About six years ago, I began to study Emmanuel Levinas's works seriously. I had tried several times before to read Totality and Infinity, unsuccessfully. The work seemed impenetrable, and each time I set out I managed only a few pages before I put the book aside. But in 2000, after Paul Franks and I had finished our translations and editorial work on Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and Theological Writings and we had agreed to teach a course on Rosenzweig and Levinas, I began to immerse myself in Levinas's works and the secondary literature on him. Paul then left Bloomington to take a position at Notre Dame, and I was scheduled to teach the course on my own. It was quite an experience, an enormous challenge but an exciting one. I found that the students, undergraduates and graduates alike, found something about Levinas gripping, and as I struggled to make sense of him for myself and for them, I also fell under his spell. This book is one outcome of that attempt to explore and decipher Levinas.

I mention these events in part to clarify something about the book. As I have worked on it, I have had several goals in mind, but one persisting reason for writing the book is, in all honesty, to find a way to make clear to myself what Levinas is saying and why it is important.