Levinas’s Existential Analytic: A Commentary on Totality and Infinity

Levinas’s Existential Analytic: A Commentary on Totality and Infinity

Role: Author
Written by professor Emeritus of Charles University in Prague

Emmanuel Levinas’s masterpiece, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority is an essential text for understanding Levinas’s discussion of “the Other,” yet it is known as a “difficult” book. Modeled after Norman Kemp Smith’s commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, professor Emeritus of Charles University in Prague, James R. Mensch’s Existential Analytic guides both new and experienced readers through Levinas’s text. Mensch explicates Levinas’s arguments and shows their historical referents, particularly with regard to Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida. Students using this book alongside Totality and Infinity will be able to follow its arguments and grasp the subtle phenomenological analyses that fill it.