In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Michael Sohn's book The Good of Recognition: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Religion in the Thought of Lévinas and Ricœur explores the philosophical and religious writings of two of twentieth-century France's most significant thinkers, Paul Ricœur and Emmanuel Lévinas, "to gain, by thinking with and through them, an insight into the phenomenon of recognition" (128). Recognition, to these authors, is not merely an act of re-cognition (identifying (...) something one already knows), nor is it simple cognition (consciousness of something). For Lévinas, to whom Ricœur is indebted for his own work, recognition precedes ontological identification and is a "sensation of the infinite" in the Other (29). Recognition entails "a primordial ethical claim by the other" (57), up to and including self-sacrifice. For Ricœur, on the other hand, recognition of the other is situated in the "loving struggle for existence" between people seeking mutual recognition (72) and presents itself as "one among many sources of value and motivation" for moral decision (81). In other words, while recognition of the other is a central concept in both authors' ethical writings, Sohn notes that "Lévinas' phenomenological description of recognition emerges out of a fundamental project to uncover the principle of all principles," while "Ricœur's attention to the locus of will integrates passivity and activity as it is taken up within the dialectic of the voluntary and the involuntary," making recognition one value among others (127). In highlighting the different positions of each of these authors, Sohn structures his writing in a highly systematized and clear way. He first divides the book broadly by author, then for each author devotes a chapter each to philosophical and religious approaches to recognition. Within each chapter, he outlines the intellectual influences for the given author, then articulates in turn the phenomenon, the ethics, and the politics of recognition. This tactic serves as a helpful reference for readers interested in Sohn's comparative project, though it sometimes leads to repetition insofar as there are overlaps in how different thinkers, philosophical schools, or principles function for each area. The overall project is framed by an introductory chapter that briefly outlines the main points of discussion throughout the book and a conclusion that summarizes, compares, and contextualizes the significance of the project. Sohn offers this text as a clarifying study of the phenomenon of recognition, a term the application of which "touches upon a broad spectrum of issues ranging from battles over multiculturalism to questions of national sovereignty and from matters of international human rights to social movements within feminism and human rights" (135). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Translation of Levinas’s Review of Lev Shestov’s Kierkegaard and the Existential PhilosophyJames McLachlan (bio)In 1937, Emmanuel Levinas published a review of Lev Shestov’s Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy.1 In one of the first studies in English on Levinas, Edith Wyschogrod claims: “What Levinas writes of Shestov’s analysis of Kierkegaard might well be taken as a program for his own future work.”2 The review of Shestov’s Kierkegaard book shows (...) Levinas sympathy with Shestov’s rebellion against rationalism and totalism, his complaint that the individual and all her concerns, desires, and suffering were crushed by the world and ignored by philosophy. But his review of Shestov’s book also shows Levinas’s concern the rebellion could end in “the vanity of personal protest” and substitute subjective imprisonment for the imprisonment of history.3 Such irrationalism could lead to its own forms of violence, which in 1937 were becoming apparent.Like Levinas, Shestov helped introduce Husserl in France, although in Shestov’s case as an adversary to Husserl with whom he developed a friendship.4 The exchange between Shestov and Levinas’s Strasbourg teacher Jean Hering helped publicize Husserl in France.5 As an [End Page 237] exile in Europe, Shestov published his most powerful works Potestas Clavium, In Job’s Balances, Athens and Jerusalem, and Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy. Shestov sought, through a continued hammering, to escape the trap of Being toward radical freedom.6 The form of Shestov’s escape attempt can be situated between Levinas and Kierkegaard. He shares with Levinas the desire to escape ontology but, like Kierkegaard, Shestov’s version of the escape is into a radically individual relation with God through a violent repudiation of the universal; thus, both Levinas’s disagreement with and attraction to Shestov in his 1937 review of Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy prefigure his rejection of Kierkegaard.One must be wary of reading Shestov as a kind of introduction to any thinker he engages, and thus the inclusion for many years of Shestov’s book on short bibliographies on Kierkegaard was extremely misleading. The book was quite influential when it appeared in 1936 around the same time as Jean Wahl’s Études Kierkegaardiennes. Shestov’s work is filled with hyperbole, exaggeration, and polemic. All of his writings are more literary essays than works of scholarship. And it is this mesmerizing writing that Russian literary critic D. S. Mirsky called “the tidiest, the most elegant, the most concentrated... in short, the most classical prose in the whole of modern Russian Literature.”7 A more perceptive reader than many Kierkegaardians who have read Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, Levinas wrote in 1937 that “the philosophical project of M. Shestov often takes on the allure of brilliant literary essay. It is a ‘poem’ rather than a ‘work.’ The author is more present therein than his subject.”8Here Levinas notes several important points about Shestov’s Kierkegaard book. Perhaps the most important is that it is not primarily about Kierkegaard that “the author is more present therein than his subject.” Levinas sees Shestov had indeed seized on one of the central aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought but “what affects us more deeply still, and this is not its smallest attraction, the ideas of M. Shestov.”9 This is true of all of Shestov’s work. It is a “vast symposium” around the problems that agitated Shestov. [End Page 238]________Emmanuel Levinas, review of Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy (Vox clamantis in deserto), by Leon Chestov, trans. T. Rageot and B. de Schloezer, Revue des Études Juives 101, nos. 1–2 (1937): 139–41.The thought of Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, dead in 1855, has known for some time a rare good fortune. Jaspers and Heidegger in German, Jean Wahl and Gabriel Marcel in France, are some of the names that permit us to measure the quality of the influence, which, in a very solid manner, he has also exercised on the only modern philosopher of Judaism worthy of the name, Franz Rosenzweig. This good fortune is not just a mode. The moral crisis opened by the War of 1914 has given men a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MATERNAL COMPASSION IN THE THOUGHT OF RENÉ GIRARD, EMIL FACKENHEIM, AND EMMANUEL LÉVINAS Ann W. Astell Purdue University l;ike empathy, compassion is a word that seldom occurs in the /writings of René Girard,' who prefers to answer to Martin Heidegger's "anxiety" [Die Sorge] before death by speaking instead of a "concern for victims" [le souci des victims].2 Maternal corn-passion does enter Girardian analysis directly, however, in his (...) discussion ofthe biblical good harlot, a compassionate mother whom Girard calls "the most perfect figura Christi that can be imagined" (1978, 241). In this paper I focus on the neglected theme of maternal compassion in the writings of Girard, letting them enter into conversation, first, with Emil Fackenheim's reflections on the plight and actions of Jewish mothers during the Holocaust and, second, with themes sounded in the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas. I argue that maternal compassion is actually central to Girard's understanding of the unveiling of the victimage mechanism, because it sees goodness in the very life of every potential victim, regardless ofwhat that person has done or is capable ofdoing, simply because he or she exists, has a face. The "innocence" of every victim is reducible to the innocence of the infant, because an infant within a sacrificial system can substitute for every other possible victim. The infant and, even more, the unborn bring us back to the very origins of life, to the Creator. There 1 On empathy and Girard, see my "Saintly Mimesis, Contagion, and Empathy." " See James William's comment on this topic in René Girard, ISee Satan Fall Like Lightning (177, note 4). The locus classicus for Martin Heidegger's "anxiety" is his Being and Time, sections 39-42. 16Ann W. Astell is, as Plato asserts and Lévinas reminds us, a "Good beyond being" that, on a transcendent plane, constitutes the "innocence" ofevery human being that lives, protesting against any one's murder. To illustrate the triangulation of desire, the rivalry of doubles, the mimetic crisis, and its possible outcome in victimage, René Girard turns to the famous biblical story ofthe judgment of Solomon in 3 Kings 3:16-28. In that story two women, two harlots, approach the king, each claiming to be the mother ofa single, living infant, over whom they are fighting. "The symmetry is obvious," Girard writes, "and it represents the very essence of human conflict" (1978, 238). Unable to determine the truth ofthe case on the basis of their conflicting testimonies, the wise king tests them by proposinga sacrificial solution that parodies distributivejustice. He decides to cut the baby in half, giving each woman an equal share, the symmetrical division ofthe victim mirroring the symmetry between the litigants. "The Latin word decidere," Girard notes, "mean etymologicalIy to divide by the sacrificial knife, to cut the throat of a victim" (1978, 238). The proposed sacrifice is averted because its horrific promise of an equal apportionment of parts of the baby's body—a sameness that would confirm the two as doubles—reveals a significant difference between the two women. According to the usual reading of the passage, one of the mothers, having (either deliberately or accidentally) killed her own baby by smothering him, lacks any genuine love for the other woman's infant. As Girard explains, "The only thing that counts for her ispossessing what the other onepossesses. In the last resort, she is ready to accept being deprived ofthe child as long as her opponent is deprived of it in the same way.... All that counts is her fascination with her hated model and rival" (1978, 239). The other woman, however, filled with yearning for the life ofthe child to whom she has given birth, reveals herself to be its true mother by renouncing her maternal rights in a passionate plea: "I beseech thee, my lord, give her the child alive, and do not kill it" (3 Kings 3:26). Commenting on the passage, Girard characterizes the values of the false mother as sacrificial, those ofthe good mother as anti-sacrificial. With reference to the child whose fate hangs in the balance, the distinction is clear enough. The true mother begs for the baby... (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting (...) itself to be half dead and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

