- Lived:
- 1906–1995 · Kaunas, Strasbourg, Paris — and a German prisoner-of-war camp
- Tradition:
- Phenomenology turned inside out; Jewish philosophy after the Shoah
- The Big Idea:
- Ethics is not a branch of philosophy — it is philosophy's foundation. Before you think, before you choose, before you even fully exist as a self, the face of another person has already made a claim on you.
- In their words:
- "The face speaks."
- If you remember one thing:
- Twenty-three hundred years of Western philosophy started from the self — my mind, my being, my freedom. Levinas started from the other person, and argued that everything else comes second.