The Event of the Good

Centers on the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, aiming to understand this important thinker on his own terms.

To read Levinas in a Levinasian way means to understand this important thinker on his own terms, thinking "ethics as first philosophy," without reducing his role to that of a contributor to some other discourse, such as phenomenology, deconstruction, or religious traditions other than his own. This volume offers a variety of interventions into how the priority of the ethical-as formulated by Emmanuel Levinas and seconded by Richard A. Cohen, one of his preeminent interpreters-reorients philosophy to its own questioning-indeed, to its very sense of itself as meaningful. In the decades since Levinas first emerged as a profound and critical voice, many have used his thought to illuminate a broad range of philosophical questions. Often this has occurred in ways that have deemphasized or altered what is arguably Levinas's most radical gesture: reframing philosophy, indeed reframing the meaning of meaning, via an ethical turn. To this end, the essays in this volume, drawing especially on Cohen's reading of Levinas, offer insights into how appropriations and assessments of his philosophy might become more in line with the urgency and full meaning of his notion of the ethical. Whether discussing ethics, aesthetics, politics, or Jewish thought, when taken together, they enhance our comprehension of ethics and Levinas's philosophy of responsibility.