This article considers the affinities in the socio-political thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Rorty. The writings of both display considerable concern for the suffering of others. Both authors note the importance of a self-critical subject becoming more aware of its own injustice as very important for recognizing our responsibilities to others. Furthermore, both stress the importance of recognizing the other outside of the usual, objectifying categories, since it is the uniqueness of the other that reminds us of our (...) responsibility for the other. Both writers view the liberal state as the best political forum in which to realize a fuller recognition of and responsibility towards the other, a form of state in which the ethical constantly interrupts the political. Rorty and Levinas disagree, however, on the legitimacy of not responding to the other. Key Words: Critchley • irony • justice • Levinas • liberal state • other • responsibility • Rorty • sentimental education. (shrink)

It seems natural to suppose that the burgeoning field of critical phenomenology would come to bear at least some affinities or resemblances (whether implicitly or explicitly) to critical theory, insofar as both are deeply concerned with directing a rigorous critical eye towards the most pressing political, economic, cultural, and social issues of our time. Yet critical theory has also had its share of critics of phenomenology itself, not least of which was the foremost member of the first-generation Frankfurt School critical (...) theorists, Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno’s critique of phenomenology was, for historical reasons, confined to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and might be concisely put as follows: for Adorno, classical phenomenology is insufficiently critical towards contemporary realities of oppression and domination (an insufficiency variously attributed to an alleged pernicious idealism, solipsism, methodological individualism, descriptivism, or ahistoricism in classical phenomenology). On this count, critical phenomenologists today may very well agree—at least to the point of affirming that phenomenology’s critical potential remained largely “untapped” in its classical formulations. However, in a twist of historical fate, Adorno failed to engage with a contemporaneous phenomenologist with whom he perhaps had more in common than anyone else: Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas himself was also notably critical of Husserl and Heidegger (while of course also being enormously indebted to them), for reasons not altogether dissimilar to Adorno’s. For Levinas, phenomenology had hitherto neglected the fundamental ethical or moral dimensions of experience—in particular our ethical responsibility towards the Other in the face of the manifold evils and injustices of the world. What might Adorno have thought of Levinas’s work, and Levinas of Adorno’s? What might they have learned from one another? And how might this exchange have affected the trajectories of critical theory, phenomenology, or critical phenomenology? (shrink)

