Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo

Haven't read it yet.

Let's hope Emmanuel Levinas ISN'T right. For Levinas, face-to-face is the opening to the infinite, the human face withstanding and prevailing over our attempts to control (know) every facet of reality. It is during this expanded engagement with the human face that we take responsibility for the Other and experience a transcendent ethical state. E-mail doesn't count. Txting either. Facebook, with its endless stream of disembodied information, might be the worst. It's a nice thought, but it feels more like an elaborately constructed world of desire than an observable or actionable state of affairs. Too bad. Heightened awareness sounds so much more inviting than the usual sausage we make of human relations. Constructed as a series of conversations, Ethics and Infinity is easier to comprehend than most of Levinas's writing and gets to various points quickly. Still, it's a long way from conversational, so buckle up. Levinas may be more visionary than philosopher, but maybe that's the point.

Excellent!

Thought provoking and insightful. Levinas, in my opinion, is one of the better philosophers of last century.

Ethics and Infinity is a great introduction to Levinas and his thought. I recently took a class on Buber and Levinas, although this text was not a part of the syllabus, it was insightful. I also recommend The Levinas Reader from 1989, it contains a series of essays that can be more concise and clear than Levinas in at other times, i.e., Totality and Infinity which is often obscurely written.

I'm so happy to have this book. Thank you so much

Quality book in fine condition delivered in a timely way. Thanks.

An exceptionally lucid series of interviews with one of the most central, misunderstood and neglected thinkers of the 20th C. If you are looking to take a quick dip in the work of Levinas (something that may not be possible) I would council you to pick this up, it is the most easily accesible book to attempt a (cursory) look at some of Levinas' key points. The questions are interesting and (more importantly) not trivial... Levinas's responses are succint but also thorough and searching. I found this much more rewarding and illuminating than some of his more weighty tomage. Good for recovering academics, practicing theorists, intellectual dilletantes and anyone else interested in adopting an ethically based philosophy that can stand up and go toe to toe with all those wily postmodernists with their impenetrable and convoluted jargon of hubris...