Addressing Levinas

Addressing Levinas PDF Author: Eric Sean Nelson
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810120488
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
At a time of great and increasing interest in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this volume draws readers into what Levinas described as "philosophy itself"—"a discourse always addressed to another." Thus the philosopher himself provides the thread that runs through these essays on his writings, one guided by the importance of the fact of being addressed—the significance of the Saying much more than the Said. The authors, leading Levinas scholars and interpreters from across the globe, explore the philosopher's relationship to a wide range of intellectual traditions, including theology, philosophy of culture, Jewish thought, phenomenology, and the history of philosophy. They also engage Levinas's contribution to ethics, politics, law, justice, psychoanalysis and epistemology, among other themes. In their radical singularity, these essays reveal the inalienable alterity at the heart of Levinas's ethics. At the same time, each essay remains open to the others, and to the perspectives and positions they advocate. Thus the volume, in its quality and diversity, enacts an authentic encounter with Levinas's thought, embodying an intellectual ethics by virtue of its style. Bringing together contributions from philosophy, theology, literary theory, gender studies, and political theory, this book offers a deeper and more thorough encounter with Levinas's ethics than any yet written.

Addressing Levinas

Addressing Levinas PDF Author: Eric Sean Nelson
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810120488
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book Here

Book Description
At a time of great and increasing interest in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this volume draws readers into what Levinas described as "philosophy itself"—"a discourse always addressed to another." Thus the philosopher himself provides the thread that runs through these essays on his writings, one guided by the importance of the fact of being addressed—the significance of the Saying much more than the Said. The authors, leading Levinas scholars and interpreters from across the globe, explore the philosopher's relationship to a wide range of intellectual traditions, including theology, philosophy of culture, Jewish thought, phenomenology, and the history of philosophy. They also engage Levinas's contribution to ethics, politics, law, justice, psychoanalysis and epistemology, among other themes. In their radical singularity, these essays reveal the inalienable alterity at the heart of Levinas's ethics. At the same time, each essay remains open to the others, and to the perspectives and positions they advocate. Thus the volume, in its quality and diversity, enacts an authentic encounter with Levinas's thought, embodying an intellectual ethics by virtue of its style. Bringing together contributions from philosophy, theology, literary theory, gender studies, and political theory, this book offers a deeper and more thorough encounter with Levinas's ethics than any yet written.

The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas

The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas PDF Author: Diane Perpich
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804759421
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This work offers a new interpretation of what Levinas means when he says that we are infinitely responsible to the other person.

The Problem with Levinas

The Problem with Levinas PDF Author: Simon Critchley
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198738765
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Levinas's idea of ethics as a relation of responsibility to the other person has become a highly influential and recognizable position across a wide range of academic and non-academic fields. Simon Critchley's aim in this book is to provide a less familiar, more troubling, and (hopefully) truer account of Levinas's work. A new dramatic method for reading Levinas is proposed, where the fundamental problem of his work is seen as the attempt to escape from the tragedy of Heidegger's philosophy and the way in which that philosophy shaped political events in the last century. Extensive and careful attention is paid to Levinas' fascinating but often overlooked work from the 1930s, where the proximity to Heidegger becomes clearer. Levinas's problem is very simple: how to escape from the tragic fatality of being as described by Heidegger. Levinas's later work is a series of attempts to answer that problem through claims about ethical selfhood and a series of phenomenological experiences, especially erotic relations and the relation to the child. These claims are analyzed in the book through close textual readings. Critchley reveals the problem with Levinas's answer to his own philosophical question and suggests a number of criticisms, particular concerning the question of gender. In the final, speculative part of the book, another answer to Levinas's problem is explored through a reading of the Song of Songs and the lens of mystical love.

