Maggs Bros.

Inscribed by the author to Maurice Nadeau (1911-2013) in blue ink to the half title: ‘Pour Maurice Nadeu Hommage d’ou vieill admiration E.L’.

Maurice Nadeau was a literary critic and editor, collaborating early in life with Breton and later writing the major reference work History of Surrealism. His work helped bring to prominence, among others, Georges Bataille, Claude Simon, Jean Genet, and Henry Miller.

A collection of essays first published in the 1970s, this book marks Levinas’ attempts to approach his foundational philosophical question - how best to ethically reckon with the other - through a series of reflections on Judaism. A group of Talmudic readings allow Levinas to expound upon the act of exegesis itself, whilst elsewhere he explores ideas of Jewish revelation, the tradition of the Name of God, and Spinoza’s Jewish background. The final set of essays on the scriptural concept and subsequent history of Zionism offer an extended opportunity to examine the Jewish intersection of politics, religious text and ethical imperative.