Toward the Outside Concepts and Themes in Emmanuel Levinas

In this accessible and carefully crafted work, Michael B. Smith provides readers a systematic exposition of the essential concepts and themes that circulate throughout the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, a major voice in twentieth century thought. The strength of this book truly lies in its scope. Unlike many recent studies that have purported to examine the scope of Levinas's thinking, Toward the Outside is distinguished by its attention to texts from both of Levinas's two main genres: the philosophical and the confessional. Smith's ability to move between Levinas's Talmudic readings and his philosophical texts produces an encompassing vision, with little precedent in the secondary literature on Levinas. Throughout, Smith also makes use of the background of phenomenological thought as well as French commentary on Levinas and phenomenology that is not readily available to most English readers. Toward the Outside is organized in three parts. In the first, by examining key pairs of concepts-totality/infinity, same/other, saying/said, among others-Smith demonstrates a keen attunement to the development of Levinas's thought as an overall philosophical trajectory. In part 2, Smith more explicitly identifies themes that are essential to our better understanding of Levinas-Judaism and the Holocaust, temporality, Levinas's treatments of Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida's reading of Levinas, and others. Finally, in part 3, his commentary, based on close readings of selected Levinas texts, follows and highlights the development of Levinas's thought meticulously. As Smith points out in specific ways, each of Levinas's works builds upon what has gone before at the same time that the early work bears within it the seeds of his later magisterial texts. Levinas constantly points to an Otherness, beyond the mire of immanence, in the infinite of transcendence. The trajectory of his thought describes an overall movement that is, indeed, "centrifugal"-toward the outside.Smith, Michael B. is the author of 'Toward the Outside Concepts and Themes in Emmanuel Levinas', published 2005 under ISBN 9780820703688 and ISBN 0820703680.