Emmanuel Levinas’s Europe: Notes on Its Essence and Structure, Around Sameness and Alterity

Abstract

Drawing on, and in dialogue with, various philosophies of Europe developed over recent decades, this article investigates the meaning and function of the notion of “Europe” in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. In a constant relationship –and by analogy– with his reflection on the relation of alterity between the “Same” and the “Other,” I seek to identify the difference, the gap, and the constitution of this Europe between the two great cities present in Levinas’s philosophy: Athens and Jerusalem. After outlining the context of self-fatigue in which Europe found itself when Levinas reflected upon it, I address both the limits and the strengths of Levinas’s theory of this same-in-the-other grounded in two spiritual sources, with particular attention to the accusations of Eurocentrism raised against it from postcolonial perspectives. I conclude that only by broadening the European archē can a moral conception of Europe be preserved and defended, and that this depends on a continuous interaction between universality and particularity –one that preserves difference without becoming enclosed within it.