What do you think?
Rate this book
Entre Nous: Essays on Thinking-of-the-Other
Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most important figures of twentieth-century philosophy. Exerting a profound influence upon such thinkers as Derrida, Lyotard, Blanchot, and Irigaray, Levinas's work bridges several major gaps in the evolution of continental philosophy--between modern and postmodern, phenomenology and poststructuralism, ethics and ontology. He is credited with having spurred a revitalized interest in ethics-based philosophy throughout Europe and America.
Entre Nous (Between Us) is the culmination of Levinas's philosophy. Published in France a few years before his death, it gathers his most important work and reveals the development of his thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Along with several trenchant interviews published here, these essays engage with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights, and legal theory. Taken together, they constitute a key to Levinas's ideas on the ethical dimensions of otherness.
Working from the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas pushed beyond the limits of their framework to argue that it is ethics, not ontology, that orients philosophy, and that responsibility precedes reasoning. Ethics for Levinas means responsibility in relation to difference. Throughout his work, Levinas returns to the metaphor of the face of the other to discuss how and where responsibility enters our lives and makes philosophy necessary. For Levinas, ethics begins with our face to face interaction with another person--seeing that person not as a reflection of one's self, nor as a threat, but as different and greater than self. Levinas moves the reader to recognize the implications of this interaction: our abiding responsibility for the other, and our concern with the other's suffering and death.
Situated at the crossroads of several philosophical schools and approaches, Levinas's work illuminates a host of critical issues and has found resonances among students and scholars of literature, law, religion, and politics. Entre Nous is at once the apotheosis of his work and an accessible introduction to it. In the end, Levinas's urgent meditations upon the face of the other suggest a new foundation upon which to grasp the nature of good and evil in the tangled skein of our lives.
Entre Nous (Between Us) is the culmination of Levinas's philosophy. Published in France a few years before his death, it gathers his most important work and reveals the development of his thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Along with several trenchant interviews published here, these essays engage with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights, and legal theory. Taken together, they constitute a key to Levinas's ideas on the ethical dimensions of otherness.
Working from the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas pushed beyond the limits of their framework to argue that it is ethics, not ontology, that orients philosophy, and that responsibility precedes reasoning. Ethics for Levinas means responsibility in relation to difference. Throughout his work, Levinas returns to the metaphor of the face of the other to discuss how and where responsibility enters our lives and makes philosophy necessary. For Levinas, ethics begins with our face to face interaction with another person--seeing that person not as a reflection of one's self, nor as a threat, but as different and greater than self. Levinas moves the reader to recognize the implications of this interaction: our abiding responsibility for the other, and our concern with the other's suffering and death.
Situated at the crossroads of several philosophical schools and approaches, Levinas's work illuminates a host of critical issues and has found resonances among students and scholars of literature, law, religion, and politics. Entre Nous is at once the apotheosis of his work and an accessible introduction to it. In the end, Levinas's urgent meditations upon the face of the other suggest a new foundation upon which to grasp the nature of good and evil in the tangled skein of our lives.
256 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1995
17 people are currently reading
573 people want to read
About the author
Emmanuel Levinas
148 books402 followersEmanuelis Levinas (later adapted to French orthography as Emmanuel Levinas) received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania. After WWII, he studied the Talmud under the enigmatic "Monsieur Chouchani", whose influence he acknowledged only late in his life.
Levinas began his philosophical studies at Strasbourg University in 1924, where he began his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot. In 1928, he went to Freiburg University to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. At Freiburg he also met Martin Heidegger. Levinas became one of the very first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl, by translating Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and by drawing on their ideas in his own philosophy, in works such as his The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, De l'Existence à l'Existant, and En Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.
According to his obituary in New York Times,[1] Levinas came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, because of the latter's affinity for the Nazis. During a lecture on forgiveness, Levinas stated "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."[2]
After earning his doctorate Levinas taught at a private Jewish High School in Paris, the École Normale Israélite Orientale, eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris in 1967, and at the Sorbonne in 1973, from which he retired in 1979. He was also a Professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In 1989 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Philosophy.
