What do you think?
Rate this book
Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas
Recent debates within Continental philosophy have decisively renewed the question of the ethical, with the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) as its center. Coming from yet in contestation with the phenomenological traditions of Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas defines ethics as an originary response to the face of the other. For him, language is an exception to a habitual economy that represses alterity and maintains the asymmetry and distance constitutive of the nontotalizing relation to the other. Ethics occurs in the interlocutionary relation to the other, and interpellation―a kind of interruption by speaking―is the essential feature of ethical language. Between 1982 and 1992, Levinas gave numerous interviews, closing a distinguished sixty-year career. Of the twenty interviews collected in this volume, seventeen appear in English for the first time. In the interviews Levinas sets forth the central features of his ethical philosophy, previously enunciated in Totality and Infinity (1961), in a language that bridges to the idiom of his later work. He underlines his dedication to the phenomenological search for the concrete and the nonformal signification of alterity. He also elaborates issues that do not receive extensive treatment in his formal philosophical works, including the question of prephilosophical experiences and the ethical signification of money, justice, and the State. The informality of the interviews prompts Levinas to address matters about which he is reticent in his published works, notably the relation of his ethical philosophy to theological questions, the intrication of the Hebrew Bible in Greek philosophy, his substantial corpus of "nonphilosophical" or "confessional" writings on the Talmud, and recollections of his extraordinary talmudic teacher, Shoshani. The centerpiece of the volume is a previously untranslated 1986 interview with François Poirié. Containing Levinas's sole extended discussion of biographical matters with an interviewer, this text helps to situate Levinas in his contemporary intellectual world and to clarify his place in French thought.
315 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
5 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
About the author
Emmanuel Levinas
146 books395 followersEmanuelis Levinas (later adapted to French orthography as Emmanuel Levinas) received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania. After WWII, he studied the Talmud under the enigmatic "Monsieur Chouchani", whose influence he acknowledged only late in his life.
Levinas began his philosophical studies at Strasbourg University in 1924, where he began his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot. In 1928, he went to Freiburg University to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. At Freiburg he also met Martin Heidegger. Levinas became one of the very first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl, by translating Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and by drawing on their ideas in his own philosophy, in works such as his The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, De l'Existence à l'Existant, and En Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.
According to his obituary in New York Times,[1] Levinas came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, because of the latter's affinity for the Nazis. During a lecture on forgiveness, Levinas stated "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."[2]
After earning his doctorate Levinas taught at a private Jewish High School in Paris, the École Normale Israélite Orientale, eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris in 1967, and at the Sorbonne in 1973, from which he retired in 1979. He was also a Professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In 1989 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Philosophy.
Among his most famous students is Rabbi Baruch Garzon from Tetouan (Morocco), who learnt Philosophy with Levinas at the Sorbonne and later went on to become one of the most important Rabbis of the Spanish-speaking world.
In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy". For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Lévinas called "ontology"). Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth".
Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."[3]. At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to affirm or deny.[4] One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness.
In Levinas's later thought following "Totality and Infinity", he argued that our responsibility for the other was already rooted within our subjective constitution. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is "everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality."[5] This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 in "Otherwise Than Being"), where Levinas maintai
Levinas began his philosophical studies at Strasbourg University in 1924, where he began his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot. In 1928, he went to Freiburg University to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. At Freiburg he also met Martin Heidegger. Levinas became one of the very first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl, by translating Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and by drawing on their ideas in his own philosophy, in works such as his The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, De l'Existence à l'Existant, and En Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.
According to his obituary in New York Times,[1] Levinas came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, because of the latter's affinity for the Nazis. During a lecture on forgiveness, Levinas stated "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."[2]
After earning his doctorate Levinas taught at a private Jewish High School in Paris, the École Normale Israélite Orientale, eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris in 1967, and at the Sorbonne in 1973, from which he retired in 1979. He was also a Professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In 1989 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Philosophy.
Among his most famous students is Rabbi Baruch Garzon from Tetouan (Morocco), who learnt Philosophy with Levinas at the Sorbonne and later went on to become one of the most important Rabbis of the Spanish-speaking world.
In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy". For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Lévinas called "ontology"). Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth".
Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."[3]. At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to affirm or deny.[4] One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness.
In Levinas's later thought following "Totality and Infinity", he argued that our responsibility for the other was already rooted within our subjective constitution. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is "everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality."[5] This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 in "Otherwise Than Being"), where Levinas maintai
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 8, 2014
This book was the most comprehensive statement of Levinas' philosophy that I have read so far.
November 13, 2018
Revision
While I generally agree with the direction of the statements that Levinas puts out, I don't think he qualifies as a philosopher nor his thought as philosophy since so much of his work consists of oracular pronouncements that don't even attempt to give reasons, even in principle.
Now, he might respond that, taking his start from phenomenology, he is trying to describe the fundamental basis of reality, and this can only be shown via a special phenomenological perception. This would be in a manner analogous to explaining the colour blue in that it can only be pointed to.
Yet, many of his claims are obviously extravagant, and it is entirely open to anyone to contradict him merely by disagreeing that the world looks like the way he said. However, while rejecting his histrionic way of putting things, where with abandon the buzzwords of metaphysics and ontology are thrown about, lots of agreement will be found for his core position. This would be the general lesson from a lot of world religions and philosophies that the ego must be conquered and a life in service to others is to be enjoined.
