A BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
What is Jewish philosophy, and does it
have a vocation? And if it has one, what is it? There are many
views about what Jewish philosophy is, and whether or not it
has a vocation. According to one, Jewish philosophy is a
synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, and its vocation is to
harmonize the Hebrew and Greek world-views. According to
a second view, Jewish philosophy is the overt or covert
importation of Athens into Jerusalem, and its vocation is to
translate Greek principles into Hebrew. Lévinas rejects
both views. Jewish philosophy does not aim to harmonize
Jerusalem and Athens. Jewish philosophy is not a translation of
Greek principles into Hebrew, but the reverse: the translation
of Hebrew principles into Greek. Warren
Zev Harvey, Hebrew University
Emmanuel Lévinas, guided by the
spirit of the oldest European traditions, apparently most of
all by Jewish traditions, he taught that the sense of
responsibility for the world is born in us with a look into the
face of a fellow being. President
Vaclav Hevel
…. [T]he Philosophy of Liberation
was inspired by the thought of Levinas, because it allowed us
to clearly define the position of “exteriority” (as
a philosophy, as popular culture, as the Latin American economy
with respect to the United States, Japan, or Europe) as
“poor”, that is to say, from an anthropological and
ethical economical level…. The majority of
today’s humanity (the South) is the other face of
modernity; it is neither pre- nor anti- nor postmodern, nor can
this South “end” or “realize” such a
modernity as Habermas pretends. Enrique
Dussel, philosopher
There is nothing the Other must do, or
nothing in particular he should become, to trigger off the
concern of the subject. We can find perhaps the fullest
description of such concern in the investigation of the
greatest moral philosopher of our century, Emmanuel Levinas. Zygmunt Bauman,
sociologist
Zionism was a type of merger of Judaism
and modernism. As soon as the power of this merger diminished,
another was needed, and Levinas is the thinker who is able to
rebuild this bridge, because he is nurtured by the deepest
sources of modernism and, at the same time, connected to an
entirely different horizon, to Mount Sinai. Benny Levy, Institute Emmanuel Levinas
The thing that is special in the State of
Israel is not that it fulfils an ancient promise, or heralds a
new age of material security (one that is unfortunately
problematic), but that it finally offers the opportunity to
carry out the social law of Judaism.
Emmanuel Levinas
