Emmanuel Levinas
1906-1995 · Phenomenology · Prominent
Levinas was a Lithuanian-born French philosopher who lost most of his family in the Holocaust and spent his career arguing that ethics comes before everything else in philosophy, including the question of what exists. Another person's face makes a claim on you before you know one thing about them, and the claim has no limit and runs one way: you owe them, whether or not they owe you.
Signature
The position Levinas is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Collectivism
- Ethics Basis
- Relational
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (14 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (79 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Ethics
- leans Means (79 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Levinas refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Love / Service
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Eidetic Intuition
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Time
- Phenomenological Time / Kairotic
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Language
- Expression / Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Death
- Agnostic
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei / Other
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine / Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?