Author Guide · Philosophy · Ethics
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Emmanuel Levinas was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1906, studied philosophy in Strasbourg and in 1928 went to Freiburg to study with Edmund Husserl, where he also attended Martin Heidegger’s seminar. In 1940, as a French soldier, he was captured and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp for officers in Germany; his family in Lithuania were murdered. The notes he kept in captivity became his first books of his own philosophy. In 1961 he presented Totalité et infini as his state doctorate, arguing that ethics, the responsibility one person bears for another, comes before every theory of being. This guide covers his 14 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1930–1991 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Emmanuel Levinas’s major works are Totality and Infinity (Totalité et infini, 1961) and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (Autrement qu’être, 1974), both translated by Alphonso Lingis. Start with Ethics and Infinity (Éthique et infini, 1982), his radio conversations with Philippe Nemo, translated by Richard A. Cohen. Below is what each book argues and which translation to look for.
Where to Start with Emmanuel Levinas
If you want the clearest way in
→ Ethics and Infinity (1982) — short conversations, in his own words.
If you want his central argument
→ Totality and Infinity (1961) — long and demanding, best after a primer.
If you want his Jewish writings
→ Difficult Freedom (1963) — essays on Judaism, read in any order.
If you want the short early statement of his ideas
→ Time and the Other (1948) — four lectures from 1946–47.
14 Emmanuel Levinas Books, in Order
The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology
La théorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl, his Strasbourg doctoral thesis, written after his two semesters with Husserl in Freiburg and published in 1930. English translation by André Orianne (Northwestern University Press, 1973).
On Escape
De l’évasion, an early essay, first published in 1935, on the need to escape from being itself. English translation by Bettina Bergo (Stanford University Press, 2003).
Existence and Existents
De l’existence à l’existant grew out of notes he kept as a prisoner of war. It describes the anonymous, impersonal “there is” (il y a), being without anyone in it, felt as the horror of a sleepless night, and how a subject first takes up a position against it. English translation by Alphonso Lingis (Duquesne edition 2001, with a foreword by Robert Bernasconi).
Time and the Other
Le Temps et l’Autre, which, like Existence and Existents, grew out of his wartime notes; first printed in 1948 and republished as a book in 1980. It argues that time does not belong to a solitary subject but arises in the relation with the other person, who cannot be absorbed into what I know. English translation by Richard A. Cohen (Duquesne University Press, 1987).
Discovering Existence with Husserl
En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger collects his essays on the two German philosophers he had studied with in Freiburg. The English edition, translated and edited by Richard A. Cohen and Michael B. Smith (Northwestern University Press, 1998), is titled after Husserl alone.
Totality and Infinity
Totalité et infini: essai sur l’extériorité, presented as his doctorat d’État in 1961. Against philosophies that fold everything into one whole, a “totality”, he argues that the face of another person breaks into my world as something I can never contain, and that this encounter, which commands me not to kill, is where ethics begins. English translation by Alphonso Lingis (Duquesne University Press, 1969).
Difficult Freedom
Difficile liberté (1963, second edition 1976) gathers his essays on Judaism, written during the years he directed the École normale israélite orientale in Paris. English translation by Seán Hand (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).
Nine Talmudic Readings
Combines two French collections, Quatre lectures talmudiques (1968) and Du sacré au saint (1977): his commentaries on passages of the Talmud, a practice that began after the war, when he studied the Talmud under the enigmatic teacher Monsieur Chouchani. English translation by Annette Aronowicz (Indiana University Press, 1990).
Humanism of the Other
Humanisme de l’autre homme, essays that ground humanism not in the self but in the other person. English translation by Nidra Poller (University of Illinois Press, 2003).
Otherwise than Being
Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, his second major work and the harder of the two. He recasts his ethics in a new vocabulary of the “saying” and the “said”, substitution and hostage, describing a responsibility for the other that comes before any choice I make. English translation by Alphonso Lingis (Martinus Nijhoff, 1981).
Proper Names
Noms propres: short essays on individual writers and thinkers, including the essay “Sans nom”. English translation by Michael B. Smith (Stanford University Press, 1996).
Of God Who Comes to Mind
De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, essays asking how God can have meaning for philosophy without being made into an object; his answer runs through the ethical relation to the other person. English translation by Bettina Bergo (Stanford University Press, 1998).
