Emmanuel Levinas
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Total reviews: 1
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
An important early work by Levinas 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.
Originally published in 1935, this English translation and publication of _On Escape_ brings the reader closer to the early thoughts and writings of Emmanuel Levinas than previous publications. His first major original manuscript after his dissertation on Husserl's theory of intuition, _Existence and Existents_, would not appear until 1947, and the lectures collected and published as _Time and the Other_ not until 1948, so the publication of this text should prove to be indispensable to English-reading audiences who have interests in Levinas' (early) work, as well as that of twentieth century Continental European philosophy. Here traditionally accepted phenomenological and existential concepts are introduced, studied, and discussed, such as the following: ontological Being, existents (beings), the identity of the self, the lived-body, radical finitude, etc.
The human subject, which modern philosophy has argued is dual in nature, no longer wishes to escape its existence, its Being; rather it seeks to be "delivered" or "deneutralized" from the world (47). As he concludes _Existence and Existents_, Levinas will later seek a way out of the there is (il y a), and discovers it in the concept of the hypostasis. One must go beyond Being to actualize this point. Philosophy, traditionally accepted, has not thought through the implications of such a task. Throughout history, philosophers have been too concerned with beings. Heidegger introduced the ontological distinction, and began teaching us to (re)think Being. Levinas now wishes to help us think through and beyond Being to get to the ethical relation to, and the infinite responsibility for, the absolute Other -- the other human being.
[for a longer review, go to: http://www.othervoices.org/2.3/mmichau/index.html]
Editorial Review:
First published in 1935, On Escape represents Emmanuel Levinas’s first attempt to break with the ontological obsession of the Western tradition. In it, Levinas not only affirms the necessity of an escape from being, but also gives a meaning and a direction to it. Beginning with an analysis of need not as lack or some external limit to a self-sufficient being, but as a positive relation to our being, Levinas moves through a series of brilliant phenomenological analyses of such phenomena as pleasure, shame, and nausea in order to show a fundamental insufficiency in the human condition.
In his critical introduction and annotation, Jacques Rolland places On Escape in its historical and intellectual context, and also within the context of Levinas’s entire oeuvre, explaining Levinas’s complicated relation to Heidegger, and underscoring the way Levinas’s analysis of “being riveted,” of the need for escape, is a meditation on the body.
