The ethical in Kierkegaard and Levinas

This is a major contribution to Kierkegaard-Levinas studies, engaging two major figures in nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophy. "The Ethical in Kierkegaard and Levinas" investigates the philosophical, ethical, religious, and social-political thought of Soren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel Levinas alongside, and in conversation with, one another.

Paradiso-Michau disentangles Levinas' troubled misconceptions about Kierkegaard's multifaceted ideas of 'the ethical' sphere of human existence, revealing a deeper agreement and synergy than previously considered.

While Kierkegaard, Levinas and some of their leading interpreters would identify their specific religious orientations (nineteenth-century Christianity and twentieth-century Judaism, respectively) as significant points of departure, this book places them in dialogue to reconsider the convergence of ethical and social-political horizons between human subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

The book concludes with a gesture toward a critical ethical and social-political theory and praxis that emerges from a comparative analysis of Kierkegaard and Levinas. In this way these, two thinkers are mutually illuminating in philosophically describing and understanding the human condition in its existential, ethical, religious, and political dimensions.