Negotiating the boundaries between religion and philosophy: Messianism in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas

In this dissertation, I argue that Emmanuel Levinas re-characterizes the conceptual boundaries between religion and philosophy. Utilizing Levinas' own metaphor of translation, I explore how he uses the "Hebrew" concept of 'messianism' within the "Greek" context of philosophical inquiry to illustrate the porous, yet not entirely permeable, boundaries between contemporary conceptions of religion and philosophy. The illumination of Levinas' unstable conception of messianism, over time and across genres of writing, reveals Levinas' contribution to the re-conceptualization of these boundaries.;In Chapter I, I investigate the use of messianism in Levinas' early Jewish thought. Levinas engages with the Rabbis of the Talmud concerning the difficulties inherent in the concept of a Messiah. Chapter II assesses Levinas' most complex messianic vision, which arises in Levinas' early philosophical thought. Messianism proves to be the key to the overall structure of Totality and Infinity . In Chapter III, I turn to an important essay by Jacques Derrida, "Violence and Metaphysics" in order to help explicate the shift between Levinas' early and late conceptions of messianism. In Chapter IV, I turn to Levinas' second great philosophical work Otherwise Than Being, Or, Beyond Essence in order to illustrate the total disappearance of messianism in Levinas' late philosophical thought. The transition from messianism as the lynchpin to Totality and Infinity to messianism as nonexistent in Otherwise Than Being, Or, Beyond Essence is difficult and jarring. In conjunction with Chapter III, Chapter IV attempts to assess the trajectory of this awkward transition in Levinas' philosophical thought. Chapter V locates the continuation of Levinas' messianism in his late Jewish thought. While the most articulate and complex conception of messianism is found in Totality and Infinity---his early philosophical thought---I argue that Levinas' later Jewish thought exhibits a different approach to the subject of messianism and sheds new light on his conception of the relation between religion and philosophy.