Among his most famous students is Rabbi Baruch Garzon from Tetouan (Morocco), who learnt Philosophy with Levinas at the Sorbonne and later went on to become one of the most important Rabbis of the Spanish-speaking world.
In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy". For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Lévinas called "ontology"). Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth".
Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."[3]. At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to affirm or deny.[4] One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness.
In Levinas's later thought following "Totality and Infinity", he argued that our responsibility for the other was already rooted within our subjective constitution. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is "everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality."[5] This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 in "Otherwise Than Being"), where Levinas maintai
Levinas began his philosophical studies at Strasbourg University in 1924, where he began his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot. In 1928, he went to Freiburg University to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. At Freiburg he also met Martin Heidegger. Levinas became one of the very first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl, by translating Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and by drawing on their ideas in his own philosophy, in works such as his The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, De l'Existence à l'Existant, and En Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.
According to his obituary in New York Times,[1] Levinas came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, because of the latter's affinity for the Nazis. During a lecture on forgiveness, Levinas stated "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."[2]
After earning his doctorate Levinas taught at a private Jewish High School in Paris, the École Normale Israélite Orientale, eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris in 1967, and at the Sorbonne in 1973, from which he retired in 1979. He was also a Professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. In 1989 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Philosophy.
Among his most famous students is Rabbi Baruch Garzon from Tetouan (Morocco), who learnt Philosophy with Levinas at the Sorbonne and later went on to become one of the most important Rabbis of the Spanish-speaking world.
In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy". For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Lévinas called "ontology"). Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth".
Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."[3]. At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to affirm or deny.[4] One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness.
In Levinas's later thought following "Totality and Infinity", he argued that our responsibility for the other was already rooted within our subjective constitution. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is "everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality."[5] This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 in "Otherwise Than Being"), where Levinas maintai
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 1, 2023
This is a great book especially where you can understand it. In my case, I was able to follow Levinas' comments on Henri Bergson and Vassily Grossman. I had tremendous difficulty following his analyses of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl. If you are reading this book for a course, however, none of this will be a problem as your professor will fill in the gaps for you.
I think that as a minimum one should read Heidegger's "Being and Time" before tackling this work as at least half articles discuss this work.
I think that as a minimum one should read Heidegger's "Being and Time" before tackling this work as at least half articles discuss this work.
June 2, 2007
This collection of essays includes "Useless Suffering." This is the essay that made Levinas my favorite philosopher. First of all, it is beautiful. Totally beautiful. Levinas describes all of your worst emotional pain and acknowledges that it is actually unfathomable. Suffering for him is not even a kind of experience.
First of all, this essay is very helpful on a personal level, because when I am that unhappy, all I am reduced to is asking, where does it go? Where do I put this? When it is no longer about the situation, when it is clear all that can happen now is I am collapsed with grief, what am I supposed to do? Well Levinas points out there is nothing. Suffering is pure submission and undergoing.
Levinas also insists on the uselessness of it. This helps define the phenomenon he is talking about. Pain or trouble in the service of something is not what he is talking about. And it is true, that pain does not leave the person with questions, sometimes it is happily borne.
Another thing about suffering is that it is always exactly the same. No matter what the cause or the individual, thge culture or part of the world or the time, the "sensation" (that's a metaphor) of it is exactly the same.
Here is the part I don't understand when I am describing this essay: After all this, Levinas writes that this universality of suffering is what gives rise to the idea of something being between people, of ethics. In my maybe too literal mind, that sounds like a purpose? but suffering was supposed to be purposeless? perhaps there is no purpose to the individual. maybe that is what purpose means in this context.
If you have any insights, please leave them here for me.
XoXo Sonja
First of all, this essay is very helpful on a personal level, because when I am that unhappy, all I am reduced to is asking, where does it go? Where do I put this? When it is no longer about the situation, when it is clear all that can happen now is I am collapsed with grief, what am I supposed to do? Well Levinas points out there is nothing. Suffering is pure submission and undergoing.
Levinas also insists on the uselessness of it. This helps define the phenomenon he is talking about. Pain or trouble in the service of something is not what he is talking about. And it is true, that pain does not leave the person with questions, sometimes it is happily borne.
