LEVINAS, EMMANUEL
(1906–1995)

Emmanuel Levinas was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, of Jewish parents. His education familiarized him with the Hebrew Bible and the Russian novelists. After having studied at the gymnasiums in Kaunas and Charkow, Ukraine, he traveled to Strasbourg, where he studied philosophy from 1924 to 1929. He spent the academic year of 1928–1929 in Freiburg, where he attended the last seminars given by Edmund Husserl and the lectures and seminars of Martin Heidegger. His dissertation, La théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl, was published in 1930. In 1930 Levinas settled in Paris, where he worked for the Alliance Israélite Universelle and its schools located throughout the Mediterranean. In 1947 he became the director of the École Normale Israélite Orientale, the training facility for teachers of those schools. In 1961 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Poitiers and in 1967 at the University of Nanterre. In 1973 he moved to the Sorbonne, where he became an honorary professor in 1976. Levinas died on December 25, 1995, a few days before his 90th birthday.

Works

Until World War II most of Levinas's writing focused on introducing the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger into France. His early commentaries on their work were collected in En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (1949). His first personal essay was the article "De l'évasion" (1935), whose central question was whether it is possible to evade the totalizing tendency of being. The search for an answer coincided with the beginning of his criticism of Heidegger's ontology. Levinas's first personal book, with the anti-Heideggerian title De l'existence à l'existant (From Existence to Existents or From Being to Beings ), was published in 1947. In the same year he gave a lecture series under the title Le temps et l'autre (Time and the Other ), in which some central thoughts of his later work are anticipated. A part of De l'existence à l'existant to which Levinas later refers with approval is its phenomenology of il y a ("there is"), that is, being in its most general and indeterminate or empty sense, preceding all determination, order, and structure. Levinas describes it as a formless and obscure night and a silent murmur, an anonymous and chaotic atmosphere or field of forces from which no being can escape. It threatens the existing entities by engulfing and suffocating them. As such, being is horrible, not because it would kill—death is not an evasion from it—but because of its depersonalizing character. All beings are caught in the anonymity of this primordial materiality—much different from the giving essence of es gibt as described by Heidegger.

The work that made Levinas famous is Totalité et infini. Essai sur l'extériorité (1961). As an attack on the entirety of Western philosophy, including Heidegger's ontology, this work tries to show why philosophy has not been faithful to the most important facts of human existence and how its basic perspective should be replaced by another one. The "totality" of the title stands for the absolutization of a panoramic perspective from which reality is understood as an all-encompassing universe. All kinds of relation, separation, exteriority, and alterity are then reduced to internal moments of one totality. Borrowing from Plato's Sophist, Levinas affirms that Western philosophy reduces the other (to heteron ) to "the Same" (tauton ). The resulting tautology is an egology because the totalization is operated by the consciousness of an ego that does not recognize any irreducible heteronomy.

The relative truth of the ego's autonomy is shown in a phenomenology of the way in which human beings inhabit the world. Levinas characterizes this "economy" (from oikos = house, and nomos = law) as vitality and enjoyment of the elements. Implicitly polemicizing against Heidegger's description of Dasein 's being-in-the-world, he focuses on the dimension of human eating, drinking, walking, swimming, dwelling, and laboring, a dimension more primordial than the handling of tools and much closer to the natural elements than scientific or technological objectification.

The infinite (l'infini ), which Levinas contrasts with the totality, is another name for "the Other" insofar as this does not fit into the totality. In order to determine the relation between consciousness, the totality, and the infinite, Levinas refers to René Descartes's Meditations on the First Philosophy, in which Descartes insists on the fact that the idea of the infinite is original and cannot be deduced from any other idea. It surpasses the capacity of consciousness, which in it "thinks more than it can think" (see Levinas's Collected Philosophical Papers, p. 56). The relation between the ego and the infinite is one of transcendence: The infinite remains exterior to consciousness, although this is essentially related to its "height."

The concrete sense of the formal structure thus indicated is shown through a phenomenology of the human other, whose "epiphany" reveals an absolute command: As soon as I am confronted, I discover myself to be under an absolute obligation. The fact of the other's existence immediately reveals to me the basic ought of all ethics. On this level is and ought are inseparable. Instead of the other (l'autre or autrui ), Levinas often uses the expressions "the face" (le visage ) or "the speech" (la parole, also le langage ) because the other's looking at me and speaking to me are the two most striking expressions of the other's infinity or "height." As the relation between an economically established ego and the infinite other, the intersubjective relation is asymmetrical: The other appears primarily not as equal to me but rather as "higher" and commanding me. I am responsible for the other's life, a responsibility that puts infinite demands on me, but I cannot order another to give his or her life for me.

In his second major work, Autrement qu'être ou audelà de l'essence (1974), Levinas continues his analyses of the relationship between the ego and the other but now emphasizes the basic structure of the ego, or rather of the "me" in the accusative, as put into question, accused, and unseated by the other. The relationship is described as nonchosen responsibility, substitution, obsession, being hostage, persecution. Subjectivity (the "me" of me voici ) is determined as a nonchosen being-for-the-other and, thus, as basically nonidentical with itself, a passivity more or otherwise passive than the passivity that is opposed to activity. Subjectivity is primarily sensibility, being touched and affected by the other, vulnerability.

