Table Of ContentLEVINAS IN JERUSALEM:
PHENOMENOLOGY,
ETHICS, POLITICS, AESTHETICS
Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Philosophy
Editor:
Reinier Munk, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Editorial Board:
Resianne Fontaine,University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Robert Gibbs,University of Toronto, Canada
Warren Zev Harvey,The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Albert van der Heide,VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Arthur Hyman,Yeshiva University, New York, U.S.A.
Howard Kreisel,Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
David Novak,University of Toronto, Canada
Kenneth Seeskin,North Western University, Illinois, U.S.A.
Colette Sirat,Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France
VOLUME 14
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LEVINAS IN JERUSALEM:
PHENOMENOLOGY,
ETHICS, POLITICS, AESTHETICS
JOELLE HANSEL
123
Dr.JoëlleHansel
SociétéInternationaledeRecherches
EmmanuelLevinas(SIREL,Paris)
RaissaandEmmanuelLevinas
Center(MOFET,Jerusalem)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
JOËLLE HANSEL
Foreword vii
PART ONE: PHENOMENOLOGY
JACQUES TAMINIAUX
The Presence of Being and Time in Totality and Infinity 3
JEAN-MICHEL SALANSKIS
The Theoretical to the Rescue of Levinas 23
SIMON CRITCHLEY
Leaving the Climate of Heidegger’s Thinking 45
PART TWO: ETHICS, POLITICS, AND JUSTICE
GEORGES HANSEL
Ethics and Politics in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas 59
PASCAL DELHOM
Necessity and Legitimacy of the State 75
ANNETTE ARONOWICZ
Judaism, the Jewish People and the State.
A Reading of Emmanuel Levinas’ Talmudic
Commentary “Judaism and Revolution” 91
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
FRANÇOIS COPPENS
Political Reason and Prophetism.
How Is the Other Ordered to Me? 109
JOËLLE HANSEL
Levinas and Bergson on Justice and Infinity 125
PETER ATTERTON
Levinas, Justice, and Just War 141
PART THREE: AESTHETICS AND EROS
FRANCESCA YARDENIT ALBERTINI
The Language of the Meeting with the Other and the
Phenomenology of Eros. Traces of Aesthetic Thinking
in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas 157
HANOCH BEN PAZI
Teaching as an Internalization of Feminine Aspects 171
NAME INDEX 201
NOTION INDEX 203
FOREWORD*
JOËLLE HANSEL
Set out in his seminal work Totality and Infinity (1961), the thought of
Emmanuel Levinas has elicited a plurality of interpretations for more
than half a century. The impressive number of works—books, articles,
dissertations—devoted to him in an unusually wide range of languages
testifies to his impact.1 Levinas studies are thus one of the most pro-
ductive areas of modern philosophical research.
Today Levinas’ works have received international acclaim. Their “ethi-
cal core”2 has clearly played a major role. Topics such as the Other, the
face, or for-the-other interjected a new vision of interpersonal rela-
tions into the landscape of contemporary philosophy. By defining
ethics as “first philosophy” Levinas completely recast the classical con-
cepts in the western philosophical tradition such as conscience, lan-
guage, time, freedom, and, in his last works, God. An “inopportune”
thinker, he went counter dominant intellectual trends, criticizing struc-
turalism and psychoanalysis, and rehabilitating words such as “human-
ism”, “peace”, “goodness”, “justice” and even “love”. At the risk of being—
erroneously—labeled a “religious thinker”, he restored the texts of the
Talmud to their rightful place among the greatest writings the human
* Translated from the French by Esther Singer.
1 See the 200-page bibliography drawn up by the Center for Metaphysics and
Philosophy of God (Catholic University of Louvain) under the supervision of Prof.
Roger Burggraeve, and including works by or on Levinas published between 1929 and
1989.
2 This is the title of the first part of a recent book by Jean-Michel Salanskis: Levinas
vivant, Paris, 2006.
viii JOËLLE HANSEL
mind has ever produced. Ethics is that locus where the “philosophical
eros”3 of Levinasian thought emerges at its fullest.