The dissertation focuses on the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In claiming "ethics is first philosophy," Levinas helps overcome the perceived indifference to ethical concerns among post-modern thinkers. However, it is often overlooked that this claim is as much about philosophy as it is about the importance of ethics. The dissertation explains why Levinas' philosophy turns to ethics and what philosophy is capable of once it has adopted this ethical figure. ;The first section is devoted to Levinas' (...) Totality and Infinity. There, Levinas argues that ethics reorients philosophy by accomplishing the metaphysical desire for beings as such, what Levinas calls the absolutely other. A reading of Jacques Derrida's essay "Violence and Metaphysics" shows that Totality and Infinity is profoundly determined by a theological conceptuality and correlatively by forgetting the ontological difference. This suggests that the primacy of ethics depends on an anterior instance, thus rendering Levinas' first philosophy secondary. ;The second section of the dissertation positions Levinas' ethical philosophy within the tradition of phenomenological philosophy and its quest for a subject who is first or ultimate. Whereas Husserl practiced the reduction to the point where it reached consciousness, Levinas practices it to a point beyond that: responsibility. Ethics intervenes as a supplement to Husserl's phenomenology: ethics is added to phenomenology in order to explain its possibility at the same time as it replaces phenomenology with ethical descriptions. This section concludes by contesting the privilege that Levinas accords to ethics in the phenomenology of the subject. It does so by showing that Heidegger's Dasein analytic offers phenomenological philosophy a similar subject. ;The third section argues that in responsibility, phenomena appear which do not appear when the subject is consciousness. These include religious phenomena. The phenomenology of responsibility can thus be the basis for a philosophy of religion. Like the modern philosophy of religion figured in Hegel and Nietzsche, it articulates the rationality or significance of religious phenomena without recourse to the dogmatic authority of faith or historical tradition. However, a philosophy of religion issued from Levinas surpasses the origin of this tradition in the death of God and end of metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper concerns the possibility of “thinking” God, and uses the work of Emmanuel Levinas to frame a contemporary approach to some of the problems involved. The difficult relationship between philosophy and Christian theology is noted, before Levinas’s thought is examined as it relates to that which both marks consciousness and exceeds it. Levinas’s adoption of the “idea of the Infinite” and hisexploration of two ways in which the Infinite might signify (have meaning) open up a useful trajectory (...) for a thought of God which is not reductive. At the same time, however, this aporetic approach raises difficulties in the context of specific religious traditions. Three problems as they occur for Christian theology are examined in the light of Levinas’s work: the problem of not being able to identify an experience of God as such; the problem of the infinite interpretability of revelation; and the problem of understanding the divinity of Jesus Christ. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 571-572 [Access article in PDF] Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, editors. The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xxx + 292. Cloth, $65.00. Paper, $23.00. The goal of the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy series has been to "dispel the intimidation" that students and non-specialists often experience when faced with the works of a "difficult (...) and challenging thinker" (i). Indeed, Emmanuel Levinas would qualify as such a thinker, whose work is firmly rooted in two traditions: (1) the admittedly abstruse and seminal phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and (2) Judaism, including the Talmudic tradition, the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, as well as Levinas's experience with rampant anti-Semitism in twentieth-century Europe. The imminent danger in producing a collection with the express intent of making a challenging thinker accessible is that the force of the thought may become undermined by the process of simplification. The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, however, achieves its goal as a book that not only elucidates Levinas but also provides numerous essays that even the Levinasian scholar will find useful.Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi are directly responsible for the success of the Companion. These two editors have proven themselves as adept collaborators in the area of Levinasian philosophy with their earlier contribution to Indiana University Press's series Studies in Continental Thought: Re-reading Levinas (Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, editors [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991]). This new cooperative effort offers essays that introduce Levinas's thought from the perspective of some of the many fields upon which he has had an influence including the philosophy of language, art, feminism, Judaism, phenomenology, and the philosophy of religion.Even with the many tangential fields to which Levinas's thought contributes, the Companion often refers to Derrida's metaphor which describes Levinas's work as a wave, the "same" wave, crashing on the beach with increasing demand. Derrida, however, is also partly responsible for the intensifying return of Levinas's work. Derrida's critique of Levinas's Totality and Infinity was the impetus behind Levinas's subsequent focus on language and the problematic of "how" one speaks of that which is outside being. Certainly, the Companion could have spent the majority of its pages outlining this philosophical, textual conversation, but such an explication would have compromised the accessibility of this introductory text to the non-specialists to whom this series caters. The editors, instead, chose to avoid Derrida's difficult critique while having a significant concentration of essays that deal with Levinas's philosophy of language. This allows neophyte students of Levinas to discover his intricate thought on language without necessary knowledge of the context as well as provide those scholars interested in the debate access to the most contemporary thought on the matter—at least from the Levinasian perspective. Readers are assured, then, that the Companion covers the difficult concepts of the speaking face from the early period to the later distinction of the "saying" and the "said," inspired by Derrida's critique.The Companion, unfortunately, seems one sided concerning an important aspect of Levinas's philosophy. Throughout his entire corpus, Levinas attributes his thought to the seminal work of Edmund Husserl, continually inviting his readers to begin again with Husserl's phenomenology. Rudolph Bernet contributes to this collection an outstanding analysis of Levinas's critique of Husserl, describing some of the departures that Levinas makes from Husserl's phenomenology. The rest of the Companion, however, makes note to downplay Levinas's positive indebtedness to phenomenology. Hillary Putnam promises to explain Levinas with a "minimum of reliance on any prior knowledge of the two great 'H's (Husserl/Heidegger)" (40). Adhering to her word, in an otherwise insightful essay, means that the phenomenological issue remains superficial. While it is never absent, Bernet's essay seems to have set the tone, placing Levinas in a position of opposition with Husserl with a minimum of discussion of what Levinas has called his adherence to the "spirit" of phenomenology. To the Companion's credit... (shrink)

