Emmanuel Levinas

This text deals with the whole of Emmanuel Levinas's work. One of the key philosophers in the post-Heideggerian field, Levinas has become an increasingly central presence in contemporary French philosophy, spanning and encapsulating the major philosophical and ethical concerns of the 20th century. Levinas engages with the work of Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Rosenzweig, Weil, Buber and Derrida. He manages to combine the insights of a phenomenological training with the demands of a Jewish culture and its basis in the endless exegesis of Talmudic reading. His subjects include the other, the body, infinity, ethics, aesthetics, politics, the nature of philosophical language itself, together with its totalizing impulse. Sean Hand examines Levinas's phenomenological training, the influence of Heidegger, the major works "Totality and Infinity" and "Otherwise Than Being or Being Beyond Essence" , Levinas's texts on God and infinity, his writings on aesthetics, and his views on the state.