“To be or not to be is not the question where transcendence is concerned. The statement of being's other, of the otherwise than being, claims to state a difference over and beyond that which separates being from nothingness — the very difference of the beyond, the difference of transcendence.”
“For others, in spite of myself, from myself.”
Emmanuel Levinas
“If every pure character in the Old Testament announces the Messiah, if every unworthy person is his torturer and every woman his Mother, does not the Book of Books lose all life with this obsessive th...”
Emmanuel Levinas
“To ignore the true God is in fact only half an evil; atheism is worth more than the piety bestowed on mythical gods.”
Emmanuel Levinas
“The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of antitheses....”
Emmanuel Levinas
“The comprehension of God taken as a participation in his sacred life, an allegedly direct comprehension, is impossible, because participation is a denial of the divine, and because nothing is more dir...”
Emmanuel Levinas
