Cfp: Readings of Difficult Freedom, North American Levinas Society and Société Internationale de Recherches Emmanuel Levinas, Toulouse, July 5-9, 2010

First published in 1963, with a second edition in 1976, Difficile Liberté, Essais sur le judaïsme is considered Levinas' most accessible book and an excellent introduction to his work. This collection of essays, which appeared in a variety of journals (L'arche, Information juive, L'esprit, Evidences, etc.) reflects the society, culture and philosophy of France from the 1950s to the 1970s. While closely linked to this era (end of World War II, the discovery of the horror of the concentration camps, Stalinism, the founding of the State of Israel) Difficile Liberté is by no means a collection of circumstantial writings. In Difficile Liberté Levinas defines post-Holocaust Judaism, and sets out the requirements and need for Jewish thought and education in an authentic but critical dialogue with modern society. These considerations are frequently interspersed with references to writers and thinkers who influenced Levinas such as Claudel, Heidegger, Hegel, Spinoza, S. Weil, Gordin and Rosenzweig, but more often to sacred texts, the Bible and the words of the Sages of Israel which Levinas continually emphasized the need to study. Does Levinas' modernity paradoxically lie in his appeal to Jews to return to these old "worm-eaten tractates" ("the Jew of the Talmud should take precedence over the Jew of the Psalms")? These articles are still innovative, sharp, concise and overarching; the style is sometimes lyrical – Levinas rarely wrote in such a strident, argumentative way, blending conviction and stupefaction. The key to what unites Levinas' work – the link between his philosophical writings and his specifically Jewish dimension – may just be found in Difficile Liberté. Beyond the obligatory analysis of the title (taken from the last few words of the article "Education and Prayer") this conference aims not only to place the essays in Difficult Freedom in their historical context and within the trajectory of Levinas' thought, but more importantly to examine them afresh – with the wonderment and questions they still elicit today. Diachronic and synchronic analyses of the articles in Difficle Liberté will help situate them with respect to Levinas' other works. Issues such as the following could be explored: Phenomenology, Ethics, the Holocaust, Israel, the Talmudic Readings, Levinas' views of science and technology, Levinas' relationship to Heidegger, Rozensweig, Bergson, French philosophers and writers, Levinas' relationship to Christianity, Levinas the educator, etc. Further information may be found here: http://www.sirel-levinas.org/.