Emmanuel Levinas

Emmanuel Levinas (January 12th 1906 - December 25th 1995) is a Philosophe French of origin Lithuania nne, born with Kaunas and naturalized French in 1930. It received as of its childhood a Jewish education traditional, mainly centered on the Torah. It was introduced later with the Talmud by enigmatic “the Mr Chouchani”.

Levinas was deeply influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, which it met at the University of Freiburg and from which it introduced work in France, in particular the Cartesian Méditations of Husserl whose it ensured the translation. Its philosophical work was also marked by the Jewish tradition, and the Jewish condition itself, Levinas having been interned in a prison camp Jews lasting the Second world war.

The philosophical teaching of Emmanuel Levinas is carried out today within the Institut of Studies Lévinassiennes, founded in the year 2000 by the philosophers Benny Levy, Alain Finkielkraut and Bernard-Henri Levy.

Biography

From Lithuania in France

Levinas was born with Kaunas in Lithuania on December 30th, 1905 (according to the Calendrier Julien into force then in the Russian empire, according to the Gregorian Calendrier is on January 12th, 1906).

Wire of Jehiel Levyne (Levinas) and Deborah Gurvic, Emmanuel is the elder one of a family of three children: Boris (born in 1909) and Aminadab (born in 1913).

His/her father is bookseller and the family speaks Russian. A particular professor teaches with the three children (three boys) Hebrew starting from the reading of the Bible.

The war of 1914 pushes the family to be fled in Russia with Kharkov (Ukraine) until in 1920. It is with Kharkov that Emmanuel Levinas enters to the college, in spite of the numerus clausus (discriminatory limitation) making it possible only five Jewish children to be allowed there. It reads the Russian great writers there, in particular Pouchkine, Lermontov, Tolstoï and Dostoïevski.

During years 1920, Levinas goes to France to Strasbourg to follow studies of philosophy (1923-1927). It meets Maurice Blanchot with which it will maintain a deep friendship.

From 1928 to 1929, he is the pupil, with Freiburg-in-Brisgau (Germany) of Edmund Husserl (two six-month periods), then of Martin Heidegger (one six-month period). After having supported its thesis of doctorate Theory of the intuition in phenomenology of Husserl (1930), it is established in Paris.

In 1931, it obtains French nationality. Married to Raissa (Marguerite) Lévi (1932), it works with Alliance Universal Jew (A.I.U.) of 1933 to 1939.
Les Levinas will have three children, Eliane, deceased in low age, Simone Hansel (born Levinas), doctor-pediatrist, and the Pianiste and type-setter Michael Levinas.

Levinas is mobilized in 1939 and is made captive in Rennes; then transported to Germany, close to Hanover. It is captive in a Arbeitskommando (commando of work) during five years, where the Jewish prisoners of war like certain catholic priests were gathered. It however wrote there the essence of its book Of the existence to existing the . After the war, it gives comments talmudic to the Conferences of the Jewish Intellectuals of France, brought together in the Lectures Talmudiques and Nouvelles Readings Talmudiques . In spite of its predilection in this field, he will never claim himself “talmudist”, i.e. main be Talmud, but “amateur, with all the connotation in love with the term”.

From 1964 to 1975, Lévinas will undertake its university career. This one will lead it of Poitiers, by Paris-Nanterre (1967), in the Sorbonne (1973).

In the years 1970 and 1980, the invitation of the Jewish community of Freiburg (Swiss), Lévinas ensures some courses the Université of Freiburg (thought Jewish, Husserl, interpretation of the Tora).

Emmanuel Levinas dies in Paris on December 25th, 1995 during the festival of Hanoucca.

The discovery of German phenomenology

The thought of Levinas meets with the crossroads of phenomenology and existential philosophy. She questions the bases of ontology to present humanism like “ethical place” of the transcendence. Glance towards the past (memory) and the future, this thought tears off the subject on the ground on which this last thinks of resting (transcendence) “to plant it” in a new way in a humanity which does not cease retracting throughout its own history (immanence).

Experiment of the war

Emmanuel Levinas seldom evokes its five years of captivity in a Stalag in Germany. However, it was wounded until in its flesh by the Antisémitisme, following the disappearance of its family in the camps. The experiment of humiliation and the useless suffering lead it to profess its Judaism like a humanism. For him, the anti-semitism indicates the hatred of the other man. Its experiment rests on one lived in charge of very diverse affects, on not named traumatic facts.

