophy, they nevertheless see its significance for Christian theological anthropology. The discussion concludes by proposing Levinas' philosophy and liberation theology's turn to the neighbor as significant for addressing contemporary socio-political and ethnic conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Strives to radically utilize Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical framework, bringing it into conversation with the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, to construct a post-ontotheological account of theology that unites theory and praxis. By allowing Levinas's Judaism to challenge von Balthasar's Catholicism, Glenn Morrison develops a perspective that is both theologically rich and philosophically provocative"--Provided by publisher.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) emerged as an influential philosophical voice in the final decades of the twentieth century, and his reputation has continued to flourish and increase in our own day. His central themes--the primacy of the ethical and the core of ethics as our responsibility to and for others--speak to readers from a host of disciplines and perspectives. However, his writings and thought are challenging and difficult. The Oxford Handbook of Levinas contains essays that aim to clarify and engage Levinas and his writings in a number of ways. Some focus on central themes of his work, others on the ways in which he read and was influenced by figures from Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant to Blanchot, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida. And there are essays on how his thinking has been appropriated in moral and political thought, psychology, film criticism, and more, and on the relation between his thinking and religious themes and traditions. Finally, several essays deal primarily with how readers have criticized him and found him wanting. The volume exposes and explores both the depth of Levinas's philosophical work and the range of applications to which it has been put, with special attention to clarifying why his interests in the human condition, the crisis of civilization, the centrality and character of ethics and morality, and the very meaning of human experience should be of interest to the widest range of readers.

Publisher Description

The thought of Emmanuel Levinas is of increasing importance for those working in the diverse fields of phenomenology and continental philosophy, French studies, Jewish studies, ethics, politics and religious studies. In this book, Nigel Zimmermann gives proper attention to the 'incarnate' aspect of the 'other' in Levinas' work, providing a theological reading that explores the basic strands of Levinas' thinking regarding the concrete nature of human living. Human communities, in which politics inevitably plays a crucial role, may learn much from the theological shape of Levinas' philosophy. In all his writings, Levinas cannot be understood apart from his roles as a Talmudic commentator and as a radical thinker who suffered personally under the shadow of the Holocaust.

In Origins of the Other, Moyn offers new readings of the work of a host of crucial thinkers, such as Hannah Arendt, Karl Barth, Karl Lowith, Gabriel Marcel, Franz Rosenzweig, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jean Wahl, who help explain why Levinas's thought evolved as it did."--Jacket.