Was Levinas an Antiphilosopher? Archi-ethics and the Jewish Experience of the Prisoner

Abstract

<p>This paper explores Levinas’s <em>Carnets de captivité</em> and <em>Écrits sur la captivité</em> in light of Badiou’s category of ‘antiphilosophy’. We make four movements: firstly, a description of what antiphilosophy is; secondly, an explanation of why the category of antiphilosophy is important to a reading of Levinas; thirdly, an exposition of the antiphilosophical elements of the <em>Carnets</em> and <em>Écrits</em> on captivity; and fourthly, we situate our reading of the notebooks within the larger context of Levinas’s post-captivity work. </p>