On the basis of its experiment of the war and the camps of work, Levinas “dismounts” philosophy to be it and proposes a philosophy of the other. Between the had a presentiment of hitlerism and the pressing responsibility to teach the future generations on the duty to remember, Levinas endeavors to carry on the history a glance without hatred nor resentment. Levinas was not with Auschwitz, however it lost all its family there. For him, to survive resembles a privilege. But in this adjournment of death, the Levinas survivor makes the strange experiment of a freedom which is discovered responsible for the other man ad infinitum.

God and the Shoah

After Auschwitz, the idea of God was essential like a different manner - even a “second religion” - to introduce God and the direction of the human suffering. In answer to the totalitarian assertion of the human thought and its rooting until major of the being, Levinas goes - to leaving the war to attempt to deploy an ethical which considers the suffering from the point of view interhumaine, i.e. in an not-indifference of the ones with the others.

To Emmanuel Levinas, the concept of Transcendance emerges from a suffering Humanité and evokes outset the Athéisme, i.e. the condition of a separate being. It is a question neither of assisting of divine nor to deny it. To refer to the absolute as an atheist is to be offered to the dialog with the Other and not to reduce it to the object of a speech. By doing this, Levinas does not seek to present evidence of the existence of God. It indicates how occurs the emphase the infinite one in finished. It is not God who is required in the next one, it is the Different one which obsesses the Conscience in the proximity of next and which means its subordination to to him Others.

Emmanuel Levinas is essential today like one of the most original thinkers of our time.

Philosophy

Introduction to the reading of two major works

Totality and infinite date completion of the phenomenologic period of Levinas. The “Epiphany of the face” is approached there in a gesture phénoménologique.
Differently than to be or Beyond the gasoline breaks with the phenomenologic language following criticisms of Derrida in Violence and Métaphysique .

Course of reading

Emmanuel Levinas is not an author easy to read. However, it is necessary to try to go as fast as possible in the middle of work. Here a way of reconciling these difficulties.

Ethical and Infinite (Dialogs with Philippe Nemo “the Book of Pocket”)
: A very easy introduction.
Totality and infinite : Preface and conclusions.
Differently than to be : the argument and the chapter six: In other words .
: Two major works.
Mr. Blanchot plural word in infinite maintenance .
: To include/understand the “not-report/ratio ratio” with the other.
J. Derrida Violence and metaphysical .
: To include/understand the need “for saying differently” the Otherness.
erotic Meditations : Test on Emmanuel Lévinas of Marc-Alain Ouaknin

Presentation of Emmanuel Levinas in its time

Levinas marked the philosophy of the end of the 20th century. By its works, it is present in many contemporary debates, as if it had anticipated them. Its thought appeared to be incarnated in one time (the years 1990), so much so that the reference to Levinas ended up being worth by itself. The register, the cultural center in which the reference to Levinas was essential is that of ethics. But what ethics, in particular for Levinas?

During the glorious Thirty, all that concerns morals related to the middle-class order and is rejected as tel. the great debates are marked by the Marxism, there is a political surdetermination of philosophy. Levinas, then in full activity, is not with the mode, which does not mean that this last is not attentive with the thought of its time. The attention of the Marxist thought to the history and the subordination of the individual to the political project concern what Levinas calls “the Totality”, (cf “the death of the subject (which is an assembly of the speech for Lacan, Barthes, Foucault, Lévi-Strauss)”). The return of subjectivity during the recession of the years 1970 makes possible the attention in Levinas.

At this time, the need for réapproprier acting individuality is large, it is the period of the humanitarian, of altruistic morals, even of ethical inflation (“ we are the world ”). The responsibility lévinassienne seems to be a suitable theoretical framework at that time. However, y-a it not there a complete misinterpretation? The responsibility lévinassienne is a determination originating in the subject, preceding the psychological or sociological determinations. The thought of Levinas runs the risk then to be diverted in ideology.

