Judaism and Philosophy: Each Other's Other in Levinas

Abstract

Levinas’s work consists of two types of writing: one confessional and Jewish and one professional and philosophical. In this article, I argue that the two styles of writing are intimately interconnected. Philosophy is enriched by the inclusion of something that was forgotten and repressed within the limits of an immanent, self-enclosed method of thinking; in conflating the two approaches, Levinas in some manner Judaizes philosophy. His “love of wisdom” is inspired by the Biblical and Talmudic “wisdom of love,” a concept which should not be excluded from the wisdom that is strived for in philosophy. At the same time, Levinas opens up dialogical Jewish thought to its other: to logical Greek thinking. Put succinctly and in a more colorful, biblical metaphor: he welcomes Shem into the tents of Yafet, but also invites Yafet into the dwellings of Shem. Levinas’s Jewish and philosophical writings are therefore interdependent—they clarify each other. It is not by accident that the same concepts and terms appear in both writings, for in each he interprets anew traditional concepts such as God, election, holiness, creation, and revelation, and imparts to them radically new meaning. Yet the same “religious” words function differently in Levinas’s different modes of thought.