The fruit of the author's many courses on Emmanuel Levinas in Europe and the United States, this study is a clear introduction for graduate students and scholars who are not yet familiar with Levinas's difficult but exceptionally important oeuvre. After a first chapter on the existential background and the key issues of his thought, chapters 2, 3, and 4 concentrate on and include a short text, "Philosophy and the idea of the Infinite," which contains the program of Levinas's (...) entire oeuvre. Chapter 5 is a companion to the reading of Levinas's first opus magnum, Totality and the Infinite. It analyzes the structure of this book and shows how its questions and answers adhere together. "Through phenomenology toward a saying beyond phenomena and essence" could be the summary of Levinas's attempt to think, with and against Martin Heidegger, the otherness of the Other. -- Amazon.com. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Il y a and the UngrundLevinas and the Russian Existentialists Berdyaev and ShestovJames McLachlan (bio)Western philosophy coincides with the disclosure of the other where the other, in manifesting itself as a being, loses its alterity. From its infancy philosophy has been struck with a horror of the other than remains other — with an insurmountable allergy. It is for this reason that it is essentially a (...) philosophy of being, that the comprehension of being is its last word, and the fundamental structure of man.... The God of the philosophers... is a god adequate to reason, a comprehended god who could not trouble the autonomy of consciousness, which finds itself again in all its adventures, returning home to itself like Ulysses, who through all his peregrinations is only on the way to his native island.— Emmanuel Levinas, “The Trace of the Other”Levinas is well known for his assault of the history of Western ontology and its allergy to otherness. In seeing all in terms of Being, philosophy subordinates ethics to ontology by reducing the other to an object of knowledge within Being. Recent work by Fiona Steinkamp, Joseph Lawrence, and Drew Dalton has called attention to a possible [End Page 213] dialogue between Schelling (especially the middle Schelling of Philosophical Investigation into the Essence of Human Freedom and The Ages of the World) and Levinas.1 Joseph Lawrence shows both Schelling and Levinas struggle with the difficulty of thinking the Good beyond being. Schelling thought that the very quest for reality forces us to philosophize from the point of view of practical rather than theoretical reason. He thought there is no adequate theoretical refutation of solipsism but there is a perfectly good practical refutation: to the extent that I treat others as real they reveal themselves as real to me. Lawrence points to Schelling’s claim in Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, “This is the secret of love, that it unites such beings as could each exist in itself, and nonetheless neither is nor can be without the other.”2The parallels between Schelling and Levinas are rooted in the latter’s appreciation of Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption. In the introduction to Totality and Infinity, Levinas famously notes that Rosenzweig’s masterpiece was “too often present in this book to be cited” (TI 28). Rosenzweig’s debt to Schelling is well documented. He carried The Ages of the World to the front with him in World War One and refers to it in correspondence. He even wrote, “It’s a great book to the last, had it been completed nobody except the Jews would give two hoots for the Star.”3 This is, without doubt, the correct historical stream to follow in connection with the relation between Schelling and Levinas and the proper way to see the connections between such Levinasian notions as the “there is” and hypostasis and the Schellingian conceptions that reflect similar ideas as the Ungrund, the emergence of the personal from the impersonal ground, and, above all, the importance of the practical ethical move beyond ontology.But there were also contemporaries holding such philosophical views in the Paris of the 1930s, and they can be seen to reinforce such positions. What is more striking is they come from Levinas’s fellow émigrés: Lev Shestov, Nicolas Berdyaev, and Alexandre Koyré. In one way or another, each either championed positions that emphasized the emergence of the particular from the general, rejected ontology, [End Page 214] or attacked the entire Western metaphysical tradition stemming from Parmenides for reasons similar to those held by Levinas. Levinas’s appreciation of Dostoevsky is also an important in connection to some of the ideas shared by Levinas, his fellow émigrés, and Schelling.4The Russian émigrés Shestov and Berdyaev were both Dostoevsky disciples; each offered major and influential studies on Dostoevsky and each viewed the novelist in quite different ways through the lens of each one’s philosophical position that had, in part, been formed by each thinker’s reading of Dostoevsky.5 Levinas’s friend, a student of Edmund Husserl, the philosopher of science Alexandre Koyré’s 1929 dissertation later... (shrink)