Philosophical ethics should not be confused with the “ethical codes” which are born or develop in the years 1980: professional ethics (medical, journalistic), parcellized deontologies, contractualism, (one spoke about “waltz with the éthiquettes”)… This multiplication causes an ethical relativism which has nothing to do with the thought of Levinas, which does not have as an ambition to provide an ethical theory within the meaning of a moral code or of a prescriptive ethics to the Kantian direction (one can hear ethics like objectified morals, founded because, which makes Kant).

Ambition of Levinas

“To say the human one of the man”, to propose an ethics of ethics, a philosophy first of the subject as it is from the ethical start subject. Levinas thinks the report/ratio of the other like the infinite one whose “face”, in its nudity, is the trace. The “face” is a thing become concept: it is what comes to obliterate any definition of the Other, any finitisation. Here, it should be seen that the Other is not authentically other than if it is not only what it is, if it overflows its definition in the being (cf the kind of the other Platonic one). Conversely, impossibility of defining the Other brings back it to indefinite, overflowing, ad infinitum within the meaning of Levinas. Thus the “face” lévinassien is not reduced to the physical face, even if it leaves (phénoménologiquement) from there.

For Levinas, to meet the Other is to have the idea of the infinite one such as Descartes defines it, i.e. (by definition), to have the thought of what one cannot think, to have the idea of that which one cannot have idea, to wish what will be able to never fill my desire (because the report/ratio with the Other is Désir and kindness). From where this strange sentence of the first section of Totality and Infini : The metaphysical Desire of the absolutely Other is satisfied insofar as it is not it.

“To disfigure” somebody, it is to destroy his face by breaking up it, by reducing it to a whole of significant qualities. For Levinas, the face is naked, without qualities, a “hole in the Being” (Sartre), which makes think so that Plato known as of the Bien beyond the Being , idea that Levinas often begins again on its account. When I am confronted with the face, it questions to me. I am relieved, traumatisé, forced. “Ethics, it is what causes a disturbance in the subject”.
Thus, the register “right-thinking person” of middle-class ethics or egalitarianism, that of charity, the altruism, of the moralizing recrimination, is not that of Levinas because its postures of charity consolidate the subject in its identity, in its subjective capacity. My charity makes me good, whereas the ethical relation lévinassienne me traumatize. Thus the place of the misinterpretation in connection with Levinas is morals (cf Alain Badiou: morals ). Like Levinas writes it, “It is important at the most point not to be easily deceived morals” ( Totalité and infinite : Preface). What is it moral question at Levinas?

Not to be “easily deceived morals”

Levinas reflects from the point of view post-nietzschéenne: doesn't the name of morals convey the simple reflection of a culture? For the aporia Kant/Nietzsche, it is necessary to make “definition of indefinable”.

“In the altruistic gesture, something of my freedom, of my power, finds to be exerted”. The idea rousseauist of “natural pity”, coming from the identification to others suffering, suggests that “the human one of the man” would hold in the division of the distress. On the contrary, at Levinas, one finds a despair vis-a-vis the inhumanity of the man facing human, a rupture of the humanistic tradition. Levinas, as an survivor of the Shoah where all its family perishes, integrated the “banality of the evil” of Arendt, question which returns to the Kantian “radicality of the evil” (before any significant action, there is a radical evil which forms compost). Thus, at Levinas, there is no repression out of human of inhuman, not of “empire of the evil”. The evil is a load to be carried, indefinable, impossible to circumscribe, infinite.

Consequently, the characteristic of the responsibility vis-a-vis this evil is to be also infinite, with the direction where one in finished forever with it. “More I am right, more I am unjust”. Sympathy is thus not for Levinas a natural affection, on which one can base a morals of the feeling, it is on the contrary “against-nature”.

Ethics for Levinas is what is in me, but does not come from me. Of myself, I persevere in my being, my “profit-sharing” or conatus essendi (Spinoza). Something from abroad comes to break this spontaneousness, “to satisfy me”, to cut me into two between me and me. It is the figure of the “defection to be it”, of the face of the other. It is the “face” of the other which makes effraction in my being and breaks my peace.

