This paper argues that the notion of death is omnipresent and essential for Emmanuel Levinas through all periods of his thought, although not always explicitly thematized. It tries to show this through a close reading of, firstly, his early period as an explicit polemic against Martin Heidegger’s analysis of death in Being and Time; secondly, his middle period, as an implicit polemic against Alexandre Kojèves influential readings of Hegel; and thirdly, his late period, in the light of psychoanalytical theories about trauma, loss, mourning and survival. This paper further argues that this notion of death, explicitly or implicitly present through all periods of Levinas’s thought, can be characterized as a traumatic survival experience in which a refusal to mourn holds sway. Finally, the paper sketches some consequences that this survival experience of death might have for contemporary post-Levinasian philosophy, to be examined in future research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-34090 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Nilsson, Mats-Ola |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Filosofi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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