Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics

Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics PDF Author: Joshua James Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Emmanuel Levinas has come to be regarded as one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century European philosophy. Initially seen as an obscure popularizer of phenomenology, Levinas is now widely admired for his original philosophic writings on the encounter with "the other," his place in post-Holocaust Jewish philosophy, his influence on Derrida, and his powerful claims about the importance of ethics for philosophy and for human life generally. The past several years have seen an explosion of interest in his thought. Critics have charged, however, that his philosophy is seriously flawed by his failure to convey his understanding of ethical responsibility in a practical ethical theory. Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics: Putting Ethics First defends Levinas against this criticism. In doing so, it develops an interpretation that stresses Levinas' sensitivity to the urgency of acting to help those who are vulnerable. The book departs from trends in Levinas scholarship. Many scholars emphasize Levinas' epistemological claims about the incomprehensibility and inexpressibility of the relation to the other as the foundational theses of his philosophy. By contrast, Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics shows how he reaches them based on a subtle analysis of the practical demands involved in recognizing responsibility for others. The book argues that Levinas is best read as pragmatic thinker, one who, above all, is concerned to stress the importance of practical effectiveness in serving the other. Finally, the book shows how his understanding of responsibility can be expressed in practical ethical theories given this pragmatic interpretation. This book is an important work for Levinas scholars, particularly those interested in his relevance for contemporary ethical debates and for social and political philosophy. The book develops an interpretation that avoids jargon, and new readers as well as readers interested in placing Levinas in dialogue with Anglo-American philosophy will find it a useful resource. The book's efforts to situate Levinas in relation to issues in analytic ethics, such as Rawls' theory of justice and debates over moral realism, will be of particular interest to the latter.

Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics

Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics PDF Author: Joshua James Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
Emmanuel Levinas has come to be regarded as one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century European philosophy. Initially seen as an obscure popularizer of phenomenology, Levinas is now widely admired for his original philosophic writings on the encounter with "the other," his place in post-Holocaust Jewish philosophy, his influence on Derrida, and his powerful claims about the importance of ethics for philosophy and for human life generally. The past several years have seen an explosion of interest in his thought. Critics have charged, however, that his philosophy is seriously flawed by his failure to convey his understanding of ethical responsibility in a practical ethical theory. Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics: Putting Ethics First defends Levinas against this criticism. In doing so, it develops an interpretation that stresses Levinas' sensitivity to the urgency of acting to help those who are vulnerable. The book departs from trends in Levinas scholarship. Many scholars emphasize Levinas' epistemological claims about the incomprehensibility and inexpressibility of the relation to the other as the foundational theses of his philosophy. By contrast, Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics shows how he reaches them based on a subtle analysis of the practical demands involved in recognizing responsibility for others. The book argues that Levinas is best read as pragmatic thinker, one who, above all, is concerned to stress the importance of practical effectiveness in serving the other. Finally, the book shows how his understanding of responsibility can be expressed in practical ethical theories given this pragmatic interpretation. This book is an important work for Levinas scholars, particularly those interested in his relevance for contemporary ethical debates and for social and political philosophy. The book develops an interpretation that avoids jargon, and new readers as well as readers interested in placing Levinas in dialogue with Anglo-American philosophy will find it a useful resource. The book's efforts to situate Levinas in relation to issues in analytic ethics, such as Rawls' theory of justice and debates over moral realism, will be of particular interest to the latter.

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.

Levinas's Ethical Politics

Levinas's Ethical Politics PDF Author: Michael L. Morgan
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253021189
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Emmanuel Levinas conceives of our lives as fundamentally interpersonal and ethical, claiming that our responsibilities to one another should shape all of our actions. While many scholars believe that Levinas failed to develop a robust view of political ethics, Michael L. Morgan argues against understandings of Levinas's thought that find him politically wanting or even antipolitical. Morgan examines Levinas's ethical critique of the political as well as his Jewish writings—including those on Zionism and the founding of the Jewish state—which are controversial reflections of Levinas's political expression. Unlike others who dismiss Levinas as irrelevant or anarchical, Morgan is the first to give extensive treatment to Levinas as a serious social political thinker whose ethics must be understood in terms of its political implications. Morgan reveals Levinas's political commitments to liberalism and democracy as well as his revolutionary conception of human life as deeply interconnected on philosophical, political, and religious grounds.

The Ambiguity of Justice: New Perspectives on Paul Ricoeur's Approach to Justice

The Ambiguity of Justice: New Perspectives on Paul Ricoeur's Approach to Justice PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004424989
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
The Ambiguity of Justice offers a collection of essays on Ricoeur’s thought on justice, and on the different views that influenced this thought, in particular those of Arendt, Honneth, Hénaff, Rawls, Levinas and Boltanski. Although Ricoeur’s idea of justice has undoubtedly caught much attention already, only a few monographs have been published so far that explicitly address this topic. The contributors of this book – a mix of both well-established Ricoeur scholars and young promising scholars in this field – address the difficulties in Ricoeur’s thought on justice by maintaining his spirit of dialogue, not only by showing how Ricoeur himself repeatedly searches for dialogue in his writings on justice, but also by arguing that Ricoeur’s thought allows contributions to contemporary debates about justice.

