This talk will focus on modern Jewish ethical philosophy through the thought of the German Jewish Philosopher Hermann Cohen and the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Kepnes will attempt to lay out a movement in modern Jewish ethics from a rule or law based ethic to an ethic of the other person in which the face of the other becomes a rule in itself that demands that the self seeks to serve the needs of the other with everything she has. Thus he will be speaking about ethics, as Levinas calls it, “first philosophy” and we might also call it “first religion.”