Ethics and Infinity
Éthique et infini: radio conversations with the philosopher Philippe Nemo in which Levinas retraces his work, from Husserl and Heidegger to the face and responsibility for the other. It is the most direct statement of his ideas in his own words. English translation by Richard A. Cohen (Duquesne University Press, 1985).
Entre Nous
Entre nous: essais sur le penser-à-l’autre collects essays from across his career, a broad overview of how his thinking developed. English translation by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (Columbia University Press, 1998).
In What Order to Read Emmanuel Levinas
Levinas is famously difficult, and his two major books, Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, are not the place to begin. Start with Ethics and Infinity, where he explains his ideas in conversation, then read Time and the Other, short lectures that already contain the core of his later work. After that, Totality and Infinity is the essential book; Otherwise than Being rewards readers who have finished it.
His Jewish writings form a second strand with its own entry point. Difficult Freedom is the most accessible; the Talmudic readings are commentaries on specific passages and can be read one at a time.
A reading path
1. Ethics and Infinity (1982)
2. Time and the Other (1948)
3. Totality and Infinity (1961)
4. Difficult Freedom (1963)
5. Otherwise than Being (1974)
Everything Else Emmanuel Levinas Published
Beyond the 14 key books: 8 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early essay
1
1 book · 1934
- 1934Reflections on the Philosophy of HitlerismQuelques réflexions sur la philosophie de l’hitlérisme, a short essay published the year after Hitler came to power
Talmudic readings
3
3 books · 1982–1996
- 1982Beyond the VerseL’au-delà du verset; trans. Gary D. Mole (1994)
- 1988In the Time of the NationsÀ l’heure des nations; trans. Michael B. Smith (1994)
- 1996New Talmudic ReadingsNouvelles lectures talmudiques, published after his death; trans. Richard A. Cohen (1999)
Later essays and lectures
4
4 books · 1975–1995
- 1975Sur Maurice Blanchotessays on his friend from his Strasbourg student years
- 1987Outside the SubjectHors sujet; trans. Michael B. Smith (1993)
- 1993God, Death, and TimeDieu, la mort et le temps, his Sorbonne lectures of 1973–74; trans. Bettina Bergo (2000)
- 1995Alterity and TranscendenceAltérité et transcendance; trans. Michael B. Smith (1999)
The years · 1906–1995
Quick facts about Emmanuel Levinas
- Known for
- Emmanuel Levinas is known for arguing that ethics is first philosophy: that the face of another person makes a claim on us before we know or decide anything.
- 1906
- Born in Kaunas, Lithuania
- 1928
- Studies with Husserl in Freiburg
- 1940
- Taken prisoner of war
- 1974
- Otherwise than Being
- 1995
- Dies near Paris
- Born
- 12 January 1906, Kaunas (Kovno), then in the Russian Empire, now Lithuania
- Died
- 25 December 1995, Clichy, near Paris, aged 89
- Studied
- Strasbourg (from 1923); Freiburg with Husserl and Heidegger (1928–29)
- War
- French citizen from 1939; prisoner of war in Germany 1940–45
- Taught
- Director of the École normale israélite orientale, Paris; Poitiers (1961), Nanterre (1967), Sorbonne (1973–79)
- Honours
- Balzan Prize for Philosophy (1989)
The red mark is 1961: Totality and Infinity, the book that set out his ethics of the face.
How Emmanuel Levinas Writes: Ethics Before Everything
Levinas trained as a phenomenologist, and his books keep Husserl’s method of describing experience from the inside, such as the horror of a sleepless night in Existence and Existents or the encounter with a face. But he uses those descriptions to reach a conclusion his teachers did not: that the relation to another person cannot be reduced to knowledge or understanding, and that this relation is ethical before it is anything else.
His prose is dense and repetitive by design. Otherwise than Being in particular piles up formulations, hostage, substitution, obsession, persecution, because he holds that ordinary philosophical language (the “said”) turns the other back into a theme, and only a self-correcting style can point to the “saying” that comes before it. Alongside the philosophy ran a second body of work: for three decades he gave short talks on Rashi every Sabbath morning at the school he directed, and his Talmudic readings apply the same ethics to Jewish texts.
