Abstract

This study is an examination of the early philosophical writings by Emmanuel Levinas, and shows how transcendence became his guiding question. The study has three parts. Part One lays out Levinas' early enthusiasm with regard to Heidegger's phenomenology. Part Two consists of close readings of three essays by Levinas from 1933 to 1935. It traces the shift in Levinas' relation to Heideggerian philosophy, a shift that may have been motivated by Heidegger's political commitments, but which was thought through philosophically. The work of these years culminates with the formulation of what would remain Levinas' guiding question: the problem of transcendence. Part Three, finally, shows how Levinas in his mature works answers his question in the account of fecundity and the account of ethical subjectivity structured as substitution.