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Radical Passivity

Rethinking Ethical Agency in Levinas

  • Book
  • © 2009

Overview

Editors:
  1. Benda Hofmeyr

    1. Department of Philosophical Anthropology, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
      Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

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  • This edited collection is the first in its kind to focus on the subject of radical passivity and to directly address criticisms leveled against Levinas’s prioritization of the Other as ethical cornerstone
  • This revaluation of Levinas’s thinking will provide a fundamental framework for reflecting on the resurgence of ethics in contemporary philosophy, literary and cultural theory
  • Unlike recent research done in France, this volume does not seek to indict Levinas for this "sacrificial ethics" but to critically assess to what extent his ethical metaphysics provides us with a basis for effective ethical action today
  • The contributors include renowned scholars from around the world, which gives the volume a guaranteed international appeal (specifically USA, UK and Europe)
  • The duo-paper structure of the volume generates an internal debate amongst the contributions, which cover the entire scope of Levinas’s work. This is instrumental in furnishing the reader with a unbiased and multi-dimensional perspective on radical passivity

Part of the book series: Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy (LOET, volume 20)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
    Download chapter PDF

  3. Radical Passivity and the Self

    1. Sincerely Yours. Towards a Phenomenology of Me

      • Adriaan Peperzak
      Pages 55-66

    2. Sincerely Me. Enjoyment and the Truth of Hedonism

      • Joachim Duyndam
      Pages 67-78

  4. Radical Passivity as Basis for Effective Ethical Action?

    1. The Fundamental Ethical Experience

      • Alphonso Lingis
      Pages 81-93

    2. Radical Passivity as the (Only) Basis for Effective Ethical Action. Reading the ‘Passage to the Third ’ in Otherwise than Being

      • Peter Zeillinger
      Pages 95-108

  5. Radical Passivity and Levinas's Talmudic Readings

    1. Listening to the Language of the Other

      • Anya Topolski
      Pages 111-131

    2. Ab-Originality: Radical Passivity through Talmudic Reading

      • Seán Hand
      Pages 133-142

    3. L'Être Entre les Lettres. Creation and Passivity in ‘And God Created Woman’

      • Luc Anckaert
      Pages 143-154

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 155-161
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Keywords

About this book

Levinas’s ethical metaphysics is essentially a meditation on what makes ethical agency possible – that which enables us to act in the interest of another, to put the well-being of another before our own. This line of questioning found its inception in and drew its inspiration from the mass atrocities that occurred during the Second World War. The Holocaust , like the Cambodian genocide, or those in Rwanda and Srebrenica, exemplifies what have come to be known as the ‘never again’ situations. After these events, we looked back each time, with varying degrees of incomprehension, horror, anger and shame, asking ourselves how we could possibly have let it all happen again. And yet, atrocity crimes are still rampant. After Rwanda (1994) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992–1995), came Kosovo (1999) and Darfur (2003). In our present-day world , hate crimes motivated by racial, sexual, or other prejudice, and mass hate such as genocide and terror, are on the rise (think, for example, of Burma, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and North Korea). A critical revaluation of the conditions of possibility of ethical agency is therefore more necessary than ever. This volume is committed to the possibility of ‘never again’. It is dedicated to all the victims – living and dead – of what Levinas calls the ‘sober, Cain-like coldness’ at the root of all crime against humanity , as much as every singular crime against another human being .

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of Philosophical Anthropology, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Benda Hofmeyr

  • Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Benda Hofmeyr

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