Levinas and the Faces of Art

ABSTRACT: Does art have ethical possibilities? Can literature disclose our responsibility for other people? This short text aims to unfold some nuances of responsible and irresponsible art as they appear in Emmanuel Levinas’s sparse remarks on aesthetics. We examine some common ways of conceiving Levinas’s thoughts in literary studies, followed by a closer discussion of his ideas on the possibilities of art in “Reality and Its Shadow” and his late interviews on Vasily Grossman and Sacha Sosno.

KEYWORDS: Emmanuel Levinas, ethics, aesthetics, Vasily Grossman, Sacha Sosno. philosophy of literature, literary criticism