Levinas against the State: Readings toward a Decolonial Philosophy

The article aims to engage with possible readings of Levinas's scholarship to construct a common theme: a Levinasian account of resistance to power. The article will firstly demonstrate the way Levinas's scholarship challenges the idea of totality in western philosophy and demands an alternative epistemological construction. It will then develop a reading of Levinas's interpretation of a Talmudic passage to explore the way the philosophy that he draws from those texts can serve as an example of an alternative philosophy. The article will apply those principles to ecology as a case for a concrete relationship to the world that emerges from Levinas's proposed philosophy. A central concept in Levinas's alternative to western totality will be heteronomy. The concept of heteronomy will challenge the totalizing logic of autonomy. It will engender a conceptualization of responsibility that will then be used to reflect on ecological care and intertwinement. decolonial theory; Talmud; ecology; epistemic disobedience.