•  193
    Converts, heretics, and lepers: Maimonides and the outsider (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 48 (2). 2010.
    This study builds upon the novel hermeneutical approach to Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed first developed by the author in a previous work, Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment . That study made two principal contributions. First, it displaced the common view of Maimonides as imposing philosophical categories onto biblical and rabbinic texts that are themselves intrinsically unphilosophical. Rather, as Diamond showed, what is often regarded as an allegorical abstraction from text t…Read more
  •  110
    Levinas and Maimonides: From metaphysics to ethical negative theology
    Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 16 (1): 95-147. 2008.
    After an initially sympathetic reading of Maimonides, Levinas develops an ambivalent attitude toward the Great Eagle, whom he views as a champion of intellectualist Judaism. Nevertheless, insights from the early engagement with Maimonides are carried forth into the central claims of Totality and Infinity regarding freedom, creation, particularity and transcendence. Levinas' arguments are directed at Heidegger but can also be seen as a phenomenological repetition of the medieval dispute about the…Read more
  •  55
    Il Y a du quotidien: Levinas and Heidegger on the self
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 28 (5): 578-604. 2002.
    Levinas's notion of il y a (there is) existence is shown to be the organizing principle behind his challenge to Being and Time. The two main aspects of that challenge propose an ontology that is not entirely reduced to being-in-the-world and a correlative account of the self that is not entirely reduced to context. In that way Levinas attempts first to restore unconditional value to the self and then to 'produce' a pluralist social ontology based on the independence of persons. The il y a argume…Read more
  •  40
    Across four decades of writing, Levinas repeatedly referred to the Holocaust as ‘the Passion of Israel at Auschwitz’. This deliberately Christological interpretation of the Holocaust raises questions about the respective roles of Judaism and Christianity in Levinas’ thought and seems at odds with his well-known view that suffering is ‘useless’. Basing my interpretation on the journals Levinas wrote as a prisoner of war and a radio talk he delivered in September 1945, I argue that his philosophic…Read more
  •  32
  •  23
    The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology
    Common Knowledge 19 (3): 565-566. 2013.
  •  20
    Being Singular Plural (review)
    Common Knowledge 8 (1): 210-210. 2002.
  •  19
    I offer a phenomenological analysis of the syntagm ‘glory of Yhwh’ which appears in relatively few but significant places in the Hebrew Bible. I discuss the biblical sense of this syntagm and make the argument for understanding it as a ‘formally indicative’ concept, in Heidegger’s sense of ‘formale Anzeige’. I thereby make the case for understanding the anthropomorphic, amoral and numinous qualities of the biblical syntagm in a way that illuminates contemporary phenomenological senses of being, …Read more
  •  17
    Rejecting the distinction Levinas asserted between Judaism and philosophy, this book reads his philosophical works, "Totality and Infinity" and "Otherwise than ...
  •  17
    Levinas and Literature: New Directions (edited book)
    De Gruyter. 2020.
    The posthumous publication of Emmanuel Levinas’s wartime diaries, postwar lectures, and drafts for two novels afford new approaches to understanding the relationship between literature, philosophy, and religion. This volume gathers an international list of experts to examine new questions raised by Levinas’s deep and creative experiment in thinking at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and religion. Chapters address the role and significance of poetry, narrative, and metaphor in accessi…Read more
  •  11
    This volume examines the relevance of Emmanuel Levinas's work to recent developments in analytic philosophy. Contemporary analytic philosophers working in metaethics, the philosophy of mind, and the metaphysic of personal identity have argued for views similar to those espoused by Levinas. Often disparately pursued, Levinas's account of "ethics as first philosophy" affords a way of connecting these respective enterprises and showing how moral normativity enters into the structure of rationality …Read more
  •  10
    Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity (edited book)
    Indiana University Press. 2017.
    Negative theology is the attempt to describe God by speaking in terms of what God is not. Historical affinities between Jewish modernity and negative theology indicate new directions for thematizing the modern Jewish experience. Questions such as, What are the limits of Jewish modernity in terms of negativity? Has this creative tradition exhausted itself? and How might Jewish thought go forward? anchor these original essays. Taken together they explore the roots and legacies of negative theology…Read more
  •  7
  •  3
    The Genesis of Totality and Infinity: The Secret Drama
    In Michael Fagenblat & Arthur Cools (eds.), Levinas and Literature: New Directions, De Gruyter. pp. 93-116. 2020.
  •  1
    Introduction: Levinas and Literature, a Marvellous Hypocrisy
    In Michael Fagenblat & Arthur Cools (eds.), Levinas and Literature: New Directions, De Gruyter. 2020.
  •  1
    Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne U. P., 2004. ISBN: 0 8207 0347 8. Since the exultant reception of Levinas’ work, particularly in the United States, an imposing obstacle to this oeuvre has steadily been erected. It is not Levinas’ complicated, often unstated philosophical disputations, nor his exhortatory style, nor even the originality of his argument that constitute the most formidable obstructions to his work today. On the contrary, the greatest difficulty today is the ease with which Levinas is a…Read more