’i am here’, abraham said: emmanuel levinas and anthropological science

Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophical work on ’the Other’ offers a challenge to the discipline of anthropology that claims knowledge of the human. For Levinas, the ’secrecy’ of subjectivity - a fundamental facet of the human condition - demands an ethics of ignorance and not-knowing; the mystery of otherness is only to be approached through ’inspiration’. Can anthropology meet a Levinasian challenge if it would define itself as a science as well as a humanistic documentation of social life? This book endeavours to take Levinasian and anthropological precepts equally seriously and offers a radical conclusion.

Nigel Rapport is Emeritus Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is Founding Director of the St Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. His most recent book was Cosmopolitan Love and Individuality: Ethical Engagement beyond Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019).