SLIDES - LEVINAS AND KILLING - SHAW - 2018.pptx

Review of Simon Critchley, The Problem with Levinas, Alexis Dianda (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 176, £ 25.00, ISBN 9780198738763 Universa. Recensioni di FIlosofia – Anno 5, Vol. 2 (2016) http://universa.filosofia.unipd.it/index.php/Universa/article/view/465/508

2018

A basic introduction to the Life and thought of Emmanuel Lévinas, presented in the cloister of New Melleray. A discussion of certain key themes: the face of the other, ethics, and the image of God in man. The second lecture concerns the interest of Lévinas in the Jewish tradition, in a philosophy that begins from Jerusalem, rather than Athens.

French Studies: A Quarterly Review, 2007

Addressing Levinas, edited with Antje Kapust and Kent Still, 2005

Table of Contents and Nelson and Kapust, Preface An international group of scholars on a corpus becoming increasingly central to contemporary continental philosophy and ethics. At a time of great and increasing interest in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this volume draws readers into what Levinas described as "philosophy itself"--"a discourse always addressed to another." Thus the philosopher himself provides the thread that runs through these essays on his writings, a thread guided by the importance of the fact of being addressed--the significance of the Saying which is much more than the Said. The authors, leading Levinas scholars and interpreters from across the globe, explore the philosopher's relationship to a wide range of intellectual traditions, including theology, philosophy of culture, Jewish thought, phenomenology and the history of philosophy. They also engage Levinas's contribution to ethics, politics, law, justice, psychoanalysis and epistemology, among other themes. In their radical singularity, these essays reveal the inalienable alterity at the heart of Levinas's ethics. At the same time, each essay remains open to the others, and to the perspectives and positions they advocate. Thus the volume, in its quality and diversity, enacts an authentic encounter with Levinas's thought, embodying an intellectual ethics by virtue of its style. Bringing together contributions from philosophy, theology, literary theory, gender studies, and political theory, this book offers a deeper and more thorough encounter with Levinas's ethics. It shows readers a productive approach to a body of work that is becoming increasingly central to contemporary continental philosophy and ethics. "Emmanuel Levinas is today generally recognized to be one of the most important European thinkers of the twentieth century. If one wished to read a single volume to get a sense of the range and depth of contemporary criticism on this major, indispensable figure, Addressing Levinas would have to be it. This outstanding collection of essays brings together many of the best-known commentators on Levinas’s work—as well as some of his finest translators into English—on a variety of essential topics, from Levinas’s original reinterpretation of ethics, ontology, and phenomenology (for example, his analyses of the face, the Other, and death) to his important but often neglected political works, his rich Talmudic readings, and his suggestive if sometimes problematic relation to psychoanalysis and questions of sexual difference. Addressing Levinas is a collection wholly worthy of its most eminent and, sadly, now silent addressee." — Michael Naas, Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University "Given the rapidly growing interest in Levinas, this volume has to be seen as an important contribution. Addressing Levinas gathers together the best-known scholars working today in French thought. Frequently reflecting on contemporary events, these essays demonstrate that Levinas's thought is not only appropriate but more than ever trenchant." — Leonard Lawlor, Faudree-Hardin University Professor of Philosophy, The University of Memphis

Routledge, 2019

Proofs of my 3 page Preface to _Levinas and Analytic Philosophy: Second-Person Normativity and the Moral Life_

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2003

the cambridge companion to L E V I N A S Each volume in this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and non-specialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker.

Modern Judaism, 2000

Neither the life nor the work of Emmanuel Levinas, the remarkable French Jewish philosopher and talmudic commentator, fit easily into customary categories. Levinas, who died in Paris in late 1995 just a few weeks shy of his ninetieth birthday, was born in Lithuania and emigrated to France, becoming a French citizen in 1931. 1 While still in his early thirties Levinas seemed poised to enter a promising career as a philosophy professor. Then the Second World War broke out. Drafted into the French army, Levinas was soon captured and, in view of his status as a French soldier, was sent off to spend the next five years in Nazi prison camps. When the war ended he returned to Paris and soon found out that his family in Lithuania had been slaughtered. Levinas rebuilt his life and, some fifteen years later, finally began that promising academic career. He had in the meantime taken on an important role in Paris' growing postwar Jewish community as the head of a training institute for Jewish educators; he also spent many years learning Talmud with a noted teacher. 2 Levinas continued to participate actively in Jewish communal life in Paris both during his academic career and long after he retired from the university in 1976. Levinas' rich and complex life spanned many worlds. His work similarly resists disciplinary pigeonholes. He wrote with great acuity and mastery about philosophy, ethics, religion, literature, aesthetics, contemporary culture, and Jewish texts. His philosophical work is among the most important in the twentieth century. His several volumes of talmudic commentaries and his collection of essays on Jewish ideas and issues are also highly regarded. 3 His influence not only in philosophy and in Jewish thought, but in the humanities and social sciences as well, has been and continues to be significant. While scholars have generally acknowledged the exceptional nature of Levinas' life and the diversity of his work, they have been reluctant for the most part to admit what follows from this-that in order to understand Levinas' unique project as a whole, it may well be necessary to move beyond academic models and the disciplinary divisions they reflect. This does not, however, mean discarding academic procedures and distinctions; Levinas' work demands not something less than