A number of scholars have discussed the possible affinities between Levinas and the kabbalah. In this essay, I explore the nexus between eros, secrecy, modesty, and the feminine in the thought of Levinas compared to a similar complex of ideas elicited from kabbalistic speculation. In addition to the likelihood that Levinas may have been influenced by the interrelatedness of these motifs in kabbalistic lore, I argue that he proffers an anti-theosophic interpretation of kabbalah, which accords with his rejection of (...) the dogma of incarnation and the related polemical depiction of Christianity as idolatry. The appropriation of the kabbalistic hermeneutic on the part of Levinas, therefore, entailed a major revision. In translating the ontological into the ethical, Levinas divests the secret of its secretive potency, but thereby fostered an esoteric reading of Jewish esotericism. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most important figures of twentieth-century philosophy. Exerting a profound influence upon such thinkers as Derrida, Lyotard, Blanchot, and Irigaray, Levinas's work bridges several major gaps in the evolution of continental philosophy--between modern and postmodern, phenomenology and poststructuralism, ethics and ontology. He is credited with having spurred a revitalized interest in ethics-based philosophy throughout Europe and America. _Entre Nous_ (Between Us) is the culmination of Levinas's philosophy. Published in France a few (...) years before his death, it gathers his most important work and reveals the development of his thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Along with several trenchant interviews published here, these essays engage with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights, and legal theory. Taken together, they constitute a key to Levinas's ideas on the ethical dimensions of otherness. Working from the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas pushed beyond the limits of their framework to argue that it is ethics, not ontology, that orients philosophy, and that responsibility precedes reasoning. Ethics for Levinas means responsibility in relation to difference. Throughout his work, Levinas returns to the metaphor of the face of the other to discuss how and where responsibility enters our lives and makes philosophy necessary. For Levinas, ethics begins with our face to face interaction with another person--seeing that person not as a reflection of one's self, nor as a threat, but as different and greater than self. Levinas moves the reader to recognize the implications of this interaction: our abiding responsibility for the other, and our concern with the other's suffering and death. Situated at the crossroads of several philosophical schools and approaches, Levinas's work illuminates a host of critical issues and has found resonances among students and scholars of literature, law, religion, and politics. _Entre Nous_ is at once the apotheosis of his work and an accessible introduction to it. In the end, Levinas's urgent meditations upon the face of the other suggest a new foundation upon which to grasp the nature of good and evil in the tangled skein of our lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. (...) For once, Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

The author probes Jullien on the problem of time, which is at the heart of European philosophy, while allowing himself to embrace an intelligibility of the ‘infra-philosophical’ leading to a ‘living in philosophy’. The question is both intriguing and rewarding: ‘what the Chinese have thought because they have not thought time’. Yet the author wonders: does Jullien pay more attention to the Greeks than to the Hebrews vis-à-vis China with regard to the concept of time? Jullien’s (...) text on time of course is a piece in a much larger set of texts that bring to the fore questions of life; the author offers, with generosity, much broader thoughts on the possibility of Jullien speaking French while thinking Chinese, and the enigma of living (say in Augustine and Montaigne) within a philosophy of transcendence in the West as opposed to the immanence of philosophy of living in China. (shrink)

Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky Reveals the interplay of phenomenology and religion in Levinas’s thought. "Kosky examines Levinas’s thought from the perspective of the philosophy of religion and he does so in a way that is attentive to the philosophical nuances of Levinas’s argument.... an insightful, well written, and carefully documented study... that uniquely illuminates Levinas’s work." —John D. Caputo For readers who suspect there is no place for religion and morality in (...) postmodern philosophy, Jeffrey L. Kosky suggests otherwise in this skillful interpretation of the ethical and religious dimensions of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought. Placing Levinas in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida and Marion, Kosky develops religious themes found in Levinas’s work and offers a way to think and speak about ethics and morality within the horizons of contemporary philosophy of religion. Kosky embraces the entire scope of Levinas’s writings, from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being, contrasting Levinas’s early religious and moral thought with that of his later works while exploring the nature of phenomenological reduction, the relation of religion and philosophy, the question of whether Levinas can be considered a Jewish thinker, and the religious and theological import of Levinas’s phenomenology. Kosky stresses that Levinas is first and foremost a phenomenologist and that the relationship between religion and philosophy in his ethics should cast doubt on the assumption that a natural or inevitable link exists between deconstruction and atheism. Jeffrey L. Kosky is translator of On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought by Jean-Luc Marion. He has taught at Williams College. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor May 2001 272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index, append. cloth 0-253-33925-1 $39.95 s / £30.50. (shrink)

Starting from the semantic difference between the Arabic terms samāḥa or tasāmuḥ, and the Latin tolerantia, this essay proposes some observations on the Islamic notion of tolerance according to some contemporary Arabic language texts of Islamic inspiration. This literature invariably emphasises the importance of tolerance in the context of the Islamic religion and thought; and, notwithstanding some evident differences among the authors, relating to schools and to varying degrees of openness to Western thought, the discourse remains anchored in (...) the foundational literature, especially the Sunnah of the Prophet. (shrink)

Ronald Mercer - Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 410-411 Book Review Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky. Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Pp. xxiv + 223. Cloth, $39.95. Emmanuel Levinas's thought has been a sleeping giant in continental philosophy, having influence upon many of his contemporaries while drawing minimal (...) attention to himself. In the last few years, however, as evidenced by the explosion of secondary literature on Levinas, it is clear that scholars are awakening to Levinas's importance. Jeffrey Kosky's work, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion, joins this secondary.. (shrink)