A Covenant of Creatures

A Covenant of Creatures PDF Author: Michael Fagenblat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804774684
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
"I am not a particularly Jewish thinker," said Emmanuel Levinas, "I am just a thinker." This book argues against the idea, affirmed by Levinas himself, that Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being separate philosophy from Judaism. By reading Levinas's philosophical works through the prism of Judaic texts and ideas, Michael Fagenblat argues that what Levinas called "ethics" is as much a hermeneutical product wrought from the Judaic heritage as a series of phenomenological observations. Decoding the Levinas's philosophy of Judaism within a Heideggerian and Pauline framework, Fagenblat uses biblical, rabbinic, and Maimonidean texts to provide sustained interpretations of the philosopher's work. Ultimately he calls for a reconsideration of the relation between tradition and philosophy, and of the meaning of faith after the death of epistemology.

Totality and Infinity

Totality and Infinity PDF Author: Emmanuel Levinas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789400993433
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description


Emmanuel

Emmanuel PDF Author: Donald Wallenfang
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666700002
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) is perhaps one of the best-kept philosophical secrets of recent times. By locating ethics as first philosophy, based on the call of the other, Levinas has revolutionized the Western philosophical tradition. In effect, the perennial priority of the self is displaced by the uncanny urgency of the other. Emmanuel: Levinas and Variations on God with Us gives the reader an introduction to the life and work of this humble philosophical genius. Several applications are made of Levinas’s insights: interreligious dialogue, analytic versus continental philosophy, law and freedom, maternity, childhood, hermeneutics, and ethical contemplation. Most especially, Levinas is brought into lively conversation with Jean-Luc Marion. Levinas’s phenomenology of proclamation is set in confrontation with Marion’s phenomenology of manifestation throughout the book. Erotic love is met with a love filled with responsibilities for the other. Mount Carmel and Mount Zion face one another in a topography of the infinite. Readers will appreciate the variety of themes treated, as well as the dynamic interaction between philosophy and theology. Given the fragmented postmodern milieux of the world today, perhaps the philosophical intuitions of Emmanuel Levinas were prepared “for such a time as this” (Esth 4:14).

Ethics at the Beginning of Life

Ethics at the Beginning of Life PDF Author: James Mumford
Publisher: Oxford Studies in Theological
ISBN: 0199673969
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Many declare the debate about abortion to be hopelessly polarised, between conservatives and liberals, between forces religious and secular. In this book Mumford upends this received wisdom and challenges consensus, arguing that many dominant attitudes and argument fail to take into account the particular way human beings 'emerge' in the world.

The Oxford Handbook of Levinas

The Oxford Handbook of Levinas PDF Author: Michael L. Morgan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190910690
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 975

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Book Description
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) emerged as an influential philosophical voice in the final decades of the twentieth century, and his reputation has continued to flourish and increase in our own day. His central themes--the primacy of the ethical and the core of ethics as our responsibility to and for others--speak to readers from a host of disciplines and perspectives. However, his writings and thought are challenging and difficult. The Oxford Handbook of Levinas contains essays that aim to clarify and engage Levinas and his writings in a number of ways. Some focus on central themes of his work, others on the ways in which he read and was influenced by figures from Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant to Blanchot, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida. And there are essays on how his thinking has been appropriated in moral and political thought, psychology, film criticism, and more, and on the relation between his thinking and religious themes and traditions. Finally, several essays deal primarily with how readers have criticized him and found him wanting. The volume exposes and explores both the depth of Levinas's philosophical work and the range of applications to which it has been put, with special attention to clarifying why his interests in the human condition, the crisis of civilization, the centrality and character of ethics and morality, and the very meaning of human experience should be of interest to the widest range of readers.

Emmanuel Levinas and the Limits to Ethics

Emmanuel Levinas and the Limits to Ethics PDF Author: Aryeh Botwinick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134750420
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Emanuel Levinas and the Limits to Ethics highlights how radically different Jewish ethics is from Christian ethics, and the profound affinities that subsist between Jewish ethics and philosophical and political liberalism. The philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas has captured the imagination of a global constituency who take his absolutizing of ethical demands and his assigning primacy to ethics over all other branches of inquiry in his mapping of Western philosophy to be indicative of a major re-ordering of both personal and cultural identity. It is this re-ordering, they believe, that would restore greater wholeness and value to human life. In this book, Aryeh Botwinick takes issue with both the theoretical analysis that Levinas engages in, and the practical ethical import that he draws from it. Arguing that what Levinas has to say about both skepticism and negative theology can be used to re-route his argument away from the avowed aims of his thought, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Ethics and Philosophy.