Skip to content
Emmanuel Levinas

File:Emmanuel_Levinas.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ153034· pop 59· linked from 433 articles

Emmanuel Levinas

Sign in to save

Also known as Emmanuel Lévinas, Emmanuelis Levinas

Jewish-French-Lithuanian philosopher

OverviewAI-generated

Emmanuel Levinas was a French male author. He was born on 12 January 1906 and died on 25 December 1995. His literary output includes 231 works, with notable titles such as *Miz︠h︡ namy*, *En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger*, *Etika a nekonečno*, *La trace de l'autre*, and *Dialog*.

Levinas is associated with specific philosophical statements, including the assertion that atheism is worth more than the piety bestowed on mythical gods. He also noted that fear for the other man's death is distinct from an individual's taking fright.

Synthesized by Vinony from 18 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, Wikiquote, MusicBrainz, Open Library, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born
12 January 1906
Died
25 December 1995
Works
231

Top works

  • Miz︠h︡ namy
  • En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger
  • Etika a nekonečno
  • La trace de l'autre
  • Dialog

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
France
Active from
1906-01-12
Active to
1995-12-25

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
158
Total plays
234

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Emmanuel+Levinas">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Emmanuel Levinas

Quotes

  • If every pure character in the Old Testament announces the Messiah, if every unworthy person is his torturer and every woman his Mother, does not the Book of Books lose all life with this obsessive theme?
  • To ignore the true God is in fact only half an evil; atheism is worth more than the piety bestowed on mythical gods.
  • The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of antitheses. The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity. For that a primordial and original relation with being is needed.
  • The comprehension of God taken as a participation in his sacred life, an allegedly direct comprehension, is impossible, because participation is a denial of the divine, and because nothing is more direct than the face to face, which is straightforwardness itself.
  • The transition of the subject-object relation to that of the I-Thou implies a passage of consciousness to a new sphere of existence, viz, the interval, betweenness or Zwischen; and this is a passage from thought to Umfassung.
  • Fear for the Other, fear for the other man's death is my fear, but is in no way an individual's taking fright.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

~16 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Emmanuel Levinas (born Emanuelis Levinas /ˈlɛvɪnɑːs/; French: [ɛmanɥɛl levinas]; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to metaphysics and ontology.

Life and career

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Emmanuel Levinas” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.