The past which the present acknowledges tends to be deceptively simple. Attention is most frequently paid to those of its aspects which appear to have anticipated the present, or to those which contrast with what the present takes to be most uniquely its own. Consequently, the past in which the present takes an interest tends to change, and it is unlikely that successive generations will assign equal significance to precisely the same aspects of what occurred in the past. This need (...) not lead to distorted views of those particular features on which attention is focused, but it can lead to a neglect of whatever aspects of the past are not of pressing present concern. Consequently, the context in which any generation views the past may easily become too narrow, and a sense of the past’s complexity will be lost. For reasons that I have elsewhere suggested, this situation is more likely to obtain in the field of cultural history than in studies of political and institutional change. When previous views as to what is most important in literature, or in philosophy, or in the arts undergo change, the whole history of these forms of endeavor will reflect that change. In what follows, I wish to call attention to some of the ways in which our own philosophic preconceptions have led to a neglect of important facets of nineteenth-century thought. (shrink)

Much of the work on Levinas and political philosophy is content to note two things: the resistance of the ethical to politics and the messianic dimension of Levinas’s thought. The task, then, has largely been to identify (usually formal) points of resistance and/or to trace out the figures of messianism in the various functions of the prophetic word. Themes of singularity and eschatology therefore dominate the discussion. While both of these aspects of his work are important and can (...) pay interesting dividends, one cannot but note another result: a lack of materiality in developing a Levinasian politics. This need not be the case. Indeed, much of my concern in what follows is to open up the possibility of thinking about Levinas and politics in a manner that reintroduces an element of concreteness. (shrink)

This essay interprets the implications of Levinas's idea of a pre-philosophical ethics for the discourses of philosophy and theology, and it suggests that his work pushes philosophy and theology, and the ethics they bear, beyond the modern division of theory and practice. This view defines the ethical according to a rhythm of ontological interpretation of human action and sheer meontological responsiveness between acting persons. This rhythm becomes discernible in a creative form of moral praxis uniting philosophy, theology, (...) and traditional ethics before an event to which the three forms of reasoning can give witness, but which they cannot comprehend. A Levinasian ethics requires this movement of thought and potentially reshapes moral discourse in response. (shrink)

In his reflection upon Dasein’s attempt to approach, understand and appropriate the possibility of its own death in Being and Time, Martin Heidegger makes an interesting side note on the phenomenological appearance of the dead body of another. Make no mistake; it is only a note – one made in passing en route to a much larger argument. But it is a note of interest nonetheless; for within it is contained the thread of a thought that, when pursued to (...) its end, seems to unravel some of the fundamental elements of the Heideggerian analytic. It is the goal of this paper then to follow that thread to its logical end by engaging in an detailed examination of the enigmatic phenomenon that is the dead body of another and, in doing so, not only illuminate the curious nature of its appearance; but, more importantly, reveal some of the limits of the Heideggerian analytic. The paper will conclude by turning to the work of Emmanuel Levinas in attempt to stretch beyond those limits. (shrink)

This essay delves into the potential non-Western contributions to the technosphere by exploring Russian perspectives within Yuk Hui’s framework of cosmotechnics. Hui's concept emphasizes "good technology"—aligned with local cosmologies and moral practices, integrating sustainability and ecological preservation. By drawing parallels with China's distinct cosmological underpinnings in technical creativity, the essay questions whether Russian civilization can provide similarly unique contributions. The text investigates the evolution of the technosphere, distinguishing between instrumental and bio-artificial components, while situating Russian technical thought within broader (...) global contrasts. Despite an outward resemblance to Western technological development, Russia’s distinctiveness emerges in social technologies, state-driven innovation, and its cosmological foundation, particularly the "Russian cosmism" of the 1960s. Through a focus on co-creation with God, universal responsibility, and theoretical prioritization, the essay identifies multidimensional understanding and the moral imperative of service as hallmarks of Russian technical creativity. These features highlight a unique trajectory that complements Hui’s concept of cosmotechnics, emphasizing Russia’s potential to enrich global discussions on decolonizing technology. (shrink)

A chronological approach that examines the progression of Levinas's deliberations on time over six decades, thus providing new insights about aspects of Levinasian thought that have consistently troubled readers, including the differences between Levinas's early and later writings, his controversial invocation of the feminine, and the blurry line between philosophy and religion in his work"--Provided by publisher.

Alternative oppositions to “infinity” and “totality” are suggested, examined and shown to be inadequate by comparison to the sense of the opposition contained in title Totality and Infinity chosen by Levinas. Special attention is given to this opposition and the priority given to ethics in relation Kant’s distinction between understanding and reason and the priority given by Kant to ethics. The book’s title is further illuminated by means of its first sentence, and the first sentence is illuminated by means of (...) the book’s title. Special attention is given to explicating the nature and significance of the hitherto unnoticed “informal” fallacy contained in the first sentence. (shrink)

In his 2010 paper ‘Grounding and Truth-Functions’, Fabrice Correia has developed the first and so far only proposal for a logic of ground based on a worldly conception of facts. In this paper, we show that the logic allows the derivation of implausible grounding claims. We then generalize these results and draw some conclusions concerning the structural features of ground and its associated notion of relevance, which has so far not received the attention it deserves.