In a cluster of books on unity and non-duality, Levinas stands as the clearest counter-voice. He names the philosophy of the whole, in which all differences are gathered into one, “totality”, and spends his work defending the separation between me and the other person, a difference that must never be merged away. What he calls “infinity” is not a oneness to dissolve into but the other’s permanent excess over anything I can grasp.
Watch
Emmanuel Levinas Interviewed by Marcel Brisebois (1981)
Marcel Brisebois interviews Emmanuel Levinas at his home in Paris for the Radio-Canada program Rencontres, broadcast on 3 November 1981; they discuss Judaism, messianism, the Bible and the relation between philosophy and religion (in French). From the official Radio-Canada Archives channel.
Frequently asked questions about Emmanuel Levinas’s books
How many books has Emmanuel Levinas written?
More than twenty-five, counting his essay collections, Talmudic readings and lectures published after his death. This page covers his 14 key books, from The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (1930) to Entre Nous (1991), with seven more in the list of other works.
What are Emmanuel Levinas’s books in order?
The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (1930), On Escape (1935), Existence and Existents (1947), Time and the Other (1948), Discovering Existence with Husserl (1949), Totality and Infinity (1961), Difficult Freedom (1963), Nine Talmudic Readings (1968 and 1977), Humanism of the Other (1972), Otherwise than Being (1974), Proper Names (1976), Of God Who Comes to Mind (1982), Ethics and Infinity (1982) and Entre Nous (1991). Years are of the French first editions.
Where should I start with Emmanuel Levinas?
With Ethics and Infinity, his conversations with Philippe Nemo, which explain his main ideas in plain speech. Then read Time and the Other before tackling Totality and Infinity.
What is Emmanuel Levinas’s most famous book?
Totality and Infinity (Totalité et infini, 1961), translated by Alphonso Lingis in 1969, in which he argues that the face of the other person is where ethics begins.
Which translations of Levinas should I read?
Alphonso Lingis translated both major works, Totality and Infinity (1969) and Otherwise than Being (1981), as well as Existence and Existents. Richard A. Cohen translated Ethics and Infinity (1985) and Time and the Other (1987); Seán Hand translated Difficult Freedom (1990); Bettina Bergo and Michael B. Smith translated many of the later collections.
What is “the face” in Levinas?
Not a physical face as such but the way another person appears to me as someone I cannot reduce to an object of knowledge. In Levinas’s account the face is vulnerable and at the same time commands: its first meaning is “you shall not kill”.
What was Levinas’s relationship to Heidegger?
He attended Heidegger’s seminar in Freiburg in 1928–29, admired Being and Time and helped introduce Heidegger to French readers. He later regretted that early enthusiasm after Heidegger joined the Nazi Party, and much of his own work is a critique of Heidegger’s philosophy of being.
Is Levinas’s work controversial?
Parts of it are debated. Simone de Beauvoir criticised his account of “the feminine” as describing woman only as the other of a male subject, and later critics such as Simon Critchley and Stella Sandford have pressed the point, while Tina Chanter and Bracha L. Ettinger have defended him. In a radio conversation with Shlomo Malka and Alain Finkielkraut on 28 September 1982, a week after the Sabra and Shatila massacres, he said that “in alterity we can find an enemy”; the remark, published as “Ethics and Politics” in The Levinas Reader (1989), has been widely discussed as a test of how his ethics applies to politics.
How did Levinas influence Jacques Derrida?
Derrida’s long essay “Violence and Metaphysics”, collected in Writing and Difference, was one of the first major readings of Levinas and did much to spread interest in him in France and abroad. Derrida also gave the eulogy at his funeral, later published as Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas.
When did Emmanuel Levinas die?
On 25 December 1995 in Clichy, near Paris, at the age of 89.
Footnotes
- Emmanuel Levinas — Wikipedia
- Emmanuel Levinas — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Primary bibliography (English translations) — Levinas resources, San Diego State University
- Howard Caygill, “Levinas’s political judgement” — Radical Philosophy
- Responsibility in the Face of the Other — My Jewish Learning
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The approach to the face is the most basic mode of responsibility.”
— Emmanuel Levinas, “Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas”, in Face to Face with Levinas, ed. Richard A. Cohen
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