Existence and Existents [Paperback]

Emmanuel Levinas (Author), Alphonso Lingis (Translator), Robert Bernasconi (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0820703192 | ISBN-13: 978-0820703190 | Publication Date: April 2001

Existence and Existents was written mostly during Levinas's imprisonment in World War II, and provides the first sketch of his mature thought -- later developed in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence (also published by Duquesne University Press). Levinas's project in Existence and Existents is to move from anonymous existence to the emergence of subjectivity; to subjectivity's practice, theory and morality; to its encounter with the alterity of the other person. He is concerned here primarily with the time of the solitary subject; time is the inner structure of subjectivity, of the movement of existing. Existence and Existents introduces the major themes and concerns that occupied Levinas throughout his career. It is essential reading for understanding both Levinas's own philosophy and the developments in philosophical thought in the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Levinas's work...contains not only wholly new analyses of the forms of time-of the present, the past, the future-but also a new conception of the work of time. Alphonso Lingis

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

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Product Details

• Paperback: 113 pages
• Publisher: Duquesne Univ Pr (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820703192
• ISBN-13: 978-0820703190
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,504 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Short Form of Making Way, October 20, 2010

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This review is from: Existence and Existents (Paperback)

Writing a review of a major work of philosophy is a preposterous act of presumption. So,instead, I will simply offer a thank you.
I have already recommended this book. This friend of mine is a self-taught student of philosophy who is truly exploring through this literature what Nietzsche's proclamation, "God is Dead" means to someone who is deeply committed to a spiritual practice.
"Existence and Existents" is an exploration of life's upsurge, in the language of philosophy, that accepts the "irremissible" (Levinas's word) onslaught of this upsurge, while not surrendering to its being "meaningless."
The book also serves as a concise counterpoint to Heidegger's mythologizing romanticism of "being." Being is a construction of the already knowing, power-seeking, war-making (as Levinas' "Totality and Infinity" makes clear) subject. Existence, in contrast, knows nothing of being, and engenders "existents" as its self-forming instantiation in its on-going surge of potency, venturing ever onward.
This book therefore sets in motion, in my opinion, the terms and the notion that defines the work of philosophy in the decades ahead. We must come to see how coming forth, in instants and as hope, also yields the human endeavor among other existents and within a frame of that humans must surpass; and so it is the work of the human endeavor to take up its stance as existents always already amid the traces of all that comes and the "there is" that has already ventured beyond itself, no less the human.
God is dead means that we are now taking up the conditions, means and comprehensions that shape a human endeavor at all. Being is the mirror, but look up over it and there is the Other, the infinite writings of faces, all of whom write their coming from existence from the "there is" to exist here, in the "I am." What there "is" of this, we humans must give to ourselves, to others and to all that lies in our "proximity."
I recommend this book to all those who seek a new way of making it matter that the human endeavor take up its responsibility. The book requires work, thought, slow reading and reflection. It teaches us, there by, the ethic of becoming the living we are.