However, I think such injunctions could in truth be more adequately grounded in a better philosophical system, where reasons could be given and a better insight into things in general might be gained. He would reply, in response, that any philosophical system is a problem in that it belongs to the order of ‘Being’, and as such seeks to totalise social experience in such a way that personal existence gets force-fit into artificially sharp categories. Indeed, the relationship between the conceptual and the ethical would be the fight between ‘Being’ and ‘beyond Being’, and this would be the entire history of philosophy as but a series of differing methods to accomplish the same task of achieving this violent totality.
However, with all this, I see no serious intellectual work that gives the detail to these big florid claims so as to justify the invocation of the grand concepts of Being, ontology, metaphysics, or totality involved in these claims. I understand that in his own weighty publications this is absent to the same extent also. In general then, and in this book of interviews definitely, not very much philosophical work is done at all in the job of understanding reality, which is of course the job of the philosopher to do.
Now, in rejecting his stage setting of the fight between Being and what is beyond Being, as being just a dramatic metaphor, what then remains is his bald statements concerning personal and social experience. But this would not get him very far philosophically either. For even in Husserlian phenomenology, with its heavy emphasis on description, by philosophical work nonetheless Husserl tried to reduce the range of what can be described to simpler principles, such as to the transcendental ego. For ever since Thales the job of intellectual enquiry seems to have been to bring as much of the immense variety of experience under as simple a rule as is possible. In this way reduction would seem to be essential to philosophy and intellectual enquiry in general.
Now it doesn’t seem that Levinas provides any way in which superior insight is gained into experience by way of such a reduction. For while I and other people may agree with the headline statements, I can detect no work that justifies these statements existing in Levinas’ writings. As such it cannot be enough to merely state experience and leave things hanging at that. Therefore, with the proviso that I haven’t read any of Levinas’ full books, and don’t intend to, I still feel safe in saying that he is not a philosopher and his work not philosophy.
While I generally agree with the direction of the statements that Levinas puts out, I don't think he qualifies as a philosopher nor his thought as philosophy since so much of his work consists of oracular pronouncements that don't even attempt to give reasons, even in principle.
Now, he might respond that, taking his start from phenomenology, he is trying to describe the fundamental basis of reality, and this can only be shown via a special phenomenological perception. This would be in a manner analogous to explaining the colour blue in that it can only be pointed to.
Yet, many of his claims are obviously extravagant, and it is entirely open to anyone to contradict him merely by disagreeing that the world looks like the way he said. However, while rejecting his histrionic way of putting things, where with abandon the buzzwords of metaphysics and ontology are thrown about, lots of agreement will be found for his core position. This would be the general lesson from a lot of world religions and philosophies that the ego must be conquered and a life in service to others is to be enjoined.
However, I think such injunctions could in truth be more adequately grounded in a better philosophical system, where reasons could be given and a better insight into things in general might be gained. He would reply, in response, that any philosophical system is a problem in that it belongs to the order of ‘Being’, and as such seeks to totalise social experience in such a way that personal existence gets force-fit into artificially sharp categories. Indeed, the relationship between the conceptual and the ethical would be the fight between ‘Being’ and ‘beyond Being’, and this would be the entire history of philosophy as but a series of differing methods to accomplish the same task of achieving this violent totality.
However, with all this, I see no serious intellectual work that gives the detail to these big florid claims so as to justify the invocation of the grand concepts of Being, ontology, metaphysics, or totality involved in these claims. I understand that in his own weighty publications this is absent to the same extent also. In general then, and in this book of interviews definitely, not very much philosophical work is done at all in the job of understanding reality, which is of course the job of the philosopher to do.
Now, in rejecting his stage setting of the fight between Being and what is beyond Being, as being just a dramatic metaphor, what then remains is his bald statements concerning personal and social experience. But this would not get him very far philosophically either. For even in Husserlian phenomenology, with its heavy emphasis on description, by philosophical work nonetheless Husserl tried to reduce the range of what can be described to simpler principles, such as to the transcendental ego. For ever since Thales the job of intellectual enquiry seems to have been to bring as much of the immense variety of experience under as simple a rule as is possible. In this way reduction would seem to be essential to philosophy and intellectual enquiry in general.
Now it doesn’t seem that Levinas provides any way in which superior insight is gained into experience by way of such a reduction. For while I and other people may agree with the headline statements, I can detect no work that justifies these statements existing in Levinas’ writings. As such it cannot be enough to merely state experience and leave things hanging at that. Therefore, with the proviso that I haven’t read any of Levinas’ full books, and don’t intend to, I still feel safe in saying that he is not a philosopher and his work not philosophy.
May 3, 2025
He’s at his clearest in his interviews. This book is, in my opinion, largely more helpful than *Ethics and Infinity*, which contains two invaluable interviews (penultimate and antepenultimate, if memory serves) but is otherwise more obscure. In general, my feeling is that once you get to *Existence and Existents*, the main ideas are there and the rest is fine tuning. To be sure, OTB adds the semiotic element (already glimpsed in a more discourse-oriented in TI), but that’s just him taking his main idea and applying it to language. After the 50s, he’s mostly clarifying and refining IMHO (and I find “God and Philosophy” to be a helpful addendum to OTB), so these interviews are especially helpful as they occur so late in his career when things have only continued to crystallize.
Read
December 8, 2023"The Vocation of the Other"
April 26, 2024
This stimulated and stirred my own thoughts enough to write another book.
April 26, 2017
This repetitive collection of interviews (Q's from all different interviewers revolve around similar topics & Levinas responds, as one would expect, similarly. After 120 pages, these interviews seem so redundant that one thinks that Levinas's A's could be exchanged willy-nilly, one response for another, all across the span of the book, and there would be little lost) is more appropriate for the Levinas-noggins & his completionists out there. Not an essential conduit for his body of thought.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews