Abstract

I argue against the work of simplifying and applying Levinas’s thought. Simplifying Levinas misses the point of the greatness of his thought, which is addressed to the most sophisticated philosophical thinkers of his day, and calls upon them to re-ground philosophy in the ethical. Applying Levinas misses the point that Levinas’s conception of alterity is perfectly concrete, because it is linked to morality through the mortality of the other.