Discovering Levinas

Discovering Levinas PDF Author: Michael L. Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139464736
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Book Description
In Discovering Levinas, Michael L. Morgan shows how this thinker faces in novel and provocative ways central philosophical problems of twentieth-century philosophy and religious thought. He tackles this task by placing Levinas in conversation with philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Onora O'Neill, Charles Taylor, and Cora Diamond. He also seeks to understand Levinas within philosophical, religious, and political developments in the history of twentieth-century intellectual culture. Morgan demystifies Levinas by examining his unfamiliar and surprising vocabulary, interpreting texts with an eye to clarity, and arguing that Levinas can be understood as a philosopher of the everyday. Morgan also shows that Levinas's ethics is not morally and politically irrelevant nor is it excessively narrow and demanding in unacceptable ways. Neither glib dismissal nor fawning acceptance, this book provides a sympathetic reading that can form a foundation for a responsible critique.

Levinas's Existential Analytic

Levinas's Existential Analytic PDF Author: James R. Mensch
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810130548
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
By virtue of the originality and depth of its thought, Emmanuel Levinas’s masterpiece, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, is destined to endure as one of the great works of philosophy. It is an essential text for understanding Levinas’s discussion of “the Other,” yet it is known as a “difficult” book. Modeled after Norman Kemp Smith’s commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Levinas’s Existential Analytic guides both new and experienced readers through Levinas’s text. James R. Mensch explicates Levinas’s arguments and shows their historical referents, particularly with regard to Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida. Students using this book alongside Totality and Infinity will be able to follow its arguments and grasp the subtle phenomenological analyses that fill it.

The Cambridge Companion to Levinas

The Cambridge Companion to Levinas PDF Author: Simon Critchley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521665650
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
A convenient and accessible guide to Levinas, first published in 2002, which emphasises the interdisciplinary significance of his work.

Between Levinas and Heidegger

Between Levinas and Heidegger PDF Author: John E. Drabinski
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438452594
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Although both Levinas and Heidegger drew inspiration from Edmund Husserl's phenomenological method and helped pave the way toward the post-structuralist movement of the late twentieth century, very little scholarly attention has been paid to the relation of these two thinkers. There are plenty of simple—and accurate—oppositions and juxtapositions: French and German, ethics and ontology, and so on. But there is also a critical intersection between Levinas and Heidegger on some of the most fundamental philosophical questions: What does it mean to be, to think, and to act in late modern life and culture? How do our conceptions of subjectivity, time, and history both reflect the condition of this historical moment and open up possibilities for critique, resistance, and transformation? The contributors to this volume take up these questions by engaging the ideas of Levinas and Heidegger relating to issues of power, violence, secularization, history, language, time, death, sacrifice, responsibility, memory, and the boundary between the human and humanism.

Levinas' 'Totality and Infinity'

Levinas' 'Totality and Infinity' PDF Author: William Large
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472531884
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Emmanuel Levinas' Totality and Infinity is a monumental work of phenomenological enquiry that goes on to assert the centrality of ethics to philosophical thought. This Reader's Guide provides a detailed explanation of the work, breaking down the occasionally intimidating but always inspirational content of Totality and Infinity for non-specialist readers, unpacking the complexities of Levinas' thought with clarity and rigour. Ideal for students coming to Levinas for the first time, the book offers essential guidance, outlining key themes, approaches to reading the text, the reception, and influence of the work, and recommends secondary reading materials.

To the Other

To the Other PDF Author: Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 9781557530240
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"The best introduction available for students of one of the most important philosophers of this century."--"American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly." (Philosophy)

Levinas and the Torah

Levinas and the Torah PDF Author: Richard I. Sugarman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438475748
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95) was one of the most original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. This book interprets the Hebrew Bible through the lens of Levinas's religious philosophy. Richard I. Sugarman examines the Pentateuch using a phenomenological approach, drawing on both Levinas's philosophical and Jewish writings. Sugarman puts Levinas in conversation with biblical commentators both classical and modern, including Rashi, Maimonides, Sforno, Hirsch, and Soloveitchik. He particularly highlights Levinas's work on the Talmud and the Holocaust. Levinas's reading is situated against the background of a renewed understanding of such phenomena as covenant, promise, different modalities of time, and justice. The volume is organized to reflect the fifty-four portions of the Torah read during the Jewish liturgical year. A preface provides an overview of Levinas's life, approach, and place in contemporary Jewish thought. The reader emerges with a deeper understanding of both the Torah and the philosophy of a key Jewish thinker.