Richard Cohen

Face to Face with Levinas makes available to American readers the best of recent thought on Emmanuel Levinas. The contributors to this volume are some of the most significant and best-known Levinas scholars in the United States and Europe—Maurice Blanchot, Luce Trigaray, Theodore De Boer, Adriaan Peperzak, Jan de Greef, Alphonso Lingis. Most notably, it features an interview with Levinas by Richard Kearney. This elaborate interview provides a succinct introduction to the themes developed within the book and allows Levinas to restate his philosophy in light of the criticisms that follow. The contributions range from the imaginative to the academi Together they provide a well-focused introduction to the ethical and ontological import of Levinas’ philosophy..

_An introduction to the ethical and ontological import of Levinas' philosophy._ _Face to Face_ with Levinas makes available to American readers the best of recent thought on Emmanuel Levinas. The contributors to this volume are some of the most significant and best-known Levinas scholars in the United States and Europe-Maurice Blanchot, Luce Trigaray, Theodore De Boer, Adriaan Peperzak, Jan de Greef, Alphonso Lingis. Most notably, it features an interview with Levinas by Richard Kearney. This elaborate interview provides a succinct introduction to the themes developed within the book and allows Levinas to restate his philosophy in light of the criticisms that follow. The contributions range from the imaginative to the academi Together they provide a well-focused introduction to the ethical and ontological import of Levinas' philosophy..

_Through translation and commentary, this book presents the final visionary statements of the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig._ This is the first publication in English of Franz Rosenzweig's 1927 translation of and commentaries on ninety-two poems and hymns of the greatest medieval "singer of Zion," Yehuda Halevi (born circa 1080). Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) is widely recognized as one of the greatest Jewish philosophers of the modern period and his Star of Redemption is considered one of the most important twentieth-century contributions to Jewish-and Christian-theology. Rosenzweig's original and brilliant commentaries open a window into the final developments of his own thought: his debates with Protestant theology, his reservations regarding modern science and culture, and his progressive appreciation for the wisdom of the Jewish tradition. They are a testament not only to the profound vision of Judaism embedded in the poetry of Yehuda Halevi, but to the ever vibrant and deepening sagacity of Franz Rosenzweig himself.

Although Levinas never mentions Lukacs by name, given that Lukacs was of the just previous generation, the generation of Levinas’s teachers, and that their lifespans included sixty-five years of overlap, given that Lukacs’ books, especially his magnum opus History and Class Consciousness, published in 1923, would almost certainly have been known to Levinas, and given that Levinas own masterpiece, Totality and Infinity, published in 1961, the word “totality” emblazoned on its title, begins with an extended discussion of political philosophy centered on the question of war, peace and ethics approached via a critique of totality, it is very possible that Levinas had Lukacs consciously in mind as a major interlocutor. Whether he did or not, however, the dispute between these two thinkers – made even more poignant owing to Levinas’s avowed and profound sympathy with the inspiration and aspirations of Marxism – is substantial, far-ranging and consequential. It is the topic of the present paper. However, because their debate is multi-layered and complex, the present paper narrows its focus – in an admitted still abbreviated and incomplete fashion – to only one of its aspects, namely, their opposition to Kant’s ethics.