Levinas Philosophy Summer Seminar Series

An international academic conference devoted to the relevance of Emmanuel Levinas’ thought today, focused both on the challenges of the contemporary world and on the reception of Levinas’ thought in contemporary philosophical discourse. Levinas deeply thought in the face of the cataclysms of the past century, most notably the Holocaust, becoming one of the brightest most insightful intellectual figures of his time. The legacy of his thought resists closure in the past, however, already insisting on the dimensions of the present and most especially the future – the future of justice in particular. Therefore, the challenges of our time – Russia’s war in Ukraine, the environment crisis, the Anthropocene era, having global consequences, as well as human action mediated by technology – set us the task of rethinking Levinas’ legacy, raising the questions of responsibility, justice and anew. No less important is the parallel task of tracing the reception of Emmanuel Levinas’ thought in contemporary philosophical discourse, focusing on the relationship – explicit or implicit - of contemporary philosophers towards his approach to ethics, ontology, phenomenology, moral responsibility and the struggle for justice. Has not Levinas’s “philosophy of the other” and “ethics as first philosophy” stimulated and challenged alternative postmodernisms, and philosophies of immanence and plasticity?  

Conference will be held in English.
Venue: Vilnius University, Universiteto str. 9/1, 201 r., Vilnius, Lithuania.
Organizing committee:
Chair: Danutė Bacevičiūtė, Vilnius University
Richard A. Cohen, University at Buffalo (SUNY)
Jolanta Saldukaitytė, Vilnius University
Rita Šerpytytė, Vilnius University

The conference is organized by The Levinas Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies at Vilnius University and the Research Council of Lithuania. 

Questions and communications: levinas.center@gmail.com  

Jolanta Saldukaityte
Vilnius, Lithuania
levinas.center@gmail.com