Levinas

1949 · réf. 41448 — Paris Vrin 1949. 8vo. Original printed wrappers. A few pencil-underlinings in the text. With discreete stamp to title-page: "Michel Adam". A very fine and clean copy. 107 5 pp. The uncommon first edition of this collection of early essays constituting the first appearance in book form of two highly important articles by one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th century. The two articles were originally published in Revue Philosophique in 1932 and 1940 but only really with their appearance in book form did they exercise their great influence in France. The essays by Levinas on the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger served to introduce this strain of philosophy in France where it would go on to dominate academic philosophy until the middle of the 1970s. As such these essays are crucial documents to anybody with an interest in the development of 20th century continental philosophy.However this volume has the added attraction of providing us with an insight into the genesis of Levinas' own thought. The experience of the Second World War which Levinas spent as a prisoner of war in Germany led him to question the ethical foundations of phenomenology and to reconsider his earlier uncritical attachment to Heidegger. It is thus by engaging critically with the conception of philosophy that is manifested in his own pre-war works that Levinas shall elaborate such masterpieces of philosophy as Totalité and Infini and Autrement qu'être. unknown