Abstract

How is it possible to make God an object of thought when meaning originates outside ontology, beyond it, in the realm of ethics, where "ethics" signifies the primacy of other persons? How are we to imagine meta-ontological meaning when thinking in the Western philosophical tradition entails a relation with Being so that meaning is revealed through the energy of "Being's move" as Being releases itself into language? Phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas considers these questions in thirteen essays written between 1972 and 1980 which focus on the disclosures of transcendence through language and intersubjective encounter.