Levinasian meditations

Cohen, Richard A.

A prominent scholar of the life and work of Emmanuel Levinas, Richard A. Cohen collects in this volume the most significant of his writings on Levinals over the past decade. With these essays, Cohen not only clearly explains the nuances of Levina's project, but he attests to the importance of Levinas's distinctive insights for philosophy and religion. Divided into two parts, the book's part 1 considers Levinas's philosophical project by bringing him into dialogue with Western thought, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant even Shakespeare, as well as twentieth century thinkers such as Heidegger, Husserl, Sartre, and Buber. What sets Levinas apart from these thinkers is his prioritizing of ethics over knowledge, being, and aethetics. In these essays, Cohen acquaints the reader with many of Levinas's key terms-such as the face-to-face, saying, said, the third, responsibility, infinity, the...