Primo Levi, a Prophet-Philosopher of Our Times: Biblical and Platonic Sources in His Writings

Abstract

The article defends the thesis of a similarity between Primo Levi and Emmanuel Levinas about three important themes: 1. both authors consider Greek science and philosophy and Biblical religion as the main sources, to which they give universal validity, of our Western culture; 2. both authors underline the primacy of ethics, grounded in prophecy, over the knowledge of nature and the meditation on being, grounded in human reason alone; 3. both authors think that science and philosophy, if detached from the prophetical ethics, run the risk of becoming productions of a mythical imagination, which does not make any distinction between nature and spirit, God and history, phenomena and noumena. The article analyzes these three themes in Primo Levi’s writings. The conclusion points out how a thinking which intends to unify religion and philosophy, Jerusalem and Athens, should take on a narrative style (which includes the vocatives) and at the same time a non-subjectivistic form.