The direction of Totality and Infini

Dismissal of ontology

This design of the otherness contradicts Western philosophy, always founded on an ontology, in what the “other” is not let think like being. “Differently than to be, and not to be differently” (Levinas). The face is what prevents me from existing naturally, and “the human one of the man” consists precisely of this mode of defection of oneself. The inhuman one would consist on the contrary in the perpetual profit-sharing of the subject. The inhuman one consists then of the identity “sujet=être”. “The being, it is the evil” like writes it Levinas (not without provocative humor). That returns to Heidegger: “The things are, the human one exists”. To bring back a subject (exclusively) to its being is a possibility of inhumanity, whereas really human subjectivity is crossed by the face. “The subject is structured like different in the same one” (Levinas).

The ethical problem/justice

There is thus at Levinas a desubjectivisation of the subject by the face: the subject is faded upon the departure, in an pre-originating way. The practical effects of ethics lévinassienne relate in particular to the policy, even if this one were not worked by Lévinas as such. The two key concepts for the questions of the political type are: “justice” and the “third”. The policy (or justice) thus seems a “ethics of ethics”: the defection of the subject vis-a-vis the face shows that the ethical question is played in face to face, i.e. to two, that in is then thirds?

Without faces, the thirds come to put forward an ethical claim, an ethical objection of ethics itself. What becomes then the ethical duet, basically asymmetrical and uneven (the subject does not have a face) at the time of the irruption of the third? Is the ethical report/ratio ruined by the interchangeable places on which justice is based since Kant?

In this ethical tension/justice, the equality poses problem because the singularity of the face cannot there be put forward. The incompatibility of these two heterogeneous kinds is one of the great questions put to the reader of Levinas.

Indeed, the solution lévinassienne with this problem is of a diachronic nature, it occurs in a series from interruptions:
Any policy carries the danger of a tyranny if it is left with it-même.
The justicielle interruption of face to face must thus itself be stopped by the point of view of éthique.
Levinas gives the indication of the court:

before the judgment: ethics,
during the judgment: equality in front of the law,
ethical again.

This can correspond to the figure of the militancy: to stop by ethics an even legal process (voluntary reapers).

Conclusion

The thought of Levinas shows the subject désubjectivé as it is responsible, it is thus not a metaphysics of the subject. Its thesis is that subjectivity is structured like “other in the same one”. Ethics enracine thus not in polishes, a common world, a being together in a place. It is not contained in “us”, but is held in a “out-place”, in a report/ratio I you where nobody can replace me (as in death). The ethical unicity of the not-substitutable subject confronts the subject with the question of its freedom, because the subject is relieved there of any capacity. What makes say to Levinas To be free, it is to do what nobody can do in my place.

There are at Levinas an ethical paradox/justice. The policy is not posed like autonomous sphere: “political afterwards! ” (Collection talmudic: Beyond the verse ), it cannot be first. On the contrary philosophy first at Lévinas is ethics, the policy is a question which comes after an answer. The question of the “justicielle” equality, if it comes before the ethical answer, shorts-circuit the ethical relation. How ethical dissymmetry can it be symmetrized in justice, in a passage of 2 with 2+n, this is the lévinassienne political question par excellence.

Works

The thought of Levinas meets with the crossroads of the Phénoménologie and existential philosophy. She questions the bases of the ontology to present humanism like “ethical place” of the Transcendance. Glance towards the past (memory) and the future, this thought tears off the subject on the ground on which this last thinks of resting (transcendence) “to plant it” in a new way in a humanity which does not cease retracting throughout its own history (immanence and incarnation). To speak in such a context, it is to let resound “the word of God” within a “holy history”, because fully directed towards the other man.

Periods

Works of Emmanuel Levinas are let gather in four periods:

immediate context of the Second world war (1929-1949),

1930 the Theory of the intuition in phenomenology of Husserl, Paris, Alcan
1934 Some reflections on the philosophy of the hitlerism
1935 Of the escape
1947 From the Existence to existing, Paris, ED. review Fountain
1949 By discovering the existence with Husserl and Heidegger

the presence of Levinas within the Jewish Diaspora (1949-1963),

1961 Totality and infinite, Test on the externality, $the Hague, Mr. Nijhoff
1963 Difficult Freedom

years of university education (1963-1974),

1972 Humanism of the other man, Montpellier, Fata Morgana
1974 Differently than to be or beyond the gasoline, $the Hague, M.Nijhoff

and the time of the retirement (1975-1995).

