In Chapter 1, I tried to observe Levinas doing what a philosopher engaged with ethical, political, and religious matters in the twentieth century might be expected to do, to comment on and consider critically the crisis of the century and events and episodes within it. Now it is time to turn to Levinas's philosophical thinking and writings themselves in order later to answer the question: what is the relationship between his philosophy and the judgments and assessments we have seen him making? This will require that we take a brief, preliminary look at the content of his “ethical metaphysics” and begin to examine it by asking what Levinas is doing in the course of that thinking, what kind of thinking it is. In the early part of this chapter, then, I will be making a first pass through his thinking, especially in its early development, a project that will unavoidably use terms yet to be clarified as well as paraphrases that may simplify too much and have a certain impropriety and vagueness about them. I will also avoid argumentation, excessive clarification, problems and questions, and all the trappings of careful analysis. That will come later.

A PRELIMINARY SKETCH

In order to sketch this picture of Levinas's “ethical metaphysics” I am going to begin by drawing on some relatively early works. These include Time and the Other (1947) [hereinafter TO], “Is Ontology Fundamental?”