1st Edition

Emmanuel Levinas The Genealogy of Ethics

By John Llewelyn Copyright 1995
    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    First Published in 2004. 'Emmanuel Levinas's thought can make us tremble' exclaims Jacques Derrida, one of the increasing number of writers in many different fields through whose works reverberate shock waves transmitted by the prophetic words of this eminent contemporary philosopher. John Llewelyn's exemplary study hears in Levinas's words an argument to the effect that is ethics is in crisis today it is because we fail to acknowledge that there is crisis in ethics from all time. After Auschwitz, he asks, dare we leave unheeded what Levinas has to say?

    Abbreviations, Preface, Introduction, Part I, 1. Ontological claustrophobia, 2. Ontic accomplishment, 3. Before time, 4. Announcing time, 5. Announcing the Other, Part II, 6. Being faced, 7. Before and beyond the face, 8. The manifold of alterity, 9. From sensibility to sense, 10. Generations, Part III, 11. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 12. Atheology, 13. Anthology, 14. Tropes, 15. Ethical agoraphobia, Notes, Bibliography, Index

    Biography

    John Llewelyn, following retirement from the University pf Edinburgh hs been visiting professor at Loyola University of Chicago and Memphis State University.

    'This is one of the most significant book-length engagements with the thought of Levinas in any language. It is of the same order of importance as Derrida's seminal essay on Levinas, 'Violence and Metaphysics'. At this level and intensity of reading the distinction between original works and commentary falls away; here we are in the presence of thinking itself, with all its difficulty and opacity.' - Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology