Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence [Paperback]

Emmanuel Levinas (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0820702994 | ISBN-13: 978-0820702995 | Publication Date: May 1998

A sequel to Levinas's Totality and Infinity, this work is generally considered Levinas's most important contribution to the contemporary debate surrounding the closure of metaphysical discourse, much commented upon by Jacques Derrida. This work contains a fundamentally original theory of the ethical relationship and describes the face-to-face relationship, sensibility, responsibility and speech. Renowned Levinas scholar Richard A. Cohen has contributed a new foreword to this edition of Otherwise than Being, which is also the first time the work is available in an affordable paperback edition. This foreword, along with Alphonso Lingis's extensive introduction to the work, is a valuable tool for researchers and students of Levinas's philosophy.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

About the Author

Emmanuel Levinas

Product Details

• Paperback: 205 pages
• Publisher: Duquesne Univ Pr (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820702994
• ISBN-13: 978-0820702995
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars otherwise than self, October 22, 2000

By 

Eli Schonfeld (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence (Paperback)

"Otherwise Than Being" is one of the only metaphysical text that seriously revise and rehabilitate the notion of the subject after Heidegger's deconstruction and critique of it. Proposing a "de-nucleated" subject, a subject that is non-indifferent to the other, Emmanuel Levinas continues the intuitions he first draw in "Totality and Infinity". But rather than simply continue directly and without revision the acquisitions of "Totality and Infinity", Levinas integrates Derrida's critique (drawn in his important article on Levinas,"Violence and Metaphysics") of the still to ontological/phenomenological discourse of "Totality and Infinity". Therefore, in "Otherwise than Being", his second Masterpiece, Levinas is developing a completely new style, a radically new way-of-thinking. Being not committed anymore neither to phenomenology nor to ontology, Levinas offers us an exercise of post-heidegerrian metaphysics that doesn't fall under the critique of philosophy as onto-theo-logy. The pre-original dimension of psychism, the an-archic dimension of the Self, or subjectivity as "other-in-the-Self" are themes breaking the classical metaphysical discourse without abandoning the primacy of the subject, or of ethics. Finally, "Otherwise than Being" is the first important challenge to Nietzsche's parricide, the first (and maybe only) text that tries to re-hear the authentic signification of the word (or name?): God.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Levinas' best work, but not easy to understand, March 29, 2005

By 

Red Jenny (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence (Paperback)

Much though I am fascinated with Levinas, I do find it nearly unreadable. His text is so dense, it requires (but definitely merits) slow reading.

Although it might be helpful to have read earlier Levinas, this book takes a bit of a departure from the philosophy he espoused in his younger days. I don't believe it is such a radical departure so much as a reorientation and increased sophistication, but that's a topic for another discussion!

I highly recommend this read if you are familiar with phenomenology, particulary Husserl and Heidegger, and Kant. I believe they are essential to understanding his arguments.

If you are willing to put in the time and mental effort to unpack this, it is a very rewarding book. For some additional explanation, a good companion is Beyond by Peperzak.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fundamental basis for all of Levinas Philosophical work, April 2, 2009

By 

Charles Haddox (El Paso, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence (Paperback)

Otherwise Than Being (along with Existence and Existents), is basic to the understanding of Levinas' philosophical thought. Some of the fundamental problems with the ideas in Otherwise Than Being are resolved more fully in Levina's "mature work" (like Entre Nous), things such as overreliance on subjectivity and rejection of "onto-theology" without the development of an alternative metaphysics (his "trancendence," the essence of otherwise-than-being seems located more in psychology than in ontology in this book), and his contradictory unwillingness to identify or not identify "illeity" as an attribute of God or as the trace of God's "being." "Illeity" is one of those Levinasisms that was never fully defined by him in this work. Nevertheless, this is his foundational--a word Levinas rejected, by the way--work. His reliance on the "provisional" language of modern phenomenology makes it a difficult read, but Levinas clearly saw it as his best starting point.