Biography of Levinas

Emmanuel Lévinas. la vie et la trace

This unique biography, composed of traces and faces, depicts the life and thought of Emmanuel Levinas, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Author Solomon Malka travels through time and space, tracing Levinas's life: from his childhood in the small Lithuanian town of Kaunas to pre-war Paris and the Nazi concentration camps; from Davos to Leuven, from the Vatican to Tel Aviv; from the corridors of the Eastern Israel Normal School to the lecture halls of the Sorbonne; from his obscurity and solitary labor to his global recognition.
This book depicts the life of Levinas, tracing the key figures who intertwined his life: his close friends Maurice Blanchot and Jean Wahl, his mentor, Mr. Choshani; his significant influences, Husserl, Heidegger, and Rosenzweig; and his interlocutors, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida, and Pope John Paul II. This biography offers a unique glimpse into the 20th century. Its strength lies in its full exploration of Levinas's Jewishness and its faithful presentation of the balance he struck between his identity as a philosopher and his Jewishness. This is the key to understanding Levinas.
Editor's Recommendation: Emmanuel Levinas was a renowned 20th-century French philosopher and Jewish thinker. A survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, his experience profoundly influenced his thought. Western and Jewish coexist in this philosopher who explored the "other."
This biography, by Solomon Malka, has studied with Levinas since his youth. After Levinas's death in 1995, Malka spent five years preparing this biography. This book comprehensively chronicles Levinas's life and intellectual development, from his birth in Eastern Europe to his studies in France and Germany and his rise to fame in France.
Levinas is both a quintessential 20th-century French philosopher, developing a series of important philosophical concepts such as being, having, and the other. He is also a 100% Jewish thinker, whose unique Jewish cultural way of thinking and living permeated his life. This book faithfully recreates Levinas's dual nature, focusing on both the brilliance of the Talmud and Socratic philosophical speculation.
This book belongs to the "Mnemosyne" series of Cogito.
◎ The industry recommends that my thoughts benefit from three people: Heidegger, Blanchot, and Levinas.
—Jacques Derrida I really appreciated and understood all those great pages in Totality and Infinity about the family. … Before Derrida, only Levinas had spoken about it in this way.
While Paul Ricoeur's philosophy is often a decontextualized intellectual enterprise, Levinas's philosophy needs to be re-contextualized within his life to be better understood. Insomnia, ennui, escape, responsibility, and hostages—a series of thought-provoking philosophical concepts—need to be activated through lived experience. As Levinas said, we cannot separate the message we receive from the face of our essential interlocutor. Solomon Malka's biography presents us with a vivid portrayal of Levinas as his interlocutor.
——Sun Xiangchen (Dean of the School of Philosophy, Fudan University)
This biography weaves together the author's memories of Levinas, interviews with his family and friends, and visits to the "places" of his life... These constitute Levinas's "traces." Through these "traces," we simultaneously draw closer to Levinas, yet at the same time, he becomes even more unfamiliar to us. We witness his ordinary yet sacred daily life, which both helps us understand his thought and seems even more distant than his thought. Through these "traces," we are both close to him and far away from him, precisely the "closeness" that Levinas articulates: Levinas is both the object of understanding and remains the Other.
—Wang Jiajun (Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, East China Normal University)
Mencius once said, "Is it possible to praise his poems and read his books without knowing the man?" This is especially true of Levinas: his philosophy is inextricably linked to the education and suffering he endured as a Jew. This biography allows us to more truly "know the man," thereby better enabling us to "read his books" and immerse ourselves in his thoughts.
——Zhu Gang (Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University)
As a philosopher, Levinas consistently rejected the separation of what is said from the act of saying it. This means that a person's words should be witnessed by their actions and life. Otherwise, all lofty rhetoric and scholarly truths are nothing but deceptive rhetoric. This biography captivates us. It not only records the traces of Levinas's life but also bears witness to his philosophy. In this era of overflowing speech and thought, we are naturally concerned to see whether these gripping arguments can be witnessed by the actions and lives of those who speak them.
——Liu Wenjin (Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, East China Normal University)
Faced with the human dilemma wrought by the Holocaust, Levinas, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, proposed ethics as "first philosophy." In his interpretation of Jewish classics, he endowed ethics with a sacredness that transcended all religious concepts. Perhaps Levinas was not as highly regarded as his peers, appearing "too Jewish"; and as a Jew, he was criticized by his fellow Jews for being "Christian." Yet, it is precisely in his often misinterpreted words that we discover love, "Pascal's 'love without greed.'"
——Zhang Yinhong (Young Scholar)
A great mind, a solitary journey, a life of speculation: Levinas has always been a stranger in Western civilization, pondering the most difficult philosophical questions in solitude.
—Gong Weimin (Translator of this book)

2022-01-01

广西师范大学出版社｜我思Cogito

I think

352

9787559842855