In the course of his analyses Levinas discovered that the other, me, and the transcendence that relates and separates them do not fit into the framework of phenomenology: Neither the other nor I (me) is phenomenon; transcendence does not have the structure of intentionality. Through phenomenology Levinas thus arrived at another level of thinking. He did not join Heidegger's call for a new ontology, however.

In Autrement qu'être Levinas gives a new description of the way being "is": Esse is interesse ; being is an active and transitive "interestingness" (intéressement ), which permeates all beings and weaves them together in a network of mutual interest. If ontology is the study of (this) being, it is not able to express the other, transcendence, and subjectivity. Transcendence surpasses being. Appealing to Plato, who characterized the good as epekeina tès ousias, Levinas points at transcendence, infinity, and otherness as "otherwise" and "beyond" the realm of being (or essence).

The other, subjectivity, and transcendence—but then also morality, affectivity, death, suffering, freedom, love, history, and many other (quasi-)phenomena—resist, not only phenomenology and ontology, but all kinds of objectification and thematization. As soon as they are treated in a reflective discourse, they are converted into a said (dit ). The saying (dire ), in which the "otherwise than being" (that which is not a phenomenon, a being, or a theme) addresses itself to an addressee, is lost in the text of the said. However, thematization and objectification are inevitable, especially in philosophy and science, but also in the practical dimensions of law, economy, and politics. The organization of justice cannot do without generalization and grouping of individuals into totalities. The transition from the asymmetrical relation between the other and me to the generalities of justice is founded in the fact that the other human who, here and now, obligates me infinitely somehow represents all other humans.

How does the intersubjective and asymmetric transcendence differ from the relationship to God? "Otherness," "infinity," and "beyond" do not apply to God in the same way as to the human other. God is neither an object nor a you; no human being can meet with God directly, but God has left a trace. The infinite responsibility of the one for the other refers to an election that precedes freedom. In coming from an immemorial, anachronical "past," responsibility indicates the "preoriginary" "illeity" of God. The il or ille of "the most high" is sharply distinguished from the chaotic anonymity of il y a ; the dimensions of economy, morality, and justice separate the indeterminacy of being from the beyond-all-determinacy of God. However, as the practical and theoretical recognition of the relationship between God and humans, religion cannot be separated from ethics: The only way to venerate God is through devotion to human others.

Besides the two books summarized here, Levinas wrote many articles. Most of these were collected in Humanisme de l'autre homme (1972), De Dieu qui vient à l'idée (1982), Hors sujet (1987), and Entre nous (1991).

Like all other philosophers, Levinas has convictions that cannot be reduced to universally shared experiences, common sense, or purely rational principles. In addition to his philosophical work he wrote extensively on Jewish questions from an orthodox Jewish, and especially Talmudic, point of view. In his philosophical writings he quotes the Bible perhaps as often as William Shakespeare or Fëdor Dostoevsky, but these quotations are not meant to replace philosophical justification of his assertions. Phenomenological rigor and emphasis are typical of his method, even where he points beyond the dimensions of phenomena and conceptuality.

See also Consciousness in Phenomenology; Descartes, René; Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich; Heidegger, Martin; Husserl, Edmund; Infinity in Theology and Metaphysics; Ontology; Phenomenology; Plato.

Bibliography

A complete bibliography of primary and secondary texts published between 1929 and 1989 is given in Roger Burggraeve, Emmanuel Levinas; une bibliographie primaire et secondaire (1929–1985) avec complément 1985–1989. Leuven: Peeters, 1990.

The most important philosophical books of Levinas are:

La théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl. Paris: Alcan, 1930; 2nd ed., 1963. Translated by A. Orianne as The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

De l'existence à l'existant. Paris, 1947; 2nd ed., 1978. Translated by A. Lingis as Existence and Existents. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978.

Le temps et l'autre. Montpellier, 1979 (2nd ed. of Levinas's contribution to Le choix, le monde, l'existence [Paris, 1948]). Translated by R. Cohen as Time and the Other. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987.

En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Paris, 1949; 2nd ed., Paris: Vrin, 1967. Partially translated by A. Lingis in Collected Philosophical Papers (v. infra).

Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l'extériorité. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961. Translated by A. Lingis as Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.

Humanisme de l'autre homme. Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1972.

Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974. Translated by A. Lingis as Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981.

De Dieu qui vient à l'idée. Paris: Vrin, 1982.

Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by A. Lingis. Boston: Nijhoff, 1987. Contains the English translation of twelve thematic essays from several volumes and journals.

Hors sujet. Montpellier, 1987.

Entre nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l'autre. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1991.

secondary literature

Bernasconi, R., and S. Critchley, eds. Re-reading Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Bernasconi, R., and D. Wood, eds. The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other. London: Routledge, 1988.

Chalier, C., and M. Abensour, eds. Emmanuel Levinas. Paris: Editions de l'Herne, 1991.

Cohen, R., ed. Face to Face with Levinas. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986.

Greisch, J., and J. Rolland, eds. Emmanuel Levinas. L'éthique comme philosophie première. Paris, 1993.

Peperzak, A., ed. Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Religion, Literature and Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Peperzak, A. To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1993.

Wyschogrod, E. Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974.

Adriaan Peperzak (1996)