Emmanuel Levinas’s doubts about the ethical value of artistic beauty have been widely acknowledged by the vast majority of Levinas’s commentators. However, though it is true that in “Reality and Its Shadow” Levinas persistently rebukes artistic beauty for its nonethicality, it is undeniable that he at least upholds the value of artistic criticism and modern literature. In this article I intend to relate Levinas’s exploration of the possibility of spiritual–ethical teaching in literature to Immanuel Kant’s reflections on the relation between (...) the feeling of beauty, that of sublimity, and sensible feeling in his third Critique. This up-close comparative examination fosters understanding of Levinas’s religious and philosophical approach to the sublime elements in some literary works, especially those of Fyodor Dostoevsky. (shrink)