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'''Emmanuel Lévinas''' ([[January 12]], [[1906]] - [[December 25]], [[1995]]) was a [[Jew]]ish [[philosopher]] [[born ]] in [[Kovno]], [[Lithuania]], who moved to [[France]], where he wrote most of his works. In his youth he had received a traditional [[Jewish ]] education, and in his later years was introduced to the [[Talmud]] by the enigmatic "[[Monsieur Chouchani]]". Levinas became a naturalized [[French ]] [[citizen ]] in [[1930]].

Levinas was deeply influenced by [[Edmund Husserl]] & [[Martin Heidegger]], whom he met at the [[university ]] of [[Freiburg]], as well as by [[Judaism|Jewish religion]]. He was one of the first intellectuals to introduce to France the [[work ]] of [[Heidegger ]] and [[Husserl]], producing both translations of their work (e.g., Husserl's ''Cartesian Meditations'') and original philosophical tracts.  ==War experiences== During the German invasion of France in [[1940Cartesian]], Levinas was reactivated with his military unit, which was quickly surrounded and forced to surrender. Initially sent to a prisoner of war camp in France, he was soon transferred to a camp on German soil near Hannover, where he remained until the end of the war.  Although protected by the [[Third Geneva Convention]] from deportation to a [[concentration camp]], Levinas was segregated in special barracks for Jewish prisoners, who were forbidden any forms of religious worship. Life in the camp was as difficult as might be expected, with Levinas often forced into wood-chopping duties.  Other prisoners report seeing him make frequent jottings in a notebook, which would later be shaped into his breakthrough treatises "De lMeditations'Existence à l'Existant," a landmark appreciation and criticism of the philosophy of Heidegger, and "Le Temps et l'Autre" (both 1948). In the meantime, his wife was shielded from deportation through the efforts of the philosopher [[Maurice Blanchot]] who also risked his own well-being seeing to it that Levinas was able to keep in contact with his immediate family through letters and other messages. Other family members were not so lucky: his mother-in-law was deported and never heard from again, while his father and brothers were murdered in Lithuania by the original [[Schutzstaffel|SSphilosophical]]tracts.

After the war, Levinas became a leading thinker in France, emerging from the circle of intellectuals surrounding [[Jean Wahl]]. His work is based on the [[ethics]] of [[Other|the Other]] or, in Levinas' [[terms]], he argues "ethics as first [[philosophy]]." For Levinas, the [[Other ]] is not knowable and cannot be made into an [[object ]] of the [[self]], as is done by traditional [[metaphysics]] (called [[ontology ]] by Levinas). Levinas prefers to [[think ]] of philosophy as the '[[knowledge ]] of [[love]]' rather than the love of knowledge. In his arrangement, ethics become an entity independent of [[subjectivity ]] to the point where [[ethical ]] [[responsibility ]] is integral to the [[subject]]; because of this, an ethics of responsibility precedes any '[[objective ]] searching after [[truth]]'. Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the [[experience ]] of the [[encounter ]] with the Other. For Levinas, the [[face-to-face]] encounter with [[another ]] [[human ]] [[being ]] is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. Upon the revelation of the face a person's first [[natural ]] [[desire ]] is to [[murder ]] the Other. At the same [[time]], the revelation of the face forces the immediate [[recognition ]] of one's inability to do so. One must instantly recognize the inviolability and [[autonomy ]] of the Other. One must then [[place ]] him or herself in the [[position ]] of a student, and the Other is recognized as a teacher. Ultimately, [[morality ]] is recognized through one's relation to the Other.

Among the many works of Levinas, key [[texts ]] include ''Totalité et infini: essai sur l'extériorité'' (1961) and ''Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'[[essence]]'' (1974). Both works have been translated into [[English ]] by the American philosopher [[Alphonso Lingis]].

In Levinas's later [[thought ]] following "[[Totality ]] and Infinity", he argued that our responsiblity for-the-other was already rooted within our [[subjective ]] [[constitution]]. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is [paraphrase] "it is of the utmost importance to [[know ]] whether or not we are duped by morality." This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 from "Otherwise Than Being"). Therein Levinas maintained that subjectivity was formed in and through our subjected-ness to the other. In this way, his effort was not to move away from traditional attempts to locate the other within subjectivity (this he agrees with), so much as his view was that subjectivity was primordially ethical and not [[theoretical]]. That is to say, our responsibility for-the-other was not a derivative feature of our subjectivity; instead, obligation founds our subjective being-in-the-[[world ]] by giving it a meaningful direction and orientation. Levinas's [[thesis ]] "ethics is first philosophy", then, means that the traditional philosophical pursuit of knowledge is but a secondary feature of a more basic ethical [[duty ]] to-the-other.

[[Category:1906 births|Levinas, Emmanuel]][[Category:1995 deaths|Levinas, Emmanuel]][[Category:20th century philosophers|Levinas, Emmanuel]][[Category:Continental philosophers|Levinas, Emmanuel]][[Category:French philosophers|Levinas, Emmanuel]][[Category:Phenomenology|Levinas, Emmanuel]][[Category:Postmodern theory|Levinas, EmmanuelEthics]][[Category:Social philosophy|Levinas, EmmanuelPhilosophy]]