Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas.

First edition. 8vo. 211, [5] pp. Original printed wrappers with integral turn-in folds, edges untrimmed. A near fine copy. Paris, Galilée, collection Incises.

A presentation copy, inscribed by the author 'pour Maurice de Gandillac aves mes fidèles et respectueuses pensées J. Derrida' in black ink to the front free endpaper.

The recipient, Maurice de Gandillac (1906-2006), was Professor of History of the Middle Ages and Renaissance philosophy at the Sorbonne from 1946 to 1977, where he exercised considerable influence over Derrida's generation of philosophers; indeed, his list of students reads almost as a 'who's who' of post-structuralist philosophers, including Derrida as well as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser and Jean-François Lyotard, amongst others.

Consisting of the speech that Derrida gave at Levinas' funeral alongside his contribution to a colloquium marking the anniversary of his death, this book is in effect a eulogy from Derrida to one of his most important philosophical forebears. Beginning with the landmark 'Violence and Metaphysics' in Writing and Difference (1967), Derrida's engagement with Levinas set the terms for his career-long reckoning of the relationship between ethics and metaphysics, carried to its full extent with his writing on the concept of hospitality. Derrida's consideration of the term 'Adieu' in this volume offers him the opportunity to explore with and against Levinas a constitutive moment of the ethical encounter: the greeting, which is in this same word also the goodbye. The theory and philosophy of this reflection is movingly turned by Derrida into the more personal question of how to say goodbye to his now-departed friend and mentor, whilst still continuing to newly greet his thought. 

Stock Code: 243749