The Levinas Dictionary

While his work speaks very powerfully to the contemporary age, the language of Emmanuel Levinas can seem difficult to approach.

This dictionary gives the reader access to the terms he used to build his arguments, including those he employed idiosyncratically and invented. It also includes terms from phenomenology to which he gave new meanings, and which focused his critique of Western philosophy. By including original French words as well as the English, The Levinas Dictionary makes the work of this central figure in 20th-century philosophy more easily readable in translation.

Each term explored belongs to one or more of three periods of the work he regarded as properly philosophical: 1) pre-1940; 2) 1940-1960, including the writing of his magnum opus Totality and Infinity and 3) 1960-1995, including his second great work, Otherwise than Being. Entries show how the terms appear, develop, or mutate over the course of his work in the phenomenology of radical ethics.

Including an intellectual biography and a chronology of Levinas’ life and work, a list of primary sources in French and English, as well as secondary sources and a glossary, The Levinas Dictionary will provide a broad and far-reaching introduction to a thinker whose work has only become more relevant to contemporary theory and practice.