Theological Terms in the Philosophy of Levinas

Abstract

This essay examines Levinas’s use of theological terms in his philosophical texts. References to theology and to theological claims appear throughout his itinerary, yet in his later works terms such as “inspiration”, “witness”, “glory”, and “prophecy” become central. Moreover, their meaning is organized around conceptions of infinity and God that play an important role in his argument for the primacy of the ethical relation with the other person. The latter claim proves to be framed in a philosophy of religion that is irreducible to theology. The status of these matters with Levinas’s major philosophical texts is clarified by recourse to some elements of his unpublished philosophy of language.