Emmanuel Levinas (French pronunciation: [leviˈna(s)]; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a Lithuanian Lithuania (/ˌlɪθjuːˈeɪniə/, U.S. usually /ˌlɪθuːˈeɪniə/ ; Lithuanian: Lietuva), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika) is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north,-born French France (pronounced /ˈfrænts/ frantss or /ˈfrɑːnts/ frahnts; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a state in Western Europe with several of its overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, philosopher Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument. The word "philosophy" comes from the and Talmudic The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism, in the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history commentator.

Contents

Life

Emanuelis Levinas (later adapted to French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in orthography The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur or Serbian, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós ("correct") and γράφειν as Emmanuel Levinas) received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania. After WWII, he studied the Talmud The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism, in the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history under the enigmatic "Monsieur Chouchani", whose influence he acknowledged only late in his life.

Levinas began his philosophical studies at Strasbourg University in 1924, where he began his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on later post-structuralist theorists such as Jacques Derrida. In 1928, he went to Freiburg University The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany to study phenomenology Phenomenology is a philosophical movement. It was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl, expanded together with a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany, and spread across to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work under Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, while at the same time he elaborated critiques of psychologism and historicism. At Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Located in the extreme south-west of the country, Freiburg straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain. One of the famous old German he also met Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger was an influential German philosopher. His best known book, Being and Time, is considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. Heidegger remains controversial due to his involvement with Nazism and statements of support for Adolf Hitler. Levinas became one of the very first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl, by translating Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and by drawing on their ideas in his own philosophy, in works such as his The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, De l'Existence à l'Existant, and En Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.

According to his obituary An obituary is a death notice which often includes an attempt by an author, publication, or news organization to give an account of the life of someone considered significant who has recently died. It can, however, be simply a death notice , and may be a paid advertisement written by family members and placed in a newspaper either by the family or in New York Times The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. Although it remains both the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States as well as being third largest overall, behind The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the weekday circulation of the paper has fallen precipitously,[1] Levinas came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, because of the latter's affinity for the Nazis Nazism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany. It was a unique variety of fascism that involved biological racism and anti-Semitism. Nazism presented itself as politically syncretic, incorporating policies, tactics and philosophies from right- and left-wing ideologies; in practice, Nazism was a far right form of. During a lecture on forgiveness, Levinas stated "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."[2]

After earning his doctorate Levinas taught at a private Jewish High School in Paris, the École Normale Israélite Orientale, eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers The University of Poitiers is a university located in Poitiers, France in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris The University of Paris was founded in the mid 11th century, and officially recognized as a university likely between 1160 and 1170 (or possibly as early as 1150). In 1970 it was reorganized as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). The university is often referred to as the Sorbonne or La Sorbonne after the collegiate in 1967, and at the Sorbonne The Sorbonne is a building of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris. It is commonly used to refer to this historic University of Paris or one of its successor institutions (see below), but this is a recent usage, and "Sorbonne" has actually been used with different in 1973, from which he retired in 1979. He was also a Professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland Switzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation (Confœderatio Helvetica in Latin, hence its ISO country codes CH and CHE), is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe[note 4] where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to. In 1989 he was awarded the Balzan Prize The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organisations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the brotherhood of man for Philosophy.

Among his most famous students is Rabbi Baruch Garzon from Tetouan Tétouan , also spelled Tetuan, sometimes Tettawen or Tettawin, is a city in northern Morocco. It is the only open port of Morocco on the Mediterranean Sea, a few miles south of the Strait of Gibraltar, and about 40 mi (60 km) E.S.E. of Tangier. In 2004 the city had 320,539 inhabitants (census figure). Tetouan's civil airport Sania Ramel Airport (Morocco), who learnt Philosophy with Levinas at the Sorbonne The Sorbonne is a building of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris. It is commonly used to refer to this historic University of Paris or one of its successor institutions (see below), but this is a recent usage, and "Sorbonne" has actually been used with different and later went on to become one of the most important Rabbis of the Spanish-speaking world.

Philosophy

In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics Ethics is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good vs. bad, noble vs. ignoble, right vs. wrong, and matters of justice, love, peace, and virtue of the Other For other uses of "other" see other other. There are also Others. And yet another or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy". For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that is not easily defined. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world. Someone who studies metaphysics would be called either a metaphysicist or a metaphysician (which Lévinas called "ontology Ontology (from the Greek ὄν, genitive ὄντος: of being and -λογία, -logia: science, study, theory) is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics,"). Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth".

Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face The face-to-face relation refers to a concept in the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas' thought on human sociality, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. In popular usage, a phenomenon often refers to an extraordinary event. In scientific usage, a phenomenon is any event that is observable, however commonplace it might be, even if it requires the use of instrumentation to observe it. For example, in physics, a phenomenon may be a in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity Alterity is a philosophical term meaning "otherness", strictly being in the sense of the other of two . It is generally now taken as the philosophical principle of exchanging one's own perspective for that of the "other." The concept was established by Emmanuel Lévinas in a series of essays, collected under the title Alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."[3]. At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to affirm or deny.[4] One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness.

