“Like a Battering-Ram”: The Place of Language in Levinas’s Thought

Abstract

The writings of Levinas address several existential questions, which relate to the primacy of ethics as “first philosophy,” and set up language as a system that enable ethical behavior in a concrete manner. However, there is no separate discussion of language, so it might seem that it derives from the transcendent intentionality that precedes it. As a result, there is a blurring of the connections between the ways in which language functions as a point of departure, at whose basis lies the freedom of choice between a commitment to the “I” and responsibility towards the “Other.” This article extracts from Levinas’s writings examples of the turning point and shows how language makes it possible to formulate possibilities, and select among them. Levinas’s talmudic readings are a special and central example of this process.