Closer Look: Levinas, On Escape

细察:列维纳斯,关于逃离

Overthink

2026-04-07

59 分钟
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Why do we seek to escape from ourselves? In episode 168 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a closer look at Emmanuel Levinas’s article “On Escape.” They discuss Levinas’s claim that escape is central to the human condition and explore what exactly we try to escape from and escape to. They explain how this aspect of human existence is crystallized by our experiences of need, pleasure, and even nausea. Are we condemned to being needy beings? How does Levinas’s view of shame put him at a distance from Sartre? And is Levinas right that to be a human is to never be at peace with oneself? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss why escape is the condition of our time and critique Levinas’s reading of idealism. Works Discussed: Emmanuel Levinas, “On Escape” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea Enjoy our work? Support Overthink via tax-deductible donation: https://www.givecampus.com/fj0w3v Join our Substack for ad-free versions of both audio and video episodes, extended episodes, exclusive live chats, and more: https://overthinkpod.substack.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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  • Hello, and welcome to Overthink, the podcast where your two favorite philosophy professors

  • bring big ideas into everyday life.

  • I'm David Pena Guzman.

  • And I'm Ellie Anderson.

  • As always, for an extended version of this episode, community discussion, and more, subscribe to Overthink on Substack.

  • Today, we're doing one of our Closer Look episodes where we dive deeply into a particular text.

  • Today, that text is from a philosopher that I spent a lot of my 20s working on, Emmanuel Levinas.

  • And we are going to be reading his essay on escape, or we read it.

  • We're going to be talking about it.

  • If you want to read it, we recommend it.

  • This pairs well with it.

  • We 're also hoping that it can be interesting,

  • even if you 're just a listener, because I have found that some of my favorite podcasts involve people

  • talking about books that I actually have n't read.

  • But this is a short essay that you can easily read.

  • Well, I have worked on Levinas a lot less than you,

  • Ellie, but he has been really influential for me in thinking about ethics and the relationship

  • specifically between phenomenology and ethics.

  • And one thing that I can not not point out is that I 've been surprised to see Levinas pop up sometimes in the most unexpected

  • of places in contemporary philosophy as a point of reference for thinking about ethics.