Levinas and the encounter between the wisdom ofphilosophy and the wisdom of religion

Abstract

Emmanuel Levinas criticizes Heidegger's thesis that existence is

the only true subject of philosophy, as well as the Western

philosophical tradition that ignores the meaning and wisdom of

religious texts. Levinas argues that there are sources of wisdom

other than philosophy, and sees religious and literary texts as pre-

philosophical experiences that contain wisdom and humanism.

Levinas draws his philosophical intuitions from religious texts to

establish a radical ethical philosophy, in which alterity is the

foundation and absolute responsibility towards other human

beings is the most important objective. He is a philosopher who

thinks from literature and religion, not just from philosophy, and
this has contributed to the fruitfulness of his philosophical work. In

this article, we will attempt to examine the problematic

relationship between philosophy and religion in Levinas, while

looking at the space of intersection between them, in order to

understand how Levinas attempts to translate the wisdom of

religion into the language of philosophy.
Keywords: Religion, philosophy, ontology, ethics, totality.