"Extreme Attention to the Real": Levinas and Religious Hermeneutics

One important area of Levinas's Jewish thought consists in his Talmudic readings. Over the course of many years, he developed an approach to the reading of Talmud that relies, implicitly and explicitly, on various hermeneutical principles. A fundamental characteristic of rabbinic reading, according to Levinas, is "extreme attention to the Real," the complexity of both human nature and the many concrete situations to which human beings must respond. This essay uses one of the Talmudic readings as a springboard for an exploration of the hermeneutics that are at work in Levinas' approach, including, in this case, his own very real relationship to and disappointment with his teacher, Martin Heidegger.