Emmanuel Levinas Quotes

“Faith is not a question of the existence or non-existence of God. It is believing that love without reward is valuable.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. The relation with the Other, or Conversation, is a non-allergic relation, an ethical relation; but inasmuch as it is welcomed this conversation is a teaching. Teaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain. In its non-violent transitivity the very epiphany of the face is produced.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“I will say this quite plainly, what truly human is -and don't be afraid of this word- love. And I mean it even with everything that burdens love or, i could say it better, responsibility is actually love, as Pascal said: 'without concupiscence' [without lust] ... love exists without worrying being loved.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“For others, in spite of myself, from myself.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved ... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again,the possibility of enjoying the Other ... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence, ... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence.

— Emmanuel Levinas

“This world, in which reason is more and more at home, is not habitable. It is hard and cold like those depots in which are piled up goods that cannot satisfy: neither clothe those who are naked, nor feed those who are hungry; it is as impersonal as factory hangars and industrial cities in which manufactured things remain abstract, true with statistical truth and borne on the anonymous circuit of the economy, resulting from skilful planning decisions which cannot prevent, but prepare disasters. There it is, the mind in its masculine essence, living on the outside, exposed to the violent, blinding sun, to the trade winds that beat against it and beat it down, on a land without folds, rootless, solitary and wandering and thus already alienated by the very things which it caused to be produced and which remain untameable and hostile.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“The "small goodness" from one person to his fellowman is lost and deformed as soon as it seeks organization and universality and system, as soon as it opts for doctrine, a treatise of politics and theology, a party, a state, and even a church. Yet it remains the sole refuge of the good in being. Unbeaten, it undergoes the violence of evil, which, as small goodness, it can neither vanquish nor drive out. A little kindness going only from man to man, not crossing distances to get to the places where events and forces unfold! A remarkable utopia of the good or the secret of its beyond.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“The true life is absent.' But we are in the world. Metaphysics arises and is maintained in this alibi.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“A fine risk is always something to be taken in philosophy ... Philosophy thus arouses a drama between philosophers and an intersubjective movement which does not resemble the dialogue of teamworkers in science, nor even the Platonic dialogue which is the reminiscence of a drama rather than a drama itself. It is sketched out in a different structure; empirically it is realized as the history of philosophy in which new interlocutors always enter who have to restate, but in which the former ones take up the floor to answer in the interpretations they arouse, and in which, nonetheless, despite a lack of "certainty in one's movements" or because of it, no one is allowed a relaxation of attention or a lack of strictness.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“If one could possess, grasp, and know the other, it would not be other.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“The very relationship with the other is the relationship with the future.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“A miracle entails a degree of irrationality-not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“What could an entirely rational being speak of with another entirely rational being?”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“Memory as an inversion of historical time is the essence of interiority.”

— Emmanuel Levinas

“Of course we do not live in order to eat, but it is not really true to say that we eat in order to live; we eat because we are hungry. Desire has no further intentions behind it ... it is a good will.”

— Emmanuel Levinas