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.

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

Get Book Here

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.

The Fence and the Neighbor

The Fence and the Neighbor PDF Author: Adam Zachary Newton
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791491447
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The Fence and the Neighbor traces the contours of two thinkers, Emmanuel Levinas and Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who crossed the divide between Talmud and philosophy "proper." Adam Zachary Newton shows how the question of nationalism that has so long haunted Western philosophy—the question of who belongs within its "fence," and who outside—has long been the concern of Jewish thought and its preoccupation with law, limits, and the place of Israel among the nations. To those unfamiliar with Talmudic thought Newton shows how deeply its language and concerns shape Levinas. He also offers an introduction to Leibowitz, a conservative religious thinker who was an outspoken gadfly and radically critical voice in the Israeli political scene. Together, their common origin in Jewish Eastern Europe, a common concern with national allegiance, and the common fence of religious Judaism that makes them intellectual neighbors are voiced in penetrating and original dialogue.

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.

Nine Talmudic Readings

Nine Talmudic Readings PDF Author: Emmanuel Levinas
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253040507
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
These nine masterful readings of the Talmud by the renowned French Jewish philosopher translate Jewish thought into the language of modern times. One of the major continental philosophers of the twentieth century, Emmanuel Levinas was also an important Talmudic commentator. Between 1963 and 1975, he delivered an enlightening and influential series of commentaries at the annual Talmudic colloquia of a group of French Jewish intellectuals in Paris. In this collection, Levinas applies a hermeneutic that simultaneously allows the classic Jewish texts to shed light on contemporary problems and lets modern problems illuminate the texts. Besides being quintessential illustrations of the art of reading, the essays express the deeply ethical vision of the human condition that makes Levinas one of the most important thinkers of our time.

Difficult Freedom

Difficult Freedom PDF Author: Emmanuel Levinas
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801857836
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Topics include ethics, aesthetics, politics, messianism, Judaism and women, and Jewish-Christian relations, as well as the work of Spinoza, Hegel, Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, Simone Weil, and Jules Issac.

Sensibility and Singularity

Sensibility and Singularity PDF Author: John E. Drabinski
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791490874
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Is Emmanuel Levinas a dismissive critic of Husserlian phenomenology, or an important member of its movement? The standard account of Levinas's work assumes his distance from Husserl. In opposition to this account, Sensibility and Singularity contends that Husserl was a vital, living resource for Levinas throughout his philosophical career. The singularity of the Other is the centerpiece of Levinas's thought. The philosophical significance of this singularity, however, cannot be fully appreciated without attending to Levinas's transformation of the Husserlian themes of time, materiality, intentionality, and sense. This book documents those transformations and establishes their centrality to Levinas's notion of ethics. What emerges from this reading is a thorough account of Levinas's constant and productive debate with the Husserlian tradition of phenomenology.

Beyond the Verse

Beyond the Verse PDF Author: Emmanuel Levinas
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780485114300
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Available in paperback for the first time, this is an important collection of essays dealing with problems in Jewish thought.

Of God Who Comes to Mind

Of God Who Comes to Mind PDF Author: Emmanuel Lévinas
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804730945
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The thirteen essays collected in this volume investigate the possibility that the word "God" can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. Nine of the essays appear in English translation for the first time. Among Levinas's writings, this volume distinguishes itself, both for students of his thought and for a wider audience, by the range of issues it addresses. Levinas not only rehearses the ethical themes that have led him to be regarded as one of the most original thinkers working out of the phenomenological tradition, but he also takes up philosophical questions concerning politics, language, and religion. The volume situates his thought in a broader intellectual context than have his previous works. In these essays, alongside the detailed investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, Rosenzweig, and Buber that characterize all his writings, Levinas also addresses the thought of Kierkegaard, Marx, Bloch, and Derrida. Some essays provide lucid expositions not available elsewhere to key areas of Levinas's thought. "God and Philosophy" is perhaps the single most important text for understanding Levinas and is in many respects the best introduction to his works. "From Consciousness to Wakefulness" illuminates Levinas's relation to Husserl and thus to phenomenology, which is always his starting point, even if he never abides by the limits it imposes. In "The Thinking of Being and the Question of the Other," Levinas not only addresses Derrida's Speech and Phenomenon but also develops an answer to the later Heidegger's account of the history of Being by suggesting another way of reading that history. Among the other topics examined in the essays are the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding.

Levinas and the Torah

Levinas and the Torah PDF Author: Richard I. Sugarman
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 143847573X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
A Levinasian commentary on the Torah. 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. “Sugarman rightly treats Levinas as a thoroughly Jewish religious thinker, an approach to the great thinker that is much needed. Taking such an approach, he opens up new, innovative horizons in Torah commentary and analysis. Through a perceptive reading of Levinas through the biblical lens, he offers an insightful illumination of both the Bible and Levinas. Some may not be sure what to make of Sugarman’s work here, but then that is how it always is with innovative approaches.” — David Patterson, author of The Holocaust and the Nonrepresentable: Literary and Photographic Transcendence

Appositions of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas

Appositions of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas PDF Author: John Llewelyn
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253214935
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
"This is a book of scintillating intelligence, a book whose range of references, whose extraordinary ethical sensibility and linguistic creativity, set a standard for philosophy that few if any contemporary thinkers other than Derrida and Levinas themselves can match.... On every page, there is Llewelean sparkle." --David Wood If not simple opposition or simple juxtaposition, what is the relation between the writings to which Derrida and Levinas appose their signatures? What would each endorse in the writings of the other? What is it to sign and endorse? How does one assume responsibility, and how does one avoid assuming it? These are some of the probing questions that the prominent Continental philosopher John Llewelyn takes up in Appositions, which brings together and synthesizes 15 essays written during the past 20 years. This book by a powerfully original thinker and first-rate interpreter is essential reading for all those interested in the writings of Derrida and Levinas and in the ways in which their thinking intersects.