Another thing about suffering is that it is always exactly the same. No matter what the cause or the individual, thge culture or part of the world or the time, the "sensation" (that's a metaphor) of it is exactly the same.
Here is the part I don't understand when I am describing this essay: After all this, Levinas writes that this universality of suffering is what gives rise to the idea of something being between people, of ethics. In my maybe too literal mind, that sounds like a purpose? but suffering was supposed to be purposeless? perhaps there is no purpose to the individual. maybe that is what purpose means in this context.
If you have any insights, please leave them here for me.
XoXo Sonja
June 5, 2015
An excellent supplement for those seeking to internalize the thinking of Levinas.
I would not recommend this collection of more simple to understand essays and discussions in the place of Totality and Infinity or Otherwise than Being. They are best consumed after, like a series of footnotes; renvois, sending back to the thought and the face of the other.
I would not recommend this collection of more simple to understand essays and discussions in the place of Totality and Infinity or Otherwise than Being. They are best consumed after, like a series of footnotes; renvois, sending back to the thought and the face of the other.
August 14, 2018
For Levinas, philosophy does not begin with wonder, as with the ancient Greeks or as according to other past or contemporary romantic views of philosophy, that often with this same romantic tone say that philosophy means wondering at things as if one were a child. For Levinas, philosophy begins with a shock. A philosophy that only starts out from wonder and sets out to understand things in their being, leading the philosopher to ask questions about this being - from which ever philosophical tradition this might be done - attributes a primacy to the ontological. And wrongly so, according to Levinas. What this namely leads to, he argues, is what he calls ‘a terrible neutrality of being’, meaning an indifferent, merely investigative attitude towards the world. Levinas exposes a violent tendency in this way of thinking. It thanks its existence to an absence of the Good.
What Levinas wants to give primacy to in ontology’s stead is Ethics. For him, philosophy begins not with wonder, but with a shock, with perturbation. The question then no longer is an ontological one about how being is in its being, but an ethical one: is it good, right or justified how being is?
For Levinas, this is not only a philosophical, theoretical matter of prioritizing one way of thinking over the other for pure intellectual reasons. For him much more is at stake. Due to the violent tendency in traditional Western philosophy, we have failed to ethically deal with the Other in a humane and responsible way. With his critique, Levinas exposes an egotistical way of thinking, which he calls ‘egology’ that has no place for the Other, because it even excludes and even annihilates him. The I, can only constitute itself and exist by virtue of exclusion of the Other. Time and again, cruelty in history repeats itself because we are unable to deal with the Other in an ethical responsible way. The most extreme outcome of this thinking was the Holocaust. This is why Levinas asks himself what kind of philosophy has made this possible? Or more specifically: what kind of subjectivity gave rise to such horror? And how come 2000 years of revelation has not prevented such a terrible thing from happening? It are these questions Levinas takes with him in his deconstruction and Critique of Western philosoph, of which one can attain a neat conception of by reading this book.
October 31, 2013
The essay "Useless Suffering" is an essential read for anyone grappling with theodicy, especially those who have suffered an irrevocable loss or violation, and who are suffering further under the crushing weight of cultural or spiritual demands to justify--even sanction--horrendous violations in the name of personal, spiritual, or even artistic "growth."
February 9, 2021
A really great collection of essays on Levinas's main theme of the Face of the Other. Good repetition and reinforcement of themes - some more densely stated than others. This book may be a useful introduction to his major philosophical works.
September 5, 2007
I am beginning to see the influence of Levinas' ideas in my own thinking, which is great. It's also very decentering. In this book Levinas challenges Western metaphysics (specifically ontology) as first philosophy and raises ethics in its place with a special emphasis on the Other.
Read
October 9, 2025Did not make for light reading. As I understand it Levinas believes that the “other” - described as the “face” commands us - prior to any cognition (even of self) to attend to their needs even at the cost of sacrificing the self. Levinas sees this ethical reality as an inescapable aspect of being; revealed as “the word of God” even. Although it is a God whose transcendence is not available to humans. The “face” of the other suggests the reality of the infinite but provides no assurance of that fact. (Although arguably that makes the act of being for the other at the expense of being for the self all the more gratuitous - yes?)
