This book shows how persecution is a condition that binds each in an ethical obligation to the
other. Persecution is functionally defined here as an impinging affective relation that is not
mediated by reason. It focuses on the works and personal lives of Emmanuel Lévinas-a
phenomenological ethicist who understood persecution as an ontological condition for human
existence-and Sigmund Freud the inventor of psychoanalysis who proposed that a demanding
superego is a persecuting psychological mechanism that enables one to sadistically enjoy moral
injunctions. Scholarship on the work of Freud and Lévinas remains critical about their
objectivity but this book uses the phenomenological method to bracket this concern with
objective truth and instead reconstruct their historical biographies to evaluate their
hyperbolically opposing claims. By doing so it is suggested that moral actions and relations
of persecution in their personal lives illuminate the epistemic limits that they argued
contribute to the psychological and ontological necessity of persecuting behaviors. Object
relations and intersubjective approaches in psychoanalysis successfully incorporate meaningful
elements from both of their theoretical works which is used to develop an intentionality of
search that is sensitive to an unknowable relational and existentially vulnerable ethical
subjectivity. Details from Freud's and Lévinas' works and lives on the proclivity to use
persecution to achieve moral ends provide significant ethical warnings and the author uses
them as a strategy for developing the reader's intentionality of search to reflect on when
they may use persecuting means for moral ends.The interdisciplinary nature of this research
monograph is intended for academics scholars and researchers who are interested in
psychoanalysis moral philosophy and phenomenology. Comparisons between various psychoanalytic
frameworks and Lévinas' ethic will also interest scholars who work on the relation between
psychoanalysis and The Other. Lévinas scholars will value the convergences between his ethics
and Freud's moral skepticism likewise readers will be interested in the extension of Lévinas'
intentionality of search. The book is useful for undergraduate or graduate courses on literary
criticism and critical theories worldwide.
