Date of Award

1-1-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Department

Religious Studies

First Advisor

Carl Raschle, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Alison Schofield, Ph.D.

Keywords

Eschatology, Hope, Levinas, Messianisim, Phenomenology

Abstract

This essay is an explication of the role of messianism, often expressed as hope, in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas's single philosophical project from 1933 until his passing in 1996 was to establish ethics as first philosophy. This effort was in opposition to the primacy of ontology in the work of Martin Heidegger. Levinas uses a phenomenological method similar to Heidegger's to establish messianic hope as a fundamental human motivation. Throughout Levinas's work, he borrows a religious vocabulary from his Jewish heritage that he resets into a philosophical domain. He takes a religious concept of messianism, specifically Jewish formulations of messianism, and associates it with the human affect of hope. Messianic hope becomes a persistent theme in all of Levinas's work. This essay will explore the origins of this terminology, the role of temporality, and how he uses messianic hope throughout his work to further his philosophical aims.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

Rights holder

Gary Ray Sunshine

File size

63 p.

File format

application/pdf

Language

en

Discipline

Philosophy of Religion

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