Twentieth-Century French Jewish Philosophy

Abstract To introduce twentieth-century French Jewish philosophy, this chapter focuses on two philosophers whose philosophical approaches were connected to Jewishness and Judaism through and through: Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Levinas’s and Derrida’s philosophical works are widely considered among the most important in Continental European philosophy. They meet around one concept, alterity, though they understand this concept differently. For Levinas, alterity is revealed in relationships with other people, which he calls ethical relations. His philosophy redefines moral duty in light of this revelation. As for Derrida, he is interested in the modus operandi of alterity itself, its forms and transformations. Yet despite these differences, Levinas and Derrida similarly regard alterity as having a Jewish meaning. For Levinas, ethics is “Judaism’s contribution to world affairs,” while for Derrida, alterity finds an accurate metaphor in the figure of the Jew. Moreover, both use texts that issued from the Jewish tradition, and both draw in their work on biographical details shaped by their Jewish experience. In sum, both “share a claim that ‘Judaism’ contributes to the task of philosophy.”