ABSTRACT
The focus of recent interpretation of Levinas’s work has shifted from ethics and its relationship to phenomenology and ontology to the problem of his political philosophy. The change is in many respects motivated by impatience with the degree of political complacency, even sentimentality, which attended the early reception of the ethics of alterity. Indeed, it has become a cathartic necessity to point to some of the more questionable political moments in Levinas’s life and thought in order to return to his ethical thought with renewed urgency. Yet once it has been acknowledged that there is a problematic and difficult politics in Levinas’s thought, the question of its significance or centrality remains. It might be argued that we know too little about Levinas’s empirical politics to arrive at a responsible assessment of its philosophical significance – the archival work on his judgement of the actions of the State of Israel, for example, is still to be done. It might also be argued that even if complete knowledge of his political judgements was ever attained, this would still be irrelevant for appreciating the significance of his ethical diversion of phenomenology. Both positions, however, overlook the importance of Levinas’s own philosophical reflection on the question of politics and philosophy, one that issued in a recognition of a ‘difficult saying’ and a ‘difficult silence’ beyond the ethical contrast between ‘the saying and the said’ explored in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence.
