Emmanuel Levinas
French · 1906–1995
Lithuanian-born French philosopher whose radical rethinking of ethics as first philosophy, grounded in the encounter with the face of the Other, challenged the primacy of ontology and offered an ethics of infinite responsibility.
Wikipedia ↗“Le visage d'autrui détruit à tout moment et déborde l'image plastique qu'il me laisse.”
French
“The face of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image it leaves me, the idea existing to my own measure and to the measure of its ideatum — the adequate idea.”
“L'éthique n'est pas une branche de la philosophie, mais la philosophie première.”
French
“Ethics is not a branch of philosophy, but first philosophy itself.”
“Autrui se révèle précisément dans son altérité, non pas dans un choc niant le moi, mais comme le phénomène originel de la douceur.”
French
“The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness.”
“La relation avec Autrui ne se produit pas en dehors du monde, mais met en question le monde possédé. La relation avec Autrui, la transcendance, consiste à dire le monde à Autrui.”
French
“The relationship with the Other is not produced outside of the world, but puts in question the world possessed. The relationship with the Other, transcendence, consists in speaking the world to the Other.”
“Le visage résiste à la possession, résiste à mes pouvoirs. Dans son épiphanie, dans l'expression, le sensible encore saisissable se mue en résistance totale à la prise.”
French
“The face resists possession, resists my powers. In its epiphany, in expression, the sensible, still graspable, turns into total resistance to the grasp.”
“Être ou ne pas être, est-ce bien là la question? La question première n'est-elle pas de savoir si l'être est inséparable du souci pour l'autre que soi?”
French
“To be or not to be — is that the question? Is it not the first and foremost question whether being is not inseparable from a concern about the other than oneself?”
“La responsabilité pour autrui n'est pas un accident arrivant à un sujet, mais précède en lui l'essence, n'a pas attendu la liberté.”
French
“Responsibility for the Other is not an accident that happens to a subject, but precedes essence in it, has not awaited freedom — in which a commitment to another would have been made.”