An important collection of articles by Immanuel Levinas, representing some of the earliest engagements with phenomenology and existentialism in France. From the library of the French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1924-2012), with his ownership inscription to the front free endpapers.
The selection includes the first appearance in book form of two particularly influential essays, ‘L’Oeuvre d’Edmond Husserl’ and ‘Martin Heidegger et l’ontologie’, originally published in the journal Revue Philosophique in 1932 and 1940 respectively, but revised and expanded for the present collection. Also included is the first appearance of ‘L’Ontologie dans le temporel’, a lecture on Heidegger originally delivered before Jean Wahl’s seminar, and ‘De la description a l’existence’, which attempts to trace methodological continuity between Husserl and Heidegger.
Levinas’s early thought was profoundly influenced by German phenomenology, having spent the academic year of 1928-29 in Freiburg, where he attended the last seminars given by Edmund Husserl and the lectures and seminars of Martin Heidegger. His dissertation, La théorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl, was published in 1930 and his early writings focused on introducing the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger in France, exemplified by the essays gathered in the present collection. However, Levinas would ultimately move away from both Husserl and Heidegger to develop his own distinct ontology and ethical philosophy, although it is arguable that he never embraced either fully.
