L'Humanite de L'Homme

This book is a compendium of six articles presented at conferences, some of which were held during the 2006 events which marked the 100th anniversary of Levinas' birth, and others more recently. As in the compilation published in 2006 entitled Levinas vivant and republished today as L'emotion ethique), the author is pursuing his goal of promoting an unfettered and relevant reading of Levinas' writings, unencumbered by his specific terminology and capable of conveying his message into previously uncharted territory. That is why the sub-title of Levinas vivant II was chosen (Levinas lives), to express this type of reading and this more timely image of Levinas. The book's unity may be attributed to the theme of man's humanity: the author argues that Levinas' thought is simply an effort to identify what, within our human experience, can be deemed to be most humane. Its aim is to describe how, and under what conditions, we are most worthy of what is meant by the adjective humane. That is why the compilation has three sections: 1) Man as witness: The author examines how Levinas uses the personal dimension and invokes the specific cases of certain individuals to clarify thoughts and analyse problems. 2) The issue of man: A comparison is drawn between Levinas' work and what is traditionally called anthropology, including the idea of a philosophical knowledge of man. 3) Beyond man? (God and history): An analysis is made of the impact of Levinasian hyper-humanism on theological thought, on the one hand, and on the concept of history and his teleology, on the other.