This thesis contributes to the discussion of two questions central to the scholarly study of the work of Emmanuel Levinas: the question of the nature of his hermeneutics, and the question of the nature of the relationship between his philosophy and his religion. The thesis consists of an extended examination of how and why Levinas reads certain of the sources of Judaism. I watch him utilizing images, ideas and quotations from the Bible, Kabbalah and Talmud in support of his larger philosophical project, a project which consists mainly of a polemic against modem ontology --philosophical and political --and against the hermeneutic of reification which supports that ontology. The Bible, Kabbalah and Talmud become, in Levinas' reading, weapons in a battle against Hegelianism, Nazi totalitarianism, and modem progressivist liberalism; or, more precisely, they come to represent ways of turning away from the battles these structures inscribe towards a prophetic peace. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract: Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics, Justice and the Human beyond Being. Levinas finds the early twentieth century to be marked by a rejection of the concept of humanity, at the moment of its awakening to its own brutality. While accepting the anti-humanist position, insofar as it questions the primacy of free will, and an unquestionable security in its attachment to a pregiven, universal Reason, Levinas' work questions the value of rethinking the human in terms of being. This thesis traces Levinas' attempt to rehabilitate humanity from its devotion to ontology as first philosophy. It argues that Levinas offers a reinterpretation of the relation of being and the human, tracing the movement in Levinas' work from a critical attempt to rethink the human and being, to the notion of the human beyond being. The thesis begins with a critical engagement with Heideggerian ontology suggesting that Levinas' renewal of the question of being in his prewar essays reflects a concern for the meaning of subjective existence and its relation to the social and political totality. These concerns lie behind his reinterpretation of the relation of existence and the existent in his essays of the 1940's in which Levinas undertakes a critique of a Platonic social totality and introduces a notion of the alterity of eros which does not have its value determined in terms of a teleology of social production. From this basis, Levinas is shown to address the question of justice by articulating the essentially ambiguous relation between the subject and another in terms of the ambivalence of the face, and contrasting this with the alterity of love. The development of these ideas is traced across Levinas' major works. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas argues that the response to the singular other is conceived of as the event of the production of a universal which affirms the tertiality of the social totality, that is, attests to the whole of humanity. In Otherwise than Being, the relation of ethics and justice is discussed in different terms, those of the relation of the ethical Saying and the realm of the Said or being's justice. Levinas juxtaposes the ontological tertiality of the third, with the notion of an ethical tertiality, which he calls illeity. Illeity is found to not be reducible to the ontological tertiality of the third party, but to name the exceeding of subjectivity in terms of an absolute susceptibility to the Other, and is an excessive concept of a singular universal: the human beyond being.

Abstract: Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics, Justice and the Human beyond Being. Levinas finds the early twentieth century to be marked by a rejection of the concept of humanity, at the moment of its awakening to its own brutality. While accepting the anti-humanist position, insofar as it questions the primacy of free will, and an unquestionable security in its attachment to a pregiven, universal Reason, Levinas' work questions the value of rethinking the human in terms of being. This thesis traces Levinas' attempt to rehabilitate humanity from its devotion to ontology as first philosophy. It argues that Levinas offers a reinterpretation of the relation of being and the human, tracing the movement in Levinas' work from a critical attempt to rethink the human and being, to the notion of the human beyond being. The thesis begins with a critical engagement with Heideggerian ontology suggesting that Levinas' renewal of the question of being in his prewar essays reflects a concern for the meaning of subjective existence and its relation to the social and political totality. These concerns lie behind his reinterpretation of the relation of existence and the existent in his essays of the 1940's in which Levinas undertakes a critique of a Platonic social totality and introduces a notion of the alterity of eros which does not have its value determined in terms of a teleology of social production. From this basis, Levinas is shown to address the question of justice by articulating the essentially ambiguous relation between the subject and another in terms of the ambivalence of the face, and contrasting this with the alterity of love. The development of these ideas is traced across Levinas' major works. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas argues that the response to the singular other is conceived of as the event of the production of a universal which affirms the tertiality of the social totality, that is, attests to the whole of humanity. In Otherwise than Being, the relation of ethics and justice is discussed in different terms, those of the relation of the ethical Saying and the realm of the Said or being's justice. Levinas juxtaposes the ontological tertiality of the third, with the notion of an ethical tertiality, which he calls illeity. Illeity is found to not be reducible to the ontological tertiality of the third party, but to name the exceeding of subjectivity in terms of an absolute susceptibility to the Other, and is an excessive concept of a singular universal: the human beyond being.

Předkládaná práce je nesena snahou o zodpovězení otázky: V čem spočívá nesoulad filosofie? Nemůže být Lévinasova etika chápána jako doplnění Heideggerovy ontologie? Na zmíněné otázky je hledána odpověď prostřednictvím vpravení se do možného "dialogu" mezi Heideggerem a Lévinasem. Odlišné pojímání bytí u obou filosofů se odhalí nejenom jako možná příčina sporu, ale i jako důvod, kvůli kterému by nemohla být Lévinasova a Heideggerova filosofie nikdy komplementární. Lévinas na rozdíl od Heideggera, který je neustále na cestě bytí, bude rozvíjet veškerá svá témata na rovině "autrement qu'être", hranicemi bytí. Odlišný přístup k bytí se ukáže jako důvod, proč nemohou Heidegger Lévinasem při tematizování etiky, vztahu člověka se světem, smrti a času nalézt společnou řeč. Klíčová slova ět, smrt, čas