Totality and Infinity
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority () is a 1961 book about ethics by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Highly influenced by phenomenology, it is considered one of Levinas's most important works. Summary. The Other. Levinas advances the thesis that all ethics derive from a confrontation with an other. This other, with whom we interact concretely, represents a gateway into the more abstract Otherness. The distinction between totality and infinity divides the limited world, which contains the other as a material body, from a spiritual world. Subjects gain access to this spiritual world, infinity, by opening themselves  to the Otherness of the other. For example: Presence. Levinas places heavy emphasis on the physical presence involved in meeting the other. He argues that only a face-to-face encounter allows true connection with Infinity, because of the incessance of this type of interaction. Written words and other words do not suffice because they have become past by the time the subject perceives them. That is: they have fallen into the register of totality. History. The book contains several observations on History and the judgement of history, like "the judgement of history is always pronounced by default." Reception. "Totality  and Infinity" is considered an original and significant contribution to the world of philosophy—continental philosophy in particular. The work can be read as a response to Levinas's teachers, the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Britannica both identify "Totality and Infinity", along with "Otherwise than Being" (1974), as one of Levinas's most important works. In "Violence and Metaphysics", an essay included in "Writing and Difference" (1967), the philosopher Jacques Derrida criticized "Totality and Infinity".