Société Internationale de Recherche Emmanuel Levinas

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the passing of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), the goal of the event is to examine the relationship between Levinas’s insights about law and justice and the problems that are on the agenda in Israeli society today. Among them are establishing the truth within the legal system, and, more precisely, the struggle for reducing the status of confession within criminal law.

Emmanuel Levinas across the Generations and Continents

The resistance of analytic philosophy to continental philosophy, at least as practiced in the United States, is well known. Anecdotes abound regarding failed attempts to bridge the divide or to discover continuities that have been missed. Increasingly however, younger scholars, thinkers, and critics who have been tempted on the one hand by analytic philosophy, and on the other by Levinas's ethical thinking, are turning to Levinas as a way of challenging the breach.

In this year's conference, the tenth anniversary of the existence of the North American Levinas Society, we would like to explore this gap and this potential dismantling. Because the idea for the organization and for the yearly conference began at Purdue (in a graduate course on Levinas), we thought it appropriate that the tenth anniversary should take place at Purdue. The conference will begin on the morning of July 27 and conclude the evening of July 30, 2015.