Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2011
During the academic year of 1928–1929, Emmanuel Lévinas attended the University of Freiburg with the purpose of studying with Edmund Husserl. As Lévinas himself would later put it, “I went to Freiburg because of Husserl and discovered Heidegger.” As Husserl's successor, Heidegger had arrived in Freiburg himself in 1928 and Lévinas was a student in Heidegger's first Freiburg lectures, Introduction to Philosophy (GA 27). Lévinas would come to regard Heidegger as a thinker of major importance and Being and Time one of the premier texts in philosophical history. Lévinas did assess features of Heidegger's thought critically. In order to understand the points at issue, it is necessary to understand them in the context of Lévinas' overall thought, and it is also necessary to understand them in the context of Heidegger's overall thought. The context thus expands rapidly. Lévinas' favorable judgments regarding Heidegger's thought would eventually come with a specific reservation, as in the following response by Lévinas to a question in a recorded conversation with Dutch philosophers at the University of Leyden in March 1975: “It is from this idea that I have even understood better certain pages of Heidegger [specifically, the discussion of ‘mineness’ (Jemeinigkeit) in Being and Time]. You know, when I pay homage to Heidegger, it is always costly to me, not because of his incontestable brilliance, as you also know.” The reference is clearly to Heidegger's public support, in the early 1930s, of the National Socialist regime in Germany.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.