Re Reading Levinas

These essays provoke new responses to the work of the eminent French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas through an analysis of how the problematics of reading, deconstruction, feminism, and psychotherapy complicate and deepen Levinas's account of responsibility. The re-reading presented here continues and expands on the long-standing debate between Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Published in English for the first time are two key texts in this debate: "Wholly Otherwise" by Levinas and "At this very moment in this work here I am" by Derrida.

How might the ethical philosophy of the renowned French thinker Emmanuel Levinas relate to literature? Because his philosophy addresses the very opening of ethical experience, it cannot be applied readily as a critical method to literary texts. Yet Levinas's work, studded as it is with literary sources and quotations, demands a literary account. With an attitude at once respectful and interrogative, closely attentive to Levinas's texts while in dialogue with readings by Derrida, Blanchot, and Bataille, Altered Reading shows how the thread of the literary leads directly to the internal tensions of Levinas's ethical discourse. Jill Robbins provides a comprehensive critical account of Levinas's early and mature philosophy as well as later key transitional essays. In an invaluable appendix, she includes her own translation of an important, previously untranslated essay by Bataille on Levinas. Altered Reading will interest philosophers, literary critics, scholars of religion, and others drawn to Levinas's work.

Levinas's idea of ethics as a relation of responsibility to others has become highly influential. Simon Critchley proposes a dramatic new way of reading Levinas's work, and provides a less familiar, more troubling, account of it. He argues that Levinas's fundamental problem was the attempt to escape the tragic fatality of Heidegger's philosophy.

Re-reading Derrida: Perspectives on Mourning and its Hospitalities, edited by Tony Thwaites and Judith Seaboyer, is a unique collaborative exploration of the legacies of the late philosopher, Jacques Derrida, across a wide variety of fields. Anchoring the book are two major essays on mourning by two of the best-known Derridean thinkers today, who were close friends of Derrida: J. Hillis Miller and Derek Attridge. Each of the other essays has been written to respond to these, and—in a novel move—to at least two of the other contributions. As a result, the very form of the book is a way of exploring the thematics of hospitality, and the ways in which disciplines open themselves to one another, extending lines of flight across the archipelagos of knowledge—the politics of the memorial, poetry, trauma, film, neoliberalism, the novel, and psychoanalysis. Throughout the book themes and concerns recur, each time refracted, developed, and questioned under the pressures of new conjunctures. As the editors’ Introduction argues, what the book seeks to show is not that a certain general body of theoretical work can be applied in all sorts of areas, but something more interesting: that from the outset, theoretical work itself takes on its meaning only in its grappling with the specific, the singular, even the unique. Miller’s and Attridge’s essays have at their heart, after all, the loss of a friend.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1996) has exerted a profound influence on 20th-century continental philosophy. This anthology, including Levinas's key philosophical texts over a period of more than forty years, provides an ideal introduction to his thought and offers insights into his most innovative ideas. Five of the ten essays presented here appear in English for the first time. An introduction by Adriaan Peperzak outlines Levinas's philosophical development and the basic themes of his writings. Each essay is accompanied by a brief introduction and notes. This collection is an ideal text for students of philosophy concerned with understanding and assessing the work of this major philosopher.

This volume of essays, all but one previously unpublished, investigates the question of Levinas&’s relationship to feminist thought. Levinas, known as the philosopher of the Other, was famously portrayed by Simone de Beauvoir as a patriarchal thinker who denigrated women by viewing them as the paradigmatic Other. Reconsideration of the validity of this interpretation of Levinas and exploration of what more positively can be derived from his thought for feminism are two of this volume&’s primary aims. Levinas breaks with Heidegger&’s phenomenology by understanding the ethical relation to the Other, the face-to-face, as exceeding the language of ontology. The ethical orientation of Levinas&’s philosophy assumes a subject who lives in a world of enjoyment, a world that is made accessible through the dwelling. The feminine presence presides over this dwelling, and the feminine face represents the first welcome. How is this feminine face to be understood? Does it provide a model for the infinite obligation to the Other, or is it a proto-ethical relation? The essays in this volume investigate this dilemma. Contributors are Alison Ainley, Diane Brody, Catherine Chalier, Luce Irigaray, Claire Katz, Kelly Oliver, Diane Perpich, Stella Sandford, Sonya Sikka, and Ewa Ziarek.

This volume contains the speech given by Derrida at Emmanuel Levinas’s funeral on December 27, 1995, and his contribution to a colloquium organized to mark the first anniversary of Levinas’s death. In this book, Derrida extends his work on Levinas in previously unexplored directions via a radical rereading of Totality and Infinity and the lesser-known Talmudic writings.

"Twelve essays take the unique approach of connecting Christian allegory, talmudic hermeneutics, and Levinasian interpretation, as authors put into dialogue the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas with a variety of English and rabbinic writings from the Middle Ages, thus illuminating what it means to classify medieval texts as profoundly ethical"--Provided by publisher.