Otherwise than being, or, Beyond essence

Alternate Titles

• Otherwise than being
• Beyond essence

Description

This is Levinas' last book. I can't describe it in a paragraph or two -- sorry! If you're looking to start with Levinas, start with perhaps Existence and Existents, or some early essays. Otherwise than Being (OTB) tells a story of how I come to be constituted as a subject in the world. This story is going to involve the Other ("autrui") in a radical way. It's not an easy book. But it is worth the read. The discussion of "substitution" (chapter 4) is perhaps the most quoted part of the book. But it's all worth a very careful read, and several re-readings. To those philosophy people who aren't putting descriptions up - please help! Really good books get no love on this site!

Description

Otherwise than being or beyond essence is a sequel to Levinas's totality and infinity. An immensely challenging and sophisticated work, it is generally considered Levinas's most important contribution to the contemporary debate surrounding the closure of metaphysical discourse, much commented upon by Jacques Derrida. The work contains a fundamentally original theory of the ethical relationship and describes the face-to-face relationship, sensibility, responsibility and speech. The process of the revelation of Being as laid out by modern phenomenological ontology is severely criticized, as the author claims that the ultimate account of these phenomena is not in ontology, the exposition of the meaning of Being, but in a paradoxical discourse, in a skeptical mode, of what is beyond Being.

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