Transcendence, morality, and history: Emmanuel Levinas and the discovery of Søren Kierkegaard in France

Abstract

To judge from his postwar essays on the subject, Emmanuel Levinas rejected the founder of existentialism with no little irritation. Where Soren Kierkegaard interpreted Isaac's binding, in Fear and Trembling, as a parable about the role of faith in taking the self beyond the merely ethical stage, Levinas suggested that it is not Abraham's hand, ready to bring the knife to his son's throat, but instead "Abraham's ear for hearing the voice" that best captures the intent of the biblical story. It "brought him back to the ethical order." As Levinas explained it: "That [Abraham] obeyed the first voice is astonishing: that he had sufficient