A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas's Philosophy of Judaism

"I am not a particularly Jewish thinker," said Emmanuel Levinas, "I am just a thinker." This book argues against the idea, affirmed by Levinas himself, that Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being separate philosophy from Judaism. By reading Levinas's philosophical works through the prism of Judaic texts and ideas, Michael Fagenblat argues that what Levinas called "ethics" is as much a hermeneutical product wrought from the Judaic heritage as a series of phenomenological observations. Decoding the Levinas's philosophy of Judaism within a Heideggerian and Pauline framework, Fagenblat uses biblical, rabbinic, and Maimonidean texts to provide sustained interpretations of the philosopher's work. Ultimately he calls for a reconsideration of the relation between tradition and philosophy, and of the meaning of faith after the death of epistemology.

Author: Michael Fagenblat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 06/03/2010
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780804768696

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2011

About the Author
Michael Fagenblat is Lecturer in the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University.