CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

1. An Original Philosophy

2. Delimitation of the Study

3. An Overview

CHAPTER ONE – EMMANUEL LEVIN AS:

LIFE, INFLUENCES, WORKS

1. Life

2. Cultural Influences

3. Some Major Works

CHAPTER TWO – TOTALITY, OR THE “SAME”

1. Nostalgia for Totality, or Universality

2. Totality

2.1 Interiority

2.2 Need

3. Impersonal Being

3.1 Being as Prison

3.2 ‘There is’ (IIy a)

3.3 Appropriation by Being

4. Knowledge and Totalization

4.1 Intentionality and Representation

4.2 Knowledge’s Violence

4.3 Understanding and Possession

4.4 Phenomenology and Possession

4.5 Immanence and Solitude

4.6 Towards a Rupture of Being.

5. Ontological Totalitarianism.

5.1 History and Totality

5.2 Totalitarianism.

Conclusion

CHAPTER THREE – INFINITY, OR THE “OTHER”

1. Infinity

2. Desire

3. Alterity as Transcendence

3.1 Alterity and Fecundity

3.2 Alterity and Death

3.3 Alterity and Time.

4. Discourse

4.1 The Other as Source of Discourse

4.2 Teaching [enseignement]

4.3 Language and Communication

4.4 The “Saying,” and the “Said”

4.4.1 Signification and Significance

4.4.2 Saying and Responsibility

Conclusion

viii

CHAPTER FOUR – THE ASYMMETRICAL RELATION

1. Facing the Other

1.1 Face as Signification

1.1.1 Signification without Context

1.1.2 Transcendence of the Face

1.1.3 The Poverty, and the Mastery, in the Face

1.1.4 The Face’s Cry of appeal

1.2 The Face-to-Face Relation

1.2.1 Addressing, or Invoking the Other

1.2.2 The Face questions my Freedom

1.2.3 The Face Commands my Attention

1.2.4 Fear for the Other’s Death, not for my Death

1.2.5 Subservience of Obedience

2. Asymmetrical Responsibility.

2.1 Bad Conscience, Good Conscience

2.1.1 A ‘temptation to innocence’

2.1.2 Freedom of the Ego, questioned.

2.1.3 Primacy of Good before Being

2.2 Obedience to a Command

2.2.1 Obsession with the Other

2.2.2 Obligation to the Other

2.2.3 Held Hostage

2.3 Non-Reciprocal Responsibility

2.3.1 Book-keeping versus Gratuitousness

2.3.2 Substitution

2.3.2.1 The Other in the Same

2.3.3 The Elected One

2.3.3.1 Non-transferable Responsibility

2.4 Expiation

2.5 The One-For-The-Other

3. The Levinasian Subject

3.1 Consciousness and Subjectivity

3.1.1 Subjectivity irreducible to Intentionality

3.2 Passivity of the Subject

3.2.1 Subjectivity and Death.

3.2.2 The “detestable” self

3.2.3 Not “I”, but “me”

3.2.4 Sub-jectum: Subjection before the Other

3.3 Subjectivity structured as a Responsibility

3.3.2 Subject as the Site of Transcendence.

3.3.3 Subordination is not Servitude.

3.3.4 Subj ectivity as Hostage

| 3.3.5 Subjectivity as Substitution and Expiation

3.4 Uniqueness of the Subject

3.4.1 Uniqueness as Obsession with the Other

3.4.2 The Singularity of the Subject.

3.4.3 Individuation of the Self

3.4.4 The Irreplaceable Self

3.4.5 Subjectivity and Freedom

Conclusion