1982 Of God who comes to the idea (Texts of 1973 to 1980)
1991 Between us. Writings on thinking it of the other, Paris, Grasset (Texts of 1951 to 1988)
1994 the Unforeseen ones of the history, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, coll “Tests” (Texts of 1929 to 1992)
1995 Otherness and transcendence (Texts of 1967 to 1989)

Such a presentation is delayed mainly with philosophical works of the author. So that the list is complete, it is also advisable to have for the spirit the writings talmudic which are registered simultaneously with the whole of the work of the author. There still, the publication date of the books joins together a collective of speech or talmudic readings.

talmudic readings:

1968 Four talmudic readings (Texts of 1963 to 1966)
1977 Of crowned with the Saint. Five new talmudic readings (Texts of 1969 to 1975)
1982 It Beyond the verse (Texts of 1969 to 1980)
1996 New talmudic readings (Texts of 1974 to 1989)

Principal works

Of the Escape, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1962
By discovering the existence with Husserl and Heidegger, Paris, J. Vrin, new edition aug. 1967, 3rd edition 1974
Four talmudic readings, Paris, Midnight, 1968, new edition in “Critical” coll, 1976
Difficult freedom, Paris, Albin Michel, coll “Presence of the Judaism”, new edition aug. 1976, 3rd edict. 1983, 4th edition 1995
On Maurice Blanchot, Fata Morgana, coll “Tests”, 1976, new edition 1995
Proper names, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1976
Of Crowned with the saint: five new talmudic readings, Paris Midnight, coll “Criticizes” 1977
Existence with existing, Paris, J. Vrin, 1978, new edition, 1993
Time and the Other, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1980
It Beyond the verse: talmudic readings and speech, Paris, Midnight, coll “Criticizes” 1982
infinite Ethique and, (dialogs of Emmmanuel Levinas and Philippe Nemo), Paris, Fayard, coll “interior Space”, 1982
Difficile freedom, Paris, LGF, the Book of pocket, coll “Biblio-tests”, 1984
Transcendance and intelligibility, Geneva, Labor and Fides, 1984, new edition 1996
Proper names, Paris, the Book of pocket, coll “Biblio tests” 1987
Per Hour of the nations, Paris, Minuit, “Critical” coll, 1988
Autrement than to be or beyond the gasoline, Paris, LGF, the Book of pocket, coll “Biblio-tests”, 1990
Of God who comes to the idea, Paris, J.Vrin, 2nd edict. review and aug. 1992
Death and time, Paris, LGF, the Book of pocket, coll “Biblio-tests”, 1992
God, death and time, Paris, Grasset, 1993
the intrigue of the infinite one: texts joined together and presented by Marie-Anne Lescourret, Paris, Flammarion, 1994
Freedom and command, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, coll “Tests”, 1994
Otherness and transcendence, Montpellier, Fata Morgana, coll “Tests”, 1995
God, death and time, LGF, the Book of pocket, coll “Biblio-tests”, 1995
New talmudic readings, Paris, Midnight, 1996
Except Subject, LGF, the Book of Pocket, coll “Biblio-tests”, 1997
Of the Escape, Paris, LGF, the Book of pocket, coll “Biblio-tests”, 1998
Ethics like philosophy first, Paris, Shores, coll “Shores pocket” 1998

See too

Internal bonds

Key words:

Others
Ethical

Philosophy:

Jewish Philosophy

To also see:

External bonds

primary Bibliography and secondary complete of the Institute of studies lévinasiennes.
a Primary Bibliography (1929-2007) and Secondary (1990-2007) By the Company Levinas Dutchwoman in co-operation with the University for the Social sciences á Utrecht. Under the responsibility of Dr. Joachim Duyndam.
Institute of studies lévinasiennes
Institute of studies lévinasiennes of Paris
Espacethique: Venture ethical philosophical Site responsibility devoted to the life and work for Emmanuel Levinas. Texts and comments, indications bibliographical are available in various languages. Directory of philosophical bonds of sites and texts on line.
On the traces of Emmanuel Levinas
File of the Noesis review devoted to the metaphysics of Levinas

1906-2006: Centenary of the birth of Emmanuel Levinas

Association for the centenary

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