Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, both shaped by Jewish intellectual traditions, reoriented twentieth-century philosophy by arguing that ethics—not metaphysics or epistemology—is the foundation of all serious thought about human existence. Their work asks what we owe to others before any contract or law is in place, examining concepts like radical hospitality, infinite responsibility, and the encounter with a face that refuses reduction to an object. Scholars working in this area continue to debate how far these ideas can travel: whether Levinas's framework remains too rooted in a particular religious inheritance to ground universal ethics, and how Derrida's deconstructive readings either extend or unsettle that inheritance. Active research explores how this tradition speaks to contemporary questions of migration, political refuge, interfaith dialogue, and the ethical limits of community.

Works

49,111

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238,829

Keywords

LevinasDerridaethicsphilosophyJewishresponsibility