ABSTRACT
n our increasingly posthuman age, Emma-Inuel Levinas’s call for a “humanisme de l’autre homme” will undoubtedly appear unfashionable to many readers. In the writings dedicated to this theme, which were published largely during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Levinas insists not only on retaining the traditional concept of humanism but also seeks to offer a religious grounding for it. Further, Levi-nas’s focus on “l’autre homme” risks reproducing the kind of androcentrism and anthropocentrism that have become deeply problematic in our contemporary posthumanist context. A closer examination of Levinas’s writings on humanism reveals, however, some surprising ways in which his thinking actually anticipates and provides essential resources for working through some of the deepest intellectual and practical challenges associated with posthumanism. In particular, I shall suggest in this essay that Levinas’s humanism provides uswithacruciallyimportantaccountoftherela-tionality that makes posthuman relations possible. And while Levinas’s persistent anthropocentrism during this period might make it appear necessary to “leave the climate” of his work altogether in order to rethink relations with the more-than-human world, 1 I shall further argue that one of his early and rarely discussed essays on ritual points in unexpected ways toward radically non-anthropocentric practices. This article beginsbybrieflytracingtheintellectualandcul-tural history that forms the context for Levi-nas’s elucidation of humanism, before turning to an analysis of his humanism itself and, finally,consideringtherelevanceofhisthinking for a posthumanist and non-anthropocentric philosophy and practice.
