Emmanuel Lévinas

Emmanuel Lévinas (January 12, 1906 - December 25, 1995) was a Jewish philosopher born in Kaunas, Lithuania, who moved to France, where he wrote most of his works. In his youth he had received a traditional Jewish education, including Talmud. He was naturalized in 1930.

War experiences

During the German invasion of France in 1940, Levinas was reactivated with his military unit, which was quickly surrounded and forced to surrender. Initially sent to a prisoner of war camp in France, he was soon transferred to a camp on German soil near Hannover, where he remained until the end of the war.

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Although protected by the Third Geneva Convention from deportation to a concentration camp, Levinas was segregated in special barracks for Jewish prisoners, who were forbidden any forms of religious worship. Life in the camp was as difficult as might be expected, with Levinas often forced into wood-chopping duties.

Related Topics:
Third Geneva Convention - Concentration camp

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Other prisoners report seeing him make frequent jottings in a notebook, which would later be shaped into his breakthrough treatises "De l'Existence à l'Existant," a landmark appreciation and criticism of the philosophy of Heidegger, and "Le Temps et l'Autre" (both 1948).

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In the meantime, his wife was shielded from deportation through the efforts of the philosopher Maurice Blanchot who also risked his own well-being seeing to it that Levinas was able to keep in contact with his immediate family through letters and other messages. Other family members were not so lucky: his mother-in-law was deported and never heard from again, while his father and brothers were murdered in Lithuania by the SS.

Related Topics:
Maurice Blanchot - SS

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