In Levinas's later thought following "Totality and Infinity", he argued that our responsibility for the other was already rooted within our subjective constitution. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is "everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality."[5] This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 in "Otherwise Than Being"), where Levinas maintained that subjectivity was formed in and through our subjected-ness to the other. In this way, his effort was not to move away from traditional attempts to locate the other within subjectivity (this he agrees with), so much as his view was that subjectivity was primordially ethical and not theoretical. That is to say, our responsibility for the other was not a derivative feature of our subjectivity; instead, obligation founds our subjective being-in-the-world by giving it a meaningful direction and orientation. Levinas's thesis "ethics as first philosophy", then, means that the traditional philosophical pursuit of knowledge is but a secondary feature of a more basic ethical duty to the other. To meet the Other is to have the idea of Infinity [6]

The elderly Levinas was a distinguished French public intellectual, whose books reportedly sold well. He had a major impact on the young Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (15 July 1930 – 8 October 2004) was a French philosopher born in Algeria, who is known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work has had a significant impact on literary theory and continental philosophy, a fellow French Jew whose seminal Writing and Difference contains an essay, "Violence and Metaphysics", on Levinas. Derrida also delivered a eulogy at Lévinas's funeral, later published as Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas, an appreciation and exploration of Levinas's moral philosophy.

War experiences

Levinas became a naturalized French citizen in 1930. When France declared war on Germany, he was ordered to report for military duty. During the German invasion of France in 1940, his military unit was quickly surrounded and forced to surrender. Levinas spent the rest of World War II Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland · as a prisoner of war in a camp near Hannover Hanover or Hannover[nb 1] (German: Hannover , [haˈnoːfɐ]), on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, in their dignities as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg (which title was later called the Elector of in Germany A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, has been known and documented before AD 100. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted until 1806. During the 16th century, northern Germany became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. As a modern nation-state,. Lévinas was assigned to a special barrack for Jewish prisoners, who were forbidden any forms of religious worship. Life in the camp was as difficult as might be expected, with Levinas often forced to chop wood and do other menial tasks. Other prisoners saw him frequently jotting in a notebook. These jottings became his book De l'Existence à l'Existant (1947) and a series of lectures published under the title Le Temps et l'Autre (1948).

Meanwhile, Maurice Blanchot Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on later post-structuralist theorists such as Jacques Derrida helped Levinas' wife and daughter spend the war in a monastery, thus sparing them from the Holocaust. Blanchot, at considerable personal risk, also saw to it that Levinas was able to keep in contact with his immediate family through letters and other messages. Other members of Levinas' family were not so fortunate; his mother-in-law was deported and never heard from again, while his father and brothers were murdered in Lithuania by the Nazi Nazism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany. It was a unique variety of fascism that involved biological racism and anti-Semitism. Nazism presented itself as politically syncretic, incorporating policies, tactics and philosophies from right- and left-wing ideologies; in practice, Nazism was a far right form of SS The Schutzstaffel (German pronunciation: [ˈʃʊtsʃtafəl] , Protection Squadron), abbreviated SS—or (Runic)—was a major Nazi organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The SS grew from a small paramilitary unit to a powerful force that served as the Führer's "Praetorian Guard," the Nazi Party's "Shield Squadron".[7]

See also

Selected writings by Levinas

A list of works, translated into English but not appearing in any collections, may be found in Critchley, S. and Bernasconi, R., (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (publ. Cambridge UP, 2002), pp. 269–270. Bibliography of English translations of Levinas's writings.

References

  1. ^ Levinas' obituary
  2. ^ Levinas, Emmanuel. Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. p. 25
  3. ^ "Totality and Infinity", p.150
  4. ^ For recent reflections on the ethical-political imports of Levinas' tradition (and biography), along with the examination of the notion of the face-to-face in relation to le visage, while taking into account the Levantine/Palestinian standpoint on conflict, see: Nader El-Bizri, "Uneasy Meditations Following Levinas," Studia Phaenomelnologica, Vol. 6 (2006), pp. 293–315
  5. ^ E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Alphonso Lingis, transl. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press), p. 21.
  6. ^ French: 'Aborder Autrui [...] c'est donc recevoir d'Autrui au-delà de la capacité du Moi: ce qui signifie exactement: avoir l'idée de l'infini.' in 'Totalité et Infini', Martinus Nijhoff, La Haye, 1991, p. 22.
  7. ^ Life and Career

Further reading

External links

Persondata
NAME Levinas, Emmanuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION French philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH 12 January 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Kovno Kaunas (pronounced /ˈkoʊnəs/ in English, Lithuanian [kɐˈunɐs] listen ) is the second largest city in Lithuania and a former temporary capital. It is served by the freeways Via Baltica (E67) and Vilnius-Klaipėda (A1). Kaunas is located at the confluence of the two largest Lithuanian rivers, the Nemunas and the Neris, and near the Kaunas, Russian Empire The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union. It was the second largest contiguous empire in world history, surpassed only by the Mongol Empire, and the third largest empire behind the British Empire and the Mongol
DATE OF DEATH 25 December 1995
PLACE OF DEATH Paris Paris ([paʁi] in French, pronounced /ˈpærɪs/ in English) is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (or Paris Region, French: Région parisienne). The city of Paris, within its administrative limits largely unchanged since 1860, has an estimated, France France (pronounced /ˈfrænts/ frantss or /ˈfrɑːnts/ frahnts; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a state in Western Europe with several of its overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian,

Categories: 1906 births | 1995 deaths | People from Kaunas | 20th-century philosophers Philosophers who made significant contributions to philosophy in the 20th century | Continental philosophers Critical theory · Phenomenology · Psychoanalytic theory · Hermeneutics · Deconstruction · | Lithuanian immigrants to France | University of Paris faculty | University of Poitiers faculty | French philosophers | Jewish philosophers | Philosophers of Judaism | French people of Lithuanian descent | Lithuanian Jews | Lithuanian philosophers | French Jews | Phenomenologists | Postmodern theory | Social philosophers | Relational ethics | Orthodox Jews | Talmudists | Holocaust studies | Jewish theologians | Jewish existentialists

 

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