Born in Eastern Europe, educated in the West under the guidance of Martin Heidegger and the phenomenological tradition, and forced to flee during the Holocaust because of their Jewish identity, it should come as no surprise that Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendts ideas intersect in an important way. This book demonstrates for the first time the significance of a dialogue between Levinas ethics of alterity and Arendts politics of plurality.

Anya Topolski brings their respective projects into dialogue by means of the notion of relationality, a concept inspired by the Judaic tradition that is prominent in both thinkers work. The book explores questions relating to the relationship between ethics and politics, the Judaic contribution to rethinking the meaning of the political after the Shoah, and the role of relationality and responsibility for politics. The result is an alternative conception of the political based on the ideas of plurality and alterity that aims to be relational, inclusive, and empowering.

Anya Topolski is a FWO postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

Acknowledgments / Abbreviations / Introduction: In Search of a Politics of Relationality /Part I: Bridges and Breaks/ 1. Biographical and Philosophical Intersections / 2. Divided by Disciplinary Confines /Part II: On Hannah Arendt/ 3. The Political: From Ashes to Hope / 4. An Ethics from Within the Political /Part III: On Emmanuel Levinas/ 5. Levinas Ethics of Alterity / 6. A Politics from Within Ethics /Part IV: From Plurality and Alterity to Relationality / 7. From Arendt and Levinas To Relationality / 8. The Promise and Pitfalls of Relationality / A.Works Cited / B. Related Works / Index