Is it righteous to be? : interviews with Emmanuel Levinas /
edited by Jill Robbins.
- ix, 307 pages ; 24 cm.
- Meridian .
- Meridian (Stanford, Calif.). .
Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-299) and index.
Introduction: "Apres Vous, Monsieur!" -- Intellectual and Personal Biography. Interview with Francois Poirie (1986). Interview with Myriam Anissimov (1985). Interview with Salomon Malka (1984) -- Ethics as First Philosophy. The Vocation of the Other (1988). Being-for-the-Other (1989). The Philosopher and Death (1982). Being-Toward-Death and "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (1986). Intention, Event, and the Other (1989). Reality Has Weight (1984). Philosophy, Justice, and Love (1983). The Awakening of the I (1992). In the Name of the Other (1990). The Other, Utopia, and Justice (1988). The Proximity of the Other (1986). Who Shall Not Prophesy? (1985). Responsibility and Substitution (1988). On the Usefulness of Insomnia (1987) -- A-Dieu. On Jewish Philosophy (1985). Judaism and Christianity after Franz Rosenzweig (1987). Discussion Following "Transcendence and Intelligibility" (1984). Select Bibliography of Works by Emmanuel Levinas. Pt. I. Pt. II. Pt. III.
"Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) is at the center of the renewed debate over the question of the ethical. In the context of the phenomenological tradition, Levinas defines ethics as an originary response to the face of the other. 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. He underlies his dedication to the phenomenological search for the concrete and the nonformal signification of alterity. He also elaborates on issues that do not receive extensive treatment in his formal philosophical works, including the question of pre-philosophical experiences, the ethical signification of money, justice, and the State. The informality of the interviews prompt Levinas to address matters about which he is reticent in his published works."--Publisher description.