Over the years, new research directions have emerged, as the studies
presented in this volume so amply demonstrate. They were originally
delivered as lectures at two international conferences that we orga-
nized at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Entitled “Levinas in
Jerusalem: Philosophical Interpretations and Religious Perspectives”
the conference that was held in 2002 attracted more than forty Israeli,
French, Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian, English, Belarusian and
American scholars. During the four-day conference, Levinas’ works
were discussed from different perspectives: phenomenology and the
history of philosophy, moral and political philosophy, Jewish philoso-
phy and Talmudic hermeneutics, Christian philosophy and theology,
literature, and aesthetics. Levinas’ relationship to such figures as
Husserl and Heidegger were analyzed, as were his ties with contempo-
rary French philosophers (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida) as well as
with Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Yishayahu
Leibovitz.
An evening entitled “Levinas, the Man” attracted an audience of more
than 1000 to the main auditorium of the University. Prominent politi-
cal and cultural figures delivered tributes, including Knesset member
Colette Avital, and the French Ambassador to Israel at the time, the
Honorable Jacques Huntzinger. Shalom Rosenberg, co-organizer of the
conference, painted a portrait of Mr. Chouchani, the brilliant, mysteri-
ous mentor who introduced Levinas to the world of the Talmud.
Georges Hansel retraced Levinas’ personal and intellectual itinerary.
Marie-Anne Lescourret, his biographer, situated the philosopher at the
intersection of four cultures—Jewish, Russian, German and French.4
3 Term used by Levinas’ friend Jacob Gordin, who in 1934 referred to the
“philosophical eros” of Maimonidean thought. See “L’actualité de Maïmonide” in J.
Gordin, Ecrits. Le renouveau de la pensée juive en France, ed. M. Goldmann, Paris,
1995.
4 Marie-Anne Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas, Paris, 1994, 2006.
FOREWORD ix
This conference—the first ever devoted exclusively to Levinas in Israel
—highlighted the extent to which Levinasian studies have blossomed
in this country. It also reflected the specificity of the way his work has
been received in Israel, where it has taken on the all the features of a
true sociological phenomenon. In a country characterized by its eth-
nic, cultural and religious plurality, the work of this European thinker
has emerged as a unifying factor, championed by readers across the
spectrum and from all ways of life. His vision of Judaism as rooted in
traditional sources and open to the modern world resonates with
many Israelis.
The second conference, which dealt with the relationship between
ethics and politics, took place in June 2003. Devoted to one of the most
promising areas in the field of Levinasian studies, it explored the key
topics of the Third party, charity and justice, and law, as well as less
well known areas such as the relationship of Levinas to Zionism and to
the State of Israel.
In the spirit that so characterized the Jerusalem conferences, the texts
we present here highlight the internal dynamics of Levinas’ thought by
taking its evolutions and transformations over more than sixty years of
philosophical activity into account. From this angle, ethics is no longer
a given, but rather the outcome of a trajectory which led Levinas from
an initial solipsism to sociality, or from “Being” to “the Other”.5 By con-
trast to approaches that encapsulate him in one category—either “phe-
nomenologist” or “Jewish thinker”—the authors here gave themselves a
dual objective: to deal with Levinas as a philosopher without ever
5 This is the subtitle Levinas gave to his study on Paul Celan that appeared in Noms
propres. Also “from existence to existent” and “from existent to the Other”, in
Levinas’ terminology (see “Signature”, in Difficult Freedom). On the topic of the
internal dynamics of Levinas’ work, see my introduction in: Joelle Hansel (ed.),
Levinas. De l’Etre à l’Autre, Paris, 2006.
Description:A disciple of Husserl and Heidegger, a contemporary of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, Levinas entirely renewed the way of thinking ethics in our times. In contrast to the whole tradition of Western philosophy, he considered ethics neither as an aspiration to individual perfection, nor as the highest bran
