PHILOSOPHY - GENERAL AND JEWISH

See my longer "Resources" page for Modern Jewish Thought here.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a reliable reference work in the field.

To research secondary literature on a philosophical topic, consult the Philosopher's Index.

Textual Reasoning is the on-line journal of the Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network, a (mostly North American) group of scholars interested in contemporary modes of Jewish thought.

The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) is the association of North American philosophers working in "Continental" (European) thought. See the program of its recent annual meeting to get a sense of the range of current research in this area.  

The recently founded Society for Continental Philosophy in a Jewish Context (CPJC) meets in conjunction with SPEP - Program of the recent meeting.

The American Philosophical Association is the main professional association of philosophers in North America.

PHENOMENOLOGY

Read up on "Phenomenology" in the article by Lester Embree in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online/Mills Reference]

The question "What Is Phenomenology?" is addressed at the website of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology.See also the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology published by CARP, in Mills Reference.

There are two noteworthy websites on Edmund Husserl:

• The Husserl Page, maintained at the University of Kentucky
• The site of the Husserl Archives in Leuven (Belgium)

"Ereignis" is a site devoted to the life and work of Martin Heidegger.

One of Heidegger's grandsons, Burghard Heidegger, has also begun a rudimentary site in German.

Centre des études heideggeriennes, founded in 2002 by Alfred Denker, Holger Zaborowski, and Daniel Ferrer.

What better way to deepen your thinking about a philosopher than to enter into a conversation with him or her in person? For a time during 2000-2001, Martin Heidegger was appearing on the Montreal-based Dialogus website and entertained questions in French and English. Will someone find a way to bring him back? (To learn more about participating in the Dialogus project, see here.)

EMMANUEL LEVINAS 

A good introduction to Levinas's philosophy is Adriaan Peperzak, To the Other (Purdue University Press, 1993) [available for purchase and on reserve]

Emmanuel Levinas Web Page by Peter Atterton of San Diego State University.

Institut d'études lévinassiennes in Jerusalem, which maintains an online primary and secondary bibliography and publishes the Cahiers d'études lévinassiennes.

A comprehensive bibliography that covers works published until 1989 is Roger Burggraeve, Emmanuel Levinas. Une bibliographie primaire et secondaire (1929-1985) avec complément 1985-1989 (Leuven: Peeters, 1990) [available at Robarts Library, U of Toronto]

Martin Heidegger et l'ontologie (excerpted) / "Martin Heidegger and Ontology" (1932), Levinas's earliest essay on Heidegger. (To be distinguished from the better-known "Is Ontology Fundamental?" (1951].)

full text of "Quelques réflexions sur la philosophie de l'hitlérisme" (1934)

There are some photographs of Levinas in the Picture Album of Phenomenologists compiled by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology.

On Levinas's Talmudic readings and other "confessional" writings:

• full text of "The Jewish Understanding of Scripture"  (1977).  This is a translation of "De la lecture juive des Écritures" (from L'Au-delà du verset [1982]).  This translation by Joseph Cunneen was published in Cross-Currents vol. 44, no. 4 (Winter 1994/1995).  A different translation appears in the book Beyond the Verse (1994), trans. Gary D. Mole.

• In the February 1998 issue of Modern Judaism, Lawrence Kaplan discusses the Talmudic reading entitled "The Temptation of Temptation," announcing that "The time has come to take the title and, even more important, the form of Emmanuel Levinas's Lectures Talmudiques, Talmudic Readings, seriously." [available on-line to McMaster affiliates]

• In the February 2000 issue of Modern Judaism, Jacob Meskin reflects on the relationship between the "philosophical" and "confessional" writings in an article entitled "Toward a New Understanding of the Work of Emmanuel Levinas."

Copyright © 2001-2005 Dana Hollander