Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas, born December 30, 1905 (January 12, 1906 in the Gregorian calendar) in Kaunas (Russian Empire at the time, Lithuania today) and died December 25, 1995 in Clichy (Hauts-de-Seine), is a philosopher of Lithuanian origin naturalized French in 1931.
Levinas' philosophy is centered on the ethical question of the Other, as well as on freedom in action. Otherness is characterized as the Other which cannot be brought back to the Self, that is to say the infinite impossible to totalize, then as the beyond of being and the surpassing of violence. A political thinker, Levinassian philosophy results in a social republicanism attached to a State which guarantees justice by bringing to life a world of citizens, and not a world of face-to-face contact between the subject and his victim. He is also one of the first to introduce the thought of Husserl and that of Heidegger into France..
Resources
Levinas by Levinas (France Culture):
The formative years, from the Russian Empire to Paris
The discovery of Husserl and Heidegger
Heidegger's "Es gibt" and Levinas's "il y a"
Ethical and metaphysical reflection on the face
The consolation of religions and the harshness of philosophy