"The reputation and influence of Emmanuel Levinas (1906-95) have grown powerfully in recent years. Well known in France in his lifetime, he has since his death become widely regarded as a major European moral philosopher profoundly shaped by his Jewish background. A pupil of Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas pioneered new forms of exegesis with his postmodern readings of the Talmud, and as an ethicist brought together religious and non-religious, Jewish and non-Jewish traditions of contemporary thought.".

"Richard A. Cohen has written a book which uses Levinas's work as its base but goes on to explore broader questions of interpretation in the context of text-based ethical thinking. Levinas's reorientation of philosophy is considered in critical contrast to alternative contemporary approaches such as those found in modern science, psychology, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Ricoeur.

Cohen explores a manner of philosophizing which he terms "ethical exegesis.""--BOOK JACKET.