Levinas's Ethical Politics

"Simply put, this is the best book on Levinas and political philosophy that is available in English. . . This book is essential reading not only for Levinas scholars, but for all political philosophers. Highly Recommended. not yet published"—Choice

"With his usual talent for clear prose and for putting Levinas in helpful conversations (including, here, with Michael Walzer, Avishai Margalit and Ruth Gavison), Michael Morgan warns his readers not to confuse Levinas's ethics with Levinas's politics. For while a political program can be more or less ethical than another, Levinas's distinction between ethics and politics means that all political acts will always fall short of any ethics that animates them. In defending his reading of Levinas, Morgan teaches us to see hope where others might see only tragedy."—Martin Kavka, Florida State University

"Against the prevailing consensus that Levinas's political theory is at best irrelevant and at worst hypocritical, Michael L. Morgan vigorously defends its abiding power. Through a painstaking analysis of Levinas's oeuvre, including his controversial interview after the massacres at Sabra and Chatila, he allows us to appreciate the potential an ethics of infinite responsibility may still have to temper a politics of agonistic struggle and impersonal proceduralism."—Martin Jay, author of Reason after Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory

"Michael L. Morgan provides an intriguing alternative to much current thinking in political philosophy. His reading of Levinas amounts to a rigorous but flexible vision of the simultaneous indispensability of political justice and its necessary vulnerability to ethical critique."—Stephen Mulhall, author of The Self and its Shadows: A Book of Essays on Individuality as Negation in Philosophy and