Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most important figures of
twentieth-century philosophy. Exerting a profound influence upon
such thinkers as Derrida, Lyotard, Blanchot, and Irigaray,
Levinas's work bridges several major gaps in the evolution of
continental philosophy -- between modern and postmodern,
phenomenology and poststructuralism, ethics and ontology. He is
credited with having spurred a revitalized interest in ethics-based
philosophy throughout Europe and America.
"Entre Nous" (Between Us) is the culmination of Levinas's
philosophy. Published in France a few years before his death, it
gathers his most important work and reveals the development of his
thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Along with
several trenchant interviews published here, these essays engage
with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human
rights, and legal theory. Taken together, they constitute a key to
Levinas's ideas on the ethical dimensions of otherness.
Working from the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and
Martin Heidegger, Levinas pushed beyond the limits of their
framework to argue that it is ethics, not ontology, that orients
philosophy, and that responsibility precedes reasoning. Ethics for
Levinas means responsibility in relation to difference. Throughout
his work, Levinas returns to the metaphor of the face of the other
to discuss how and where responsibility enters our lives and makes
philosophy necessary. For Levinas, ethics begins with our face to
face interaction with another person -- seeing that person not as a
reflection of one's self, nor as a threat, but as different and
greater than self. Levinas moves the reader to recognize the
implications of this interaction: our abiding responsibility for
the other, and our concern with the other's suffering and
death.
Situated at the crossroads of several philosophical schools and
approaches, Levinas's work illuminates a host of critical issues
and has found resonances among students and scholars of literature,
law, religion, and politics. "Entre Nous" is at once the apotheosis
of his work and an accessible introduction to it. In the end,
Levinas's urgent meditations upon the face of the other suggest a
new foundation upon which to grasp the nature of good and evil in
the tangled skein of our lives.
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