Problems in Levinas

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most elaborately discussed moral philosophers of recent decades, and his philosophy has many adherents. I believe, however, that the scholarly literature on his work is overly expository and insufficiently critical. In this article I try to take some steps toward filling this gap in Levinas scholarship. My aim is not to present another exegetical account of Levinas’s philosophy but rather to point at under-discussed problems in it. I will suggest here that some central claims in Levinas’s philosophy are highly problematic, indeed, too problematic to accept.