ABSTRACT
Emmanuel Levinas described his understanding of religion in one of his two principal books, Totality and Infinity (1961). This essay attempts to follow his account in some detail and to compare it with Freud's picture of religion in The Future of an Illusion (1927). Freud's picture, like that of most subsequent psychoanalytic theorists, emphasised the role of religious “objects,” figures such as gods, bodhisattvas or demons, or purported spiritual realities such as the career of the soul in the afterlife, which are different in different religions. Such “objects” are notably absent from Levinas’ account. The essay goes on to consider the significance of this absence. It suggests that Levinas’ account opens up a deeper perspective in which to perceive the true importance religions may have in the life of the individual, and in society more largely, which may be difficult to recognise when the emphasis is on their “objects.”
