Beyond the Self, Beyond Ontology: Levinas' Reading of Shestov's Reading of Kierkegaard

Comparative and Continental Philosophy 2 (2):179-196 (2010)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In 1937, Emmanuel Levinas published a review of Lev Shestov’s Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle in the journal Revue des Études Juives. This essay includes a translation of his review as well as an introductory essay that contextualizes it. In her Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics (1972), Edith Wyschogrod contended that Levinas’ short review contains what “might well be taken as the program of his own future work.” Both seek a way out of ontology, but Shestov seeks his escape through a violent wrenching out of the tradition of Western ontology. Levinas would later dub this attempt “the wound that bleeds throughout Shestov’s work.” Unlike Shestov, Levinas does not seek a lost primordial freedom that existed before being and has been lost ever since. Because Levinas’ ethics takes its rise in the relation to the other person, he does not suffer from Shestov’s continual wound that cannot be escaped.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

On escape =.Emmanuel Lévinas (ed.) - 2003 - Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Returning (to) the gift of death: violence and history in Derrida and Levinas.Jeffrey Hanson - 2010 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 67 (1):1 - 15.
Levinas and the Phenomenology of Reading.Colin Davis - 2006 - Studia Phaenomenologica 6:275-292.
Levinas and the Unnamed Balaam on Ontology and Idolatry.Annabel Herzog - 2011 - Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 19 (2):131-145.
The Many Faces of Levinas as a Reader of Kierkegaard.Merold Westphal - 2008 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 64 (2/4):1141 - 1162.
Overcoming Relativism? Levinas's Return to Platonism.Peter C. Blum - 2000 - Journal of Religious Ethics 28 (1):91 - 117.
An other face of ethics in Levinas.Barbara Jane Davy - 2007 - Ethics and the Environment 12 (1):39-66.
Is it righteous to be?: interviews with Emmanuel Lévinas.Emmanuel Lévinas - 2001 - Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Edited by Jill Robbins.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-03-17

Downloads
61 (#236,715)

6 months
2 (#658,980)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Totality and infinity.Emmanuel Levinas - 1961/1969 - Pittsburgh,: Duquesne University Press.
Writing and difference.Jacques Derrida - 1978 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The will to power.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - 1924 - London,: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Edited by Walter Arnold Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale.
The will to power.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - 1967 - New York,: Random House. Edited by Walter Arnold Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale.
Collected philosophical papers.Emmanuel Lévinas - 1987 - Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press.

View all 19 references / Add more references