The “Breach” that Leads to God: On the Interrelation Between Love and Justice as Revelatory Enactment in the Work of Emmanuel Levinas
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis undertakes a critically constructive examination of the relation of love and justice in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, concentrating principally upon what for Levinas is the “revelatory” status of this relation, which, when enacted, gives witness of the Infinite. Although the term “revelation” in Levinas’s work is often employed with specific reference to the ethical relation between human beings, without any apparent religious connotation, he also maintains that the revelatory character of the ethical relation constitutes the “breach that leads to God”. Importantly, this is not to be understood as an impassable chasm between immanence and transcendence but rather as a “breach” within immanence itself, at the enactment of which the unthinkable and unthematisable God first “comes to mind”. Through the analysis of love and justice, as the mutually constitutive and interdependent enactments which give witness of this breach, familiar themes in Levinas’s work will also be shown to be associated with it: for example, asymmetry, diachronic time, the “saying” and the “said”, nothingness and being, and the “passing” of the infinite in the finite. In light of this analysis, the thesis will then seek to address a specific and often-debated problem in Levinas’s work about whether, and if so how, the God who “comes to mind” in the ethical relation (where the term “God” retains the character of an irrepressible ambiguity) can be identified with the biblical God; and further, to evaluate the implications this question may have with regard to understanding the role and significance of the unavoidably thematising discourse of theology, which Levinas calls “the intellection of the biblical God”. In this regard, it is of particular interest that the “revelatory” character of the relation of love and justice features in Christian theology with similar prominence in the work of Saint Augustine. In order to provide a basic framework, therefore, through which both the opportun…
abstract: This thesis undertakes a critically constructive examination of the relation of love and justice in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, concentrating principally upon what for Levinas is the “revelatory” status of this relation, which, when enacted, gives witness of the Infinite. Although the term “revelation” in Levinas’s work is often employed with specific reference to the ethical relation between human beings, without any apparent religious connotation, he also maintains that the revelatory character of the ethical relation constitutes the “breach that leads to God”. Importantly, this is not to be understood as an impassable chasm between immanence and transcendence but rather as a “breach” within immanence itself, at the enactment of which the unthinkable and unthematisable God first “comes to mind”. Through the analysis of love and justice, as the mutually constitutive and interdependent enactments which give witness of this breach, familiar themes in Levinas’s work will also be shown to be associated with it: for example, asymmetry, diachronic time, the “saying” and the “said”, nothingness and being, and the “passing” of the infinite in the finite. In light of this analysis, the thesis will then seek to address a specific and often-debated problem in Levinas’s work about whether, and if so how, the God who “comes to mind” in the ethical relation (where the term “God” retains the character of an irrepressible ambiguity) can be identified with the biblical God; and further, to evaluate the implications this question may have with regard to understanding the role and significance of the unavoidably thematising discourse of theology, which Levinas calls “the intellection of the biblical God”. In this regard, it is of particular interest that the “revelatory” character of the relation of love and justice features in Christian theology with similar prominence in the work of Saint Augustine. In order to provide a basic framework, therefore, through which both the opportun…
author: Innes, Stephen
language: eng
date published: 2013-6-1
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:44:37Z
provider: King's College London
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: King's College London