NDLI: The Non-Existent God: Transcendence, Humanity, and Ethics in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Turner, Donald L. Turrell, Ford
Copyright Year	2007
Abstract	This paper considers three essential gestures in Levinas’s theology, highlighting in each case how Levinas’s thinking allows him to either incorporate or sidestep some of the fiercest modern criticisms of traditional theism. First, we present Levinas’s vision of divine transcendence, outlining his ontological atheism and explaining how this obviates proving the existence of God and avoids the tangles of traditional theodicy. Second, we describe Levinas’s idea of the trace, showing how a non-existent God still leaves its mark in the face of the other person and explaining how this vision of divine immanence accords with the agendas of thinkers such as Feuerbach and Nietzsche, who criticized theology that elevated God while debasing humanity. Third, we present Levinas’s insistence on the philosophical primacy of ethics, showing how he infuses his ethical philosophy with religious themes, elevating moral philosophy to the level of ultimate concern in a way that even atheist social theorists such as Marx or Freud could appreciate. We close by briefly considering limitations of Levinas’s model, discussing problems with its practical applicability and suggesting that its scope might be too narrow: both for its failure to acknowledge potential ethical demands manifest by non-human animals and the natural world and for its inability to recognize solitary or aesthetic experiences as religiously significant. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.
Starting Page	375
Ending Page	382
Page Count	8
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00483893
Journal	Philosophia
Volume Number	35
Issue Number	3-4
e-ISSN	15749274
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2007-08-21
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Levinas God Ethics Religion Phenomenology Transcendence Hermeneutics of suspicion Theology Philosophy of Science Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Language Epistemology Philosophy
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy

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