Published in 1821, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right is considered the definitive articulation of the legal, moral, social, and political philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. However, shortly before its publication, Hegel delivered a series of lectures on the subject matter of the work at the University of Berlin. These lectures are unlike any others Hegel gave on the philosophy of Right in that they do not supplement a published text but rather give a full and independent presentation (...) of his mature political thought. Yet, they are also unlike Hegel's formal treatise in that they form a smooth and flowing discourse, much like Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and history of philosophy. Substantively, these lectures contain more extensive discussions of poverty and the proletariat than are found in Hegel's published text--discussions that carry out the retreat from optimism about the present age intimated in the preface to Outlines but nowhere evident in the text itself. Translated with an introduction and notes by Alan Brudner, Hegel's 1819/20 lectures on the philosophy of Right present his complete thoughts on law and the state in a manner that is more accessible and engaging than any other Hegelian text on these subjects. (shrink)

Deduction has frequently been condemned as a useless intellectual instrument because of its tautological character. To thoroughgoing opponents of rationalism, the pretensions of deduction are on the same level with those of induction. Both presume to yield more knowledge from the fact that we have some knowledge; and this is an impossible paradox, which not even so powerful an opponent of the “Philosophy of Experience” as Bradley could resolve to his own satisfaction. I wish in this brief note to (...) indicate how this semblance of paradox may very easily be removed without having to deny, as has often been thought necessary, the tautologicality of deduction. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy 1 -- 2. Beyond Being. Ontology and Eschatology in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas 33 -- 3. The Rationality of the Philosophy of Levinas 56 -- 4. Levinas on Substitution 83 -- 5. Judaism and Hellenism in the Philosophy of Levinas and Heidegger 101 -- 6. Ontological Difference (Heidegger) and Ontological Separation (Levinas) 115 -- 7. Enmity, Friendship, Corporeality 133 -- 8. The Rationality of Transcendence 147 -- (...) 9. Levinas on Theology and the Philosophy of Religion 169. (shrink)

In this essay, I develop an affective account of subjectivity that draws on two important philosophers within the phenomenological tradition. Many claim that the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Henry are entirely opposed to one another. Levinas is typically thought of as a philosopher of transcendence, while Henry is typically thought of as a philosopher of immanence. By attending to the role that affect plays in the work of both thinkers, I demonstrate that traces of immanence can (...) be located in Levinas, while traces of transcendence can be located in Henry. What this account shows is that the self, because it is affective, is unique and set apart from the world, but also porous and open to being affected by others. (shrink)

These are my comments on The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought at the ASEEES convention (Chicago, November 2022).

Levinas does not speak quite often about the Temple, but in his Talmudic commentaries, he says quite impressive things about the Temple and its image. Commenting the Tractate Yoma 10a of Talmud, he says that «The Temple of Jerusalem in Jewish thought is a symbol, which signifies for the whole of humanity». This paper focuses on clarify this sentence and the universality of one Temple, which «is an exact replica of the heavenly Temple, the order of absolute holiness» according (...) with his comment to Rabbi Hayyim Volozhiner. I research the symbolic value of the Temple in Jerusalem built as in ruins and try to connect this value with the rest of Levinas’ philosophy, especially with his theory of sacrifice as substitution.Palabras clave: Temple of Jerusalem; Politics-Messianism; History; Responsibility; Guilt; Holiness; Sacrifice. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas has exerted a profound influence on 20th-century continental philosophy. This anthology, including Levinas's key philosophical texts over a period of more than forty years, provides an ideal introduction to his thought and offers insights into his most innovative ideas. Five of the ten essays presented here appear in English for the first time. An introduction by Adriaan Peperzak outlines Levinas's philosophical development and the basic themes of his writings. Each essay is accompanied by a brief introduction (...) and notes. This collection is an ideal text for students of philosophy concerned with understanding and assessing the work of this major philosopher. (shrink)

The following frank comments on the subject of analysis, though they obviously represent a preliminary examination af some of the problems that emerge between philosophical analysis and phenomenology as the two major trends in contemporary philosophy, are conceived by the present author in a much broader manner than the mere confrontation of two apparently opposing schools of thought. Due to the emergent nature of these themes, some adagio, others allegro, it has been impossible to arrange them in the (...) usual systematic manner. Whatever in these comments is "offensive" to either phenomenologist or analyst derives from the fact that this is only a preliminary study, in which the author is orienting himself and preparing for more systematic and thorough-going dialogue with sympathetic analyst friends and phenomenologist critics. What is presented here to friend, foe, and general philosophical reader, is a selection of themes that have puzzled me greatly. I offer them without any of the usual excuses and with the hope that to some extent this discussion may bring philosophers together, so that we can begin to lind the common ground, on which to make our contribution to contemporary thought the more truly convincing. (shrink)

In ‘Levinas: Ethics or Mystification?’ (Miller, 2017), Alistair Miller presents a searing indictment of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and a dismissal of claims for its importance for education. He provides a summary account of Levinas's philosophy and, in relation to this, refers briefly to a number of authors who have related Levinas's work to education. This account is at fault, however, in fundamental ways, and this leads to errors in the conclusions that he draws. The present short (...) paper does not attempt to address these problems in the round but rather focuses on a particular aspect of his phrasing in constructing the account, taking this as a significant pointer to the nature of the misinterpretation as a whole. (shrink)

The article on my theory of descriptions by Mr. Lejewski raises two points. One is as to the copula. I do not quite understand why it is thought that an ambiguity in the meaning of the word “is” is relevant in regard to my theory of descriptions. There are many problems in regard to which it is relevant. I have mentioned one of these in criticizing Hegel in Our Knowledge of the External World on p. 39 n of the (...) original edition . But, although I have read Mr. Lejewski's argument several times, it still seems to me quite clear that in “Scott is the author of Waverley” the “is” is that of identity. Nor have I been able to understand why he considers his theory of descriptions preferable to mine. I am, however, quite willing to believe that there is some point that I have missed in his discussion. (shrink)

