Quotes from book
Totality and Infinity

Name: Totality and Infinity
Author: Emmanuel Levinas

Emmanuel LevinasOriginal title Totalité et Infini, Essai sur l'extériorité (French, 1961)

Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority is a 1961 work of philosophy by Emmanuel Levinas. It is one of his early works, highly influenced by phenomenology.

“The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity.”

Emmanuel Levinas book Totality and Infinity

Context: The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of antitheses. The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity. For that a primordial and original relation with being is needed.

Totality and Infinity (1961)

“The comprehension of God taken as a participation in his sacred life, an allegedly direct comprehension, is impossible, because participation is a denial of the divine, and because nothing is more direct than the face to face, which is straightforwardness itself.”

Emmanuel Levinas book Totality and Infinity

Totality and Infinity (1961)