In recent years, Scholars have increasingly put the works of William Shakespeare in dialogue with the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Currently, a search for “Levinas” and “Shakespeare” on Google Scholar returns about 16,600 results.1¹ The earliest examples of such work appeared at the start of the twenty-first century, which means that the philosopher himself, who died in 1995, did not live to see the Levinasian turn in Shakespeare studies.2² Nevertheless, Levinas did much to lead us in this direction. In interviews and essays, Levinas named Shakespeare as one of his primary influences and identified the playwright as one whose art he admired.3³ In his early work Time and the Other (1948), Levinas provocatively proposed that “the whole of philosophy is only a meditation of Shakespeare”; and in his great work Otherwise Than Being (1974), he alluded to both Macbeth and Hamlet on the first page.4⁴ Indeed, Levinas’s collected works contain more references to Shakespeare than to any other author, save Dostoyevsky. The majority of references are to Hamlet and Macbeth, but contemporary critics working in the vein of Levinas have tended to favor King Lear. No Shakespeare play has been subjected to Levinasian analysis more fully or more frequently.5⁵ This critical proclivity is not unwarranted, for Shakespeare’s tragic play and Levinas’s ethical writings tell the same basic story—that of the egoist who heedlessly pursues his own interests until he is called into question by traumatizing encounters with others.

中文翻译：

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甜蜜的愚弄：李尔王和列维纳斯的道德幽默

近年来，学者们越来越多地将威廉·莎士比亚的作品与伊曼纽尔·列维纳斯的伦理哲学进行对话。目前，在 Google Scholar 上搜索“Levinas”和“Shakespeare”会返回大约 16,600 个结果。1 ¹此类作品的最早例子出现在 21 世纪初，这意味着这位哲学家本人于 1995 年去世，没有看到莎士比亚研究中的列维纳斯转向^{。2 2}尽管如此，列维纳斯在带领我们朝这个方向发展方面做了很多工作。在采访和文章中，列维纳斯将莎士比亚列为他的主要影响之一，并将这位剧作家视为他所钦佩的艺术。^{3 3}在他的早期作品《时代与他者》中（1948），列维纳斯挑衅地提出“整个哲学只是莎士比亚的沉思”；而在他的伟大著作《非存在》 （1974）中，他在第一页就提到了麦克白和哈姆雷特。4 ⁴事实上，除了陀思妥耶夫斯基之外，列维纳斯的文集中对莎士比亚的引用比对任何其他作者都多。大多数参考文献是哈姆雷特和麦克白，但在列维纳斯的脉络中工作的当代评论家倾向于支持李尔王。没有哪一部莎士比亚戏剧得到更全面或更频繁的列维纳分析。^{5 5}这种批判倾向并非没有根据，因为莎士比亚的悲剧戏剧和列维纳斯的伦理著作讲述了相同的基本故事——利己主义者不顾一切地追求自己的利益，直到他因与他人的创伤遭遇而受到质疑。