Broken Tablets

Levinas, Derrida, and the Literary Afterlife of Religion
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-231-17059-8
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 227 mm x 154 mm, Gewicht: 358 g

Over a span of thirty years, twentieth-century French philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida held a conversation across texts. Sharing a Jewish heritage and a background in phenomenology, both came to situate their work at the margins of philosophy, articulating this placement through religion and literature. Chronicling the interactions between these thinkers, Sarah Hammerschlag argues that the stakes in their respective positions were more than philosophical. They were also political. Levinas's investments were born out in his writings on Judaism and ultimately in an evolving conviction that the young state of Israel held the best possibility for achieving such an ideal. For Derrida, the Jewish question was literary. The stakes of Jewish survival could only be approached through reflections on modern literature's religious legacy, a line of thinking that provided him the means to reconceive democracy. Hammerschlag's reexamination of Derrida and Levinas's textual exchange not only produces a new account of this friendship but also has significant ramifications for debates within Continental philosophy, the study of religion, and political theology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hammerschlag, Sarah

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Dekonstruktivismus, Strukturalismus, Poststrukturalismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsAbbreviations1. "What Must a Jewish Thinker Be?"2. Levinas3. Between the Jew and Writing4. To Lose One's Head: Literature and the Democracy to Come5. Literature and the Political-Theological RemainsEpilogue: "There is not a pin to choose between us"NotesBibliographyIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Sarah Hammerschlag is assistant professor of religion and literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She is the author of The Figural Jew: Politics and Identity in Postwar French Thought (2010), which was a finalist for the Best First Book Award in the History of Religions from the American Academy of Religion.