Emanuel Lévinas a židovství

This survey examines the Jewish inspiration of the work of Emmanuel Levinas. This inspiration has been long recognized explicitly in his Talmudic expositions that have appeared since the sixties. However, also the two central works of Levinas’s philosophical and ethical endeavour, his Totality and infinity (1961) and his Otherwise than being (1973), even thou arguing philosophically, do in their deep structure deal with the central concepts of the Bible, namely the utmost authority of Biblical prohibitions and the peculiar Hebrew idiom hinneni defining personality as the one who provide him- or herself to the Other.