Discovering Levinas

Michael L. Morgan shows how Emmanuel Levinas faces central philosophical problems that figure in twentieth-century philosophy and religious thought.

Michael L. Morgan (Author)

9780521872591, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 May 2007

528 pages
23.5 x 16.5 x 3.8 cm, 0.836 kg

'Michael L. Morgan's Discovering Levinas very admirably situates Levinas's work in historical and philosophical context - and provides us with lucid restatements of such key issues in Levinas scholarship as his relationship to phenomenology, his understanding of God, his relationship to contemporary moral philosophy, and how he comprehends Judaism. It is a rich and rewarding book.' AJS Review

In Discovering Levinas, Michael L. Morgan shows how this thinker faces in novel and provocative ways central philosophical problems of twentieth-century philosophy and religious thought. He tackles this task by placing Levinas in conversation with philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Onora O'Neill, Charles Taylor, and Cora Diamond. He also seeks to understand Levinas within philosophical, religious, and political developments in the history of twentieth-century intellectual culture. Morgan demystifies Levinas by examining his unfamiliar and surprising vocabulary, interpreting texts with an eye to clarity, and arguing that Levinas can be understood as a philosopher of the everyday. Morgan also shows that Levinas's ethics is not morally and politically irrelevant nor is it excessively narrow and demanding in unacceptable ways. Neither glib dismissal nor fawning acceptance, this book provides a sympathetic reading that can form a foundation for a responsible critique.

1. Auschwitz, politics, and the twentieth century
2. Phenomenology and transcendental philosophy
3. The ethical content of the face-to-face
4. Philosophy, totality, and the everyday
5. Meaning, culture, and language
6. Subjectivity and the self
7. God and philosophy
8. Time, Messianism, and diachrony
9. Ethical realism and contemporary moral philosophy
10. Beyond language and expressibility
11. Judaism, ethics, and religion
Conclusion: Levinas and the primacy of the ethical - Kant, Kierkegaard, and Derrida
Appendix: facing reasons.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Cultural studies [JFC], Religion: general [HRA], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Philosophy [HP]