Specters of Marx 1993–1995 477
His grief helped to bring him closer to Paul Ricoeur, who had
fi rst encouraged him to read Totality and infi nity. A few days after
the ceremony, Ricoeur wrote to his former assistant to tell him how
touched he had been by his speech: ‘Allow me to come and share my
deep sadness with you. You said, standing before Levinas, named
by his fi rst name Emmanuel, the words that were needed, words
which I endorse with all my thought. [.. .] May the uprightness
which that master of justice taught us, continue to unite us.’^49
A year later, in the amphithéâtre Richelieu in the Sorbonne,
Derrida opened the proceedings in a conference on Levinas with a
lecture called ‘A word of welcome’. This was a powerful, vigilant
homage to a philosophy that had been his constant companion but
that seemed even more important now that Levinas had died. It was
as if Derrida were essaying a ‘beyond Levinas’, continuing his work
and taking it further. However great his loyal admiration and his
respect, he did not want Levinas’s death to deprive him of the right
to dialogue and to argue with his texts.^50