ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the question of how to understand the social nature of human existence beyond any attempt to reduce individuals to their community and beyond a pitting of these communities against each other. The author addresses this question by examining the resources offered by Levinas. It is first argued argues that Levinas can be read as opposing the idea that persons are first and foremost members of a particular social group. In addition, the author examines to what extent his rethinking of sociality fares better than a division of the human world into closed and static communities. There has in recent years been growing attention to several troublesome aspects of Levinas’s work, and in the second part of her essay the author discusses these writings on women, Palestinians, and Asians, among others, against the background of Levinas’s attempt to leave the notion of community behind. This allows the author to provide a comprehensive explanation of these problematic elements.
