Emmanuel Levinas

These essays unfold a complex picture from phenomenology to Talmudic readings. It shows how radically Levinas expanded genetic phenomenology toward preconscious and intersubjective affectivity. It discusses Levinas' appropriation of Heidegger's early hermeneutics as secular revelation of what-is toward a phenomenology of the unseen, adapting Maimonides' two-leveled conception of language. Pursuing the source of Heidegger's ontological difference to Eckhart, the book unearths the important influence of Maimonides on Eckhart, and Levinas' recourse to the former's negative theology. It then explores two strains of biblical hermeneutics: a Hassidic source, via Buber, and a rationalist one, through Levinas. It closes with a consideration of politics, both revolutionary and that of "difference."