The Cambridge Companion to Levinas

by Edited by Simon Critchley , Robert Bernasconi

• ISBN13: 9780521662062
• ISBN10: 0521662060
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Emmanuel Levinas is now widely recognised alongside Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre as one of the most important Continental philosophers of the twentieth century. His abiding concern was the primacy of the ethical relation to the other person and his central thesis was that ethics is first philosophy. His work has also had a profound impact on a number of fields outside philosophy such as theology, Jewish studies, literature and cultural theory, psychotherapy, sociology, political theory, international relations theory and critical legal theory. This volume contains overviews of Levinas's contribution in a number of fields, and includes detailed discussions of his early and late work, his relation to Judaism and talmudic commentary, and his contributions to aesthetics and the philosophy of religion.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	ix
Acknowledgements	xii
List of abbreviations	xiii
Emmanuel Levinas: a disparate inventory	xv
Simon Critchley
Introduction	1	(32)
Simon Critchley
Levinas and Judaism	33	(30)
Hilary Putnam
Levinas and the face of the other	63	(19)
Bernhard Waldenfels
Levinas's critique of Husserl	82	(18)
Rudolf Bernet
Levinas and the Talmud	100	(19)
Catherine Chalier
Levinas and language	119	(20)
John Llewelyn
Levinas, feminism and the feminine	139	(22)
Stella Sandford
Sincerity and the end of theodicy: three remarks on Levinas and Kant	161	(27)
Paul Davies
Language and alterity in the thought of Levinas	188	(18)
Edith Wyschogrod
The concepts of art and poetry in Emmanuel Levinas's writings	206	(28)
Gerald L. Bruns
What is the question to which `substitution' is the answer?	234	(18)
Robert Bernasconi
Evil and the temptation of theodicy	252	(16)
Richard J. Bernstein
Bibliography	268	(14)
Index	282