Emmanuel levinas biography summary forms

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) was a Talmudist, ethicist, and continental philosopher whose thought has left a lasting imprint on contemporary philosophy and theology. His sophisticated ethical system that understands the self to be radically responsible for the Other has challenged conventional theories of selfhood, subjectivity, consciousness, ethics, metaphysics, language, and social relations. Furthermore, his ethical philosophy is beginning to find its way into psychological discourse concerning psychotherapy, human development, and definitions of selfhood.

Levinas was born in Kaunas (a.k.a. Kovno), Lithuania, in 1906 to a moderately affluent, Orthodox Jewish family. In his formative years, he was educated in traditional Hebrew school and was also heavily influenced by the work of Russian novelists such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. In 1923, Levinas traveled to Strasbourg, France, for formal education in philosophy. Shortly after, he went to Freiburg, Germany, where he studied...

First published Sun Jul 23, 2006; substantive revision Wed Aug 3, 2011

Levinas's philosophy has been called ethics. If ethics means rationalist self-legislation and freedom (deontology), the calculation of happiness (utilitarianism), or the cultivation of virtues (virtue ethics), then Levinas's philosophy is not an ethics. Levinas claimed, in 1961, that he was developing a “first philosophy.” This first philosophy is neither traditional logic nor metaphysics, however. It is an interpretive, phenomenological description of the rise and repetition of the face-to-face encounter, or the intersubjective relation at its precognitive core; viz., being called by another and responding to that other. If precognitive experience, that is, human sensibility, can be characterized conceptually, then it must be described in what is most characteristic to it: a continuum of sensibility and affectivity, in other words, sentience and emotion in their interconnection.

This entry will focus on Levinas's philosophy, rather than his Talmudic lessons (see the bibliography) and his essays on Judaism (notably, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, 1963). Levinas's philosophical project can be called constructivist. He proposes phenomenological description and a hermeneutics of lived experience in the world. He lays bare levels of experience described neither by Husserl nor by Heidegger. These layers of experience concern the encounter with the world, with the human other, and a reconstruction of a layered interiority characterized by sensibility and affectivity.

1. Introduction

1.1 Overview of Levinas's Philosophy

Jacques Derrida pointed out in 1967 that “Levinas does not want to propose laws or moral rules…it is a matter of [writing] an ethics of ethics.” An ethics of ethics means, here, the exploration of conditions of possibility of any interest in good actions or lives. In light of that, it can be said t

1. Life and Career

• 1905: Born January 12 in Kaunas (Kovno, in Russian), Lithuania. Lithuania is a part of pre-Revolutionary Russia and the surrounding culture ‘tolerates’ Jews. He is the eldest child in a middle class family and has two brothers, Boris and Aminadab.
• 1914: In the wake of the War, Levinas’ family emigrates to Karkhov, in the Ukraine. The family returns to Lithuania in 1920, two years after the country obtains independence from the Revolutionary government.
• 1923: Goes to study philosophy in Strasbourg (France). Levinas studies philosophy with Maurice Pradines, psychology with Charles Blondel, and sociology with Maurice Halbwachs. Meets Maurice Blanchot who will become a close friend.
• 1928–29: Levinas travels to Freiburg to study with Edmund Husserl; he attends Heidegger’s seminar.
• 1930: Publishes his thesis in French, La théorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl [The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology].
• 1931: French translation, by Levinas, of Husserl’s Sorbonne lectures, Cartesian Meditations, in collaboration with Gabrielle Peiffer.
• 1932: Marries Raïssa Levi, whom he had known since childhood.
• 1934: Levinas publishes a philosophical analysis of “Hitlerism”, Quelques réflexions sur la philosophie de l’hitlérisme [Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism].
• 1935: Levinas publishes an original essay in hermeneutic ontology, De l’évasion [On Escape], in Émile Bréhier’s journal Recherches philosophiques (reprinted in 1982).
• 1939: Naturalized French; enlists in the French officer corps.
• 1940: Captured by the Nazis; imprisoned in Fallingbostel, a labor camp for officers. His Lithuanian family is murdered. His wife Raïssa, and daughter Simone are hidden by religious nuns in Orléans.
• 1947: Following the publication of De l’ex