Levinas on the Primacy of the Ethical

Exploring the relationship between phenomenology and religion in Levinass writings The philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas affirms both the urgency of peace and the fact that peace is never finally assured. This tension is a question of responsibility and of the ethical relation in which that responsibility is grounded. Jeffrey Bloechl pursues this prophetic dimension of Levinass philosophyhis commitment to phenomenology and to a philosophy of religionto make the case for the mutual reinforcement and intelligibility of these two threads. Levinas on the Primacy of the Ethical traces the emergence of Levinass early thought in relation to modern political philosophy, his revision of Martin Heideggers existential phenomenology, the consolidation of his mature position, his important differences with Freudian psychoanalysis, the turn from metaphysics to language in his later philosophy, and his complex relationship with Christian theology. Starting with an exposition of how positive notions of religious transcendence are already present in some of Levinass early phenomenological texts, Bloechl then stakes the reverse claim: that Levinass conception of God is dependent on his existential phenomenology. Proceeding chronologically, but with frequent nods to later developments, this book builds toward the ultimate assertion that Levinas offers us a phenomenology of event and of relation without appeal to any foundation, ground, or causal principle. Only in this way is Levinas able to generate an argumentand not merely an exhortationfor the primacy of the ethical as he conceives it.