Rethinking Levinas on Heidegger on Death

Abstract

What are the basic coordinates of the dispute between Heidegger and Levinas over “death” and its phenomenological and ontological significance? In what ways do Heidegger and Levinas disagree about how we become genuinely or fully ourselves? By examining the convergences and divergences of Heidegger’s and Levinas phenomenologies of death, “Rethinking Levinas on Heidegger on Death” suggests that Heidegger and Levinas both understood themselves as struggling to articulate the requisite ethical response to the great traumas of the twentieth century. By comparing their thinking at this level, we can better understand the ways in which Levinas genuinely diverges from Heidegger even while building critically on his thinking.