Emmanuel Levinas (1906-95) placed ethics at the foundation of philosophy; during his life, which spanned almost the entire twentieth century, he witnessed devastating events that could not have been more demanding of that philosophical stance.Unforeseen History covers the years 1929-92, providing a wide overview of Levinas's work-especially his views on aesthetics and Judaism--offering examples of his precise thinking at work in small essays, long essays, and interviews.The earliest essays in Unforeseen History discuss phenomenology, a subject Levinas introduced to a great many French thinkers, including Jean-Paul Sartre. In his prescient 1934 essay ''Some Thoughts on the Philosophy of Hitlerism,'' moreover, he confronted a philosophy that had yet to manifest itself fully in cataclysm.