Levinas’s philosophy thus operates as a critique of Heidegger’s existential phenomenology in Being and Time.
Ultimately, I must admit that Levinas’s use of religious/prophetic language has some appeal even as it offers no real reason to embark upon a journey into theology or belief. I cannot help but think that Levinas’s insistence that ethics proceeds ontology or epistemology because of the inescapable demands of the “face” speaks to an essential “sociality” present in the being of every human being. This “sociality” however perhaps does not require the arcane language and theoretical concepts of an exactingly subtle phenomenological analysis.
I cannot help but think that we can dispense with much of this continental verbiage and accomplish many of the same ends (authenticity that includes sociality) by exploring the ethical implications inherent in a pragmatic project that is always-already contingent, naturalistic, and anti-foundationalist.
Levinas’s philosophy thus operates as a critique of Heidegger’s existential phenomenology in Being and Time.
Ultimately, I must admit that Levinas’s use of religious/prophetic language has some appeal even as it offers no real reason to embark upon a journey into theology or belief. I cannot help but think that Levinas’s insistence that ethics proceeds ontology or epistemology because of the inescapable demands of the “face” speaks to an essential “sociality” present in the being of every human being. This “sociality” however perhaps does not require the arcane language and theoretical concepts of an exactingly subtle phenomenological analysis.
I cannot help but think that we can dispense with much of this continental verbiage and accomplish many of the same ends (authenticity that includes sociality) by exploring the ethical implications inherent in a pragmatic project that is always-already contingent, naturalistic, and anti-foundationalist.
August 5, 2024
3.5 for now. I’m having a hard time rating this book. Levinas’ philosophy is beautiful and at some times beautiful might be the word for his writing. But the lack of clear communication of ideas is something necessary for philosophy that is going to convince someone else. I loved that this book points me to other texts as well that I want to read in order to understand Levinas’ philosophy more. There were points of these essays that made me furiously write my thoughts and open my heart and mind to new ways of thinking.
Read
November 3, 2020this book fucked me up when i read it, with the whole dying-for-the-other, heroic self-sacrifice thing as the ultimate ethical act, but, now, nearly two years after having read it, and, still thinking of the other, i see that the other is shit and not worth dying for, even though they want you to die because they are evil-yet-hypocritical savages who want only revenge
February 28, 2020
Unfortunately rather dry and tortured. While the work contains some ingenious sparks of insight that come sudden and unexpected, the rest seems obscure or poorly translated. The interviews in the second half do make up for a more pleasant read.
Read
December 14, 2024Difficile de noter ce livre comme l'est d'ailleurs le style et les idées de Lévinas. Une chose est claire; sans une maitrise de la philosophie de Husserl, Heiddeger et encore Kierkegaard on ne comprendra pas Lévinas!
November 15, 2020
- The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights -
July 1, 2025
"We moeten ons niet laten imponeren door de valse rijpheid van de modernen die voor de ethiek , moralisme genoemd, geen plaats vinden in het redelijk gesprek. "
October 30, 2024
Los ensayos podrían estar mejor seleccionados, había muchos que eran una reiteración de los mismos temas con exactamente las mismas palabras. Estoy casi segura de que había dos ensayos donde dos párrafos eran exactamente iguales.
Mis capítulos favoritos eran en los que justamente se alejaba de los temas de siempre o les lograba dar una nueva dimensión. Le daría 5 estrellas a:
- El yo y la totalidad
- Levy Bruhl y la filosofía contemporánea
- El sufrimiento inútil
- Determinación filosófica sobre la idea de cultura
Mis capítulos favoritos eran en los que justamente se alejaba de los temas de siempre o les lograba dar una nueva dimensión. Le daría 5 estrellas a:
- El yo y la totalidad
- Levy Bruhl y la filosofía contemporánea
- El sufrimiento inútil
- Determinación filosófica sobre la idea de cultura
August 9, 2013
I understood very little of this. What I did understand, I liked, I think, but I don't know if I'll ever try to reread it.
Read
November 18, 2014Reviewed here.
Read
February 11, 20172/8/17: Read "Useless Suffering" (p.91-101)
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews