Humanism of the Other By Emmanuel Levinas

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-95) is the author ofTime and the Other,Totality and Infinity,Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence,and many other philosophical texts. 

Nidra Poller is the translator of Ahmadou Kourouma'sMonnewand Michael Jeanneret'sPerpetual Motion.

Richard A. Cohen is the Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the translator of many Levinas books.

Levinas on the possibility and need for humanist ethics

InHumanism of the Other,Emmanuel Levinas argues that it is not only possible but of the highest exigency to understand one's humanity through the humanity of others. In paperback for the first time, Levinas’s work here is based in a new appreciation for ethics and takes new distances from phenomenology, idealism, and skepticism to rehabilitate humanism and restore its promises.

Painfully aware of the long history of dehumanization that reached its apotheosis in Hitler and Nazism, Levinas does not underestimate the difficulty of reconciling oneself with another. The humanity of the human, Levinas argues, is not discoverable through mathematics, rational metaphysics, or introspection. Rather, it is found in the recognition that the other person comes first, that the suffering and mortality of others are the obligations and morality of the self.