ABSTRACT
For most of Levinas’s career he remained a relatively obscure philosopher, known primarily for his interpretations of Husserl and Heidegger (his early work on Husserl influenced Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, among others). Attention was drawn to Levinas’s work in 1964 by Jacques DERRIDA’s famous essay, called “Violence and Metaphysics,” on Totality and Infinity. Since then his influence in the areas of philosophy, religious
studies, and literary theory has grown exponentially. Levinas died on December 25, 1995 – the eighth day of Hanukkah that year.
