Discovering Levinas

Michael L. Morgan has been a professor at Indiana University for 31 years and, in 2004, was named a Chancellor's Professor. He has published articles in a variety of journals, edited several collections, and authored four books, most recently Interim Judaism (2001). He is the coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy.

• 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.

'Discovering Levinas is the best introduction to Levinas's philosophy in existence. Those who are already interested in Levinas will find that Morgan's book gives them new conversation partners and frees up their own prose. Graduate courses on Levinas will find that requiring students to purchase this book will raise the quality of class discussions. Undergraduate courses with Levinas on their syllabus should also excerpt this very readable book, especially the several chapters that stay close to the surface of brief Levinas essays, so that students do not become discouraged by the gnomic nature of Levinas's writing.' Martin Kavka, Journal of the American Academy of Religion