Outside the Subject: Levinas's Jewish Perspective on Time

摘要: Levinas's Jewishness is a self-evident characteristic of his thought, whether considered from the particulars of his biography, or his close intellectual relationship to other modern Jewish thinkers, or the clues we might glean from his own writings—ranging from hints dropped in the midst of his “secular" essays to explicit allusions in his commen-taries on Talmudic passages. At no level can one approach him without recognizing his profound indebtedness to Jewish sources, and thus it is not surprising that the very foundations of his philosophy would be informed by a Jewish perspective. The thesis I wish to sketch, and it can be little more than a preliminary exposition in the space here allotted, is that Levinas assumes a traditional Jewish understanding of Time as the foundation of his ethical stance. My interpretation parts company with previous critiques in two respects: the first is an analysis of time in the Judaic …