Patrick O’Connor, podcaster and BSP president, talks with Dr Will Large, author of Levinas’ ‘Totality and Infinity: A Reader’s Guide’.
Thales’ Well is a podcast exploring philosophy, politics, current affairs, literature and film. In this episode host Patrick O’Connor, president of the BSP and Senior Lecturer at NTU, talks to Will Large about Emmanual Levinas. Will works at the University of Gloucestershire and is the author of Levinas’ ‘Totality and Infinity: A Reader’s Guide and Heidegger’s Being and Time: A Philosophical Guide.
Thales’ Well overview: “I spoke with Will Large about the Jewish philosopher Emmanual Levinas. Levinas is a philosopher who had a unique conception of ethics, one resistant to many of the traditional ways we approach ethics in Philosophy. Many of Levinas’ writings were composed during his time in a prisoner of war camp, and his work unsurprisingly embraces notions of escape, otherness, subjectivity and anti-totalitarianism. Also, many members of his immediate family were murdered by fascists. Levinas’ entire career subsequently became devoted to radically transforming how we approach others in a concrete way. With Will, I had a wide-ranging conversation where we touched on the distinction between ethics and morality, Levinas’ book Totality and Infinity, Daniel Kahnemann, Gilles Deleuze, virtue signalling, parenthood, the movie Election, political anarchism and environmentalism.”
Check out Will and Pat’s conversation on Thales’ Well: On Levinas with Will Large.