This note identifies and comments on selected crucial traits of Robert Aumann’s philosophy of game theory. In doing so, it aims at carving out and expressing some notions tacitly held by many working game theorists and ideally even at triggering subsequent reflection on the philosophy of game theory in general. According to my reconstruction of Aumann’s position, sophisticated, relatively precise rules of language—an ultra-refined grammar for interactions—constitute the heart of game theory. Consequently, the heart of game theory is (...) devoid, or almost devoid, of empirical content. The final section proposes a nomenclature for lucidly discussing the relationships between theories, different types of models, and “the real world” and employs it to explicate and slightly amend Aumann’s remarks on the role of truth and fruitfulness in game theory. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende, por meio da análise literária e da leitura de Freud , investigar a concepção de progresso em Sade, tomando como objeto de estudo o romance A filosofia na alcova . Defende-se que a ficção sadeana resulta de um conflito entre indivíduo e sociedade, de cujo resultado depende a felicidade humana. Esta seria alcançada com a superação dos obstáculos impostos pela educação, pela cultura e pela abertura da sociedade para a satisfação de todos os prazeres do sentido. The (...) goal of this article is to investigate the concept of progress in Sade's work through the analysis and reading of Freud's work, focusing here on the analysis of the novel Justine. It argues that Sadean fiction is the result of a conflict between each individual and society, and that the happiness of humankind depends on the outcome of this conflict. Happiness would consequently be reached by overcoming the accumulation of obstacles imposed by education and culture, and through the willingness of the society to satisfy every pleasure of the senses. (shrink)

Few philosophers of note have been subject to the exigencies of intellectual fad and fashion quite like Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), once an influential and widely read author of a best-seller, who was largely forgotten until rediscovered by twentieth-century aestheticians claiming him as a founder of their discipline (11–14). The collection of his mature works, Characteristicks of Men, Manner, Times (1711), now boasts three modern editions and is routinely anthologized, and an expanding body of scholarship is (...) devoted to studying his thought. Shaftesbury remains a marginal figure, however, with his contribution to the canon, especially in the realm of moral philosophy, still... Read More. (shrink)

What does a truly democratic experience of political action look like today? In this provocative new work, Adriana Cavarero weighs in on contemporary debates about the relationship between democracy, happiness, and dissent. Drawing upon Arendt's understanding of politics as a participatory experience, but also discussing texts by Émile Zola, Elias Canetti, Boris Pasternak, and Roland Barthes, along with engaging Judith Butler, Cavarero proposes a new view of democracy, based not on violence, but rather on the spontaneous experience of a plurality (...) of bodies coming together in public. Expanding upon the themes explored in previous works, Cavarero offers a timely intervention into current thinking about the nature of democracy, suggesting that its emergence thrives on the nonviolent creativity of a widespread, participatory, and relational power that is shared horizontally rather than vertically. From digital democracy to selfies to contemporary protest movements, Cavarero argues that we need to rethink our focus on individual happiness and turn toward rediscovering the joyful emotions of birth through plural interaction. Yes, let us be happy, she urges, but let us do so publicly, politically, together. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In his published work, Levinas only mentions metaphor for the sake of dismissing its relevance to his ethics of transcendence. Metaphor is aligned with the poetic imagery and the rhetorical devices that weave together an ontology of immanence, whereas transcendence is said to occur through an immediate encounter with the other. But Levinas's unpublished lecture “La Métaphore” is of interest precisely because it troubles this distinction through the notion of a “metaphorical transcendence.” Although Levinas abandons this terminology after his (...) lecture, this article suggests that an implicit, but unavowed, operation of metaphor persists in the guise of his ethics of substitution. (shrink)

On standard accounts of responsibility, one is thought to be responsible for one's own actions or affairs. Levinas' philosophy speaks of a responsibility that goes beyond my actions and their consequences to an infinite, irrecusable, asymmetrical responsibility for the other human. In the dissertation, I present a defense of Levinasian responsibility and argue that distinctive of Levinas' thought as an ethics is the manner in which it maintains the absolute and unexceptionable character of responsibility, while simultaneously putting (...) into question every possible ground or justification for this claim. The central chapters of the dissertation consider the connection between the formal structure of transcendence and the deformalization of this notion as responsibility. After discussing the notions of transcendence employed in the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, I examine Levinas' criticism that transcendence in their sense remains an immanence insofar it continues to tie the conditions of intelligibility to modes of understanding and comprehension. Levinas' reconception of transcendence as a relation to exteriority and absolute alterity is then examined as it is developed first in his early writings , and then in Totality and Infinity through the tropes of the idea of infinity, metaphysical desire, and the face. The aim of these chapters is not only to elucidate in detail the conception of transcendence, but to examine why Levinas thinks that transcendence is already an ethical event. While commentators have sometimes claimed that ethics in Levinas' sense is neither normative nor descriptive, I show that the question of normativity--of how ethical claims are binding on us--is central to the problematic of responsibility, though in a way which ultimately forces us to revise our understanding of both normativity and ethics. Levinas contests the possibility of decisive evidence that would prove the truth of our ethical obligations. What I show is how the call for proof or justification always already distorts and passes over the meaning of responsibility. (shrink)