Vulnerability and peace

Levinas' writings on the political express a double urgency: the first concerns the question of violence and war, which seem to dominate politics. The second, no less urgent philosophically, is that of the legitimacy of the political, which cannot emerge solely from violence or from the displacement of that violence. In the texts gathered here, spanning more than 40 years, Emmanuel Levinas addresses the issues of totalitarianism, war, and human vulnerability, but also justice, human rights, and the legitimacy of political institutions. He writes about the hopes and dangers he associates with the state of Israel, and in general about the difficult meeting of the Jewish claim to justice and the Greek categories of the political. From a New Perspective.