Emmanuel Levinas
Source: Wikipedia: Emmanuel Levinas
Philosophy & Thought • Historical Archive • 🇱🇹 Russian Empire • 0 views

Emmanuel Levinas 🇱🇹

Emmanuel Levinas
["Philosopher", "Ethicist", "Phenomenologist"]
Born Jan 12, 1906 🇱🇹 Kaunas, Russian Empire
Passed Away Dec 25, 1995 Paris, France
Lifespan 89 years old
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"The Face of the Other comes to me with an absolute vulnerability and an absolute commandment: Thou shalt not kill."

Archival Overview

Lithuanian-born French philosopher who established ethics as 'First Philosophy' in Totality and Infinity, centering thought on infinite responsibility before the Face of the Other (l'Autre).

Biographical Record

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) studied phenomenology in Freiburg under Husserl and Heidegger before introducing both thinkers to France. Serving as an officer in the French Army in 1940, he spent the war in a German POW camp, while his entire Lithuanian family was murdered in the Holocaust.

In his 1961 masterwork 'Totalite et Infini' ('Totality and Infinity'), Levinas overturned Western ontology, arguing that philosophy begins not with abstract Being, but with the ethical encounter with the vulnerable, commanding Face of the Other ('Thou shalt not kill'). Ethics is an asymmetric, infinite responsibility.

Key Life Milestones

1961

Totality and Infinity (Totalite et Infini)

Published his doctoral thesis establishing ethics as first philosophy against ontological totalization.

1974

Otherwise than Being

Published his crowning phenomenological work on substitution, vulnerability, and maternal sacrifice.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Pantin Cemetery
Pantin (Paris), France
GPS: 48.9056, 2.4089
View on Memory Atlas
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