Levinas on the Primacy of the Ethical

Philosophy as Prophecy
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8101-4545-0
Verlag: Northwestern University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

Exploring the relationship between phenomenology and religion in Levinas’s writings

The philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas affirms both the urgency of peace and the fact that peace is never finally assured. This tension is a question of responsibility and of the ethical relation in which that responsibility is grounded. Jeffrey Bloechl pursues this prophetic dimension of Levinas’s philosophy—his commitment to phenomenology and to a philosophy of religion—to make the case for the mutual reinforcement and intelligibility of these two threads.

Levinas on the Primacy of the Ethical traces the emergence of Levinas’s early thought in relation to modern political philosophy, his revision of Martin Heidegger’s existential phenomenology, the consolidation of his mature position, his important differences with Freudian psychoanalysis, the turn from metaphysics to language in his later philosophy, and his complex relationship with Christian theology. Starting with an exposition of how positive notions of religious transcendence are already present in some of Levinas’s early phenomenological texts, Bloechl then stakes the reverse claim: that Levinas’s conception of God is dependent on his existential phenomenology. Proceeding chronologically, but with frequent nods to later developments, this book builds toward the ultimate assertion that Levinas offers us a phenomenology of event and of relation without appeal to any foundation, ground, or causal principle. Only in this way is Levinas able to generate an argument—and not merely an exhortation—for the primacy of the ethical as he conceives it.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Phänomenologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction
- Chapter 1. Situation and Violence. Levinas, Sartre, and Heidegger
- Chapter 2. The Spirituality of Captivity: Being Jewish
- Chapter 3. Plurality and Infinity: Ethics as Religion
- Chapter 4. The Ethics of Desire: Levinas and Psychoanalysis
- Chapter 5. Speech and Transcendence: Levinas’s Theory of Metaphor
- Chapter 6. The One God and the Other: Levinas and Christian Theology
- Conclusion: Prophecy and the Ethical Plot of Humanity
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index