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Levinas between Ethics and Politics

For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth

  • Book
  • © 1999

Overview

Authors:
  1. Bettina Bergo
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Part of the book series: Phaenomenologica (PHAE, volume 152)

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XI
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  2. Introduction

    1. Introduction

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 1-5

  3. Presentation and Analysis of the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-7
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    2. On the Significance and Evolution of the Philosophy of Levinas

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 9-36

    3. Levinas’ Ethical Metaphysics

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 37-54

    4. Levels of Being in Totality and Infinity

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 55-81

    5. Intersubjectivity in Totality and Infinity

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 82-104

    6. Election from ‘Beyond the Face’ in Totality and Infinity: Intersubjectivity Grounded in a Figurative Biology

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 105-131

    7. The Passage from TI to OBBE Via Prophetism and Messianic Consciousness

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 132-147

    8. Subjectivity and Messianic Consciousness

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 148-168

    9. Prophetism: From the Saying to the Said, or the Passage from Ethical Responsibility to Sociality

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 169-205

  4. Between Responsibility and Justice: A Criticism of the Passage from Ethics to Politics

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 207-207
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    2. Ethics as First Philosophy and the Question of Its Universalization

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 209-239

    3. The Universalization of Responsibility as a Passage from Ethics to a Politics of Questioning: Simon Critchley’s Reading of Levinas

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 241-257

    4. Gillian Rose’s Critique of Prophetism and Politics in Levinas

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 258-276

    5. The Unhappy Consciousness and Levinas’ Ethics

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 277-294

    6. Concluding Remarks

      • Bettina Bergo
      Pages 295-301

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 302-309
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Keywords

About this book

The act of thought-thought as an act-would precede the thought thinking or becoming conscious of an act. The notion of act involves a violence essentially: the violence of transitivity, lacking in the transcendence of thought. . . Totality and Infinity The work of Emmanuel Levinas revolves around two preoccupations. First, his philosophical project can be described as the construction of a formal ethics, grounded upon the transcendence of the other human being and a subject's spontaneous responsibility toward that other. Second, Levinas has written extensively on, and as a member of, the cultural and textual life of Judaism. These two concerns are intertwined. Their relation, however, is one of considerable complexity. Levinas' philosophical project stems directly from his situation as a Jewish thinker in the twentieth century and takes its particular form from his study of the Torah and the Talmud. It is, indeed, a hermeneutics of biblical experience. If inspired by Judaism, Levinas' ethics are not eo ipso confessional. What his ethics takes from Judaism, rather, is a particular way of conceiving transcendence and the other human being. It owes to the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber a logos of the world and of the holy, which acknowledges their incom­ mensurability without positing one as fallen and the other as supernal.

Reviews

`Bergo's work is not for novices. However, those familiar with Levinas's thought are likely to find it an astonishingly erudite, even indispensable, reading of his major works as well as a subtle, cogently argued interpretation of the ambiguities, rifts and paradoxes inherent in the relation of ethics to polity.'
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 15:1 (2001)

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Levinas between Ethics and Politics

  • Book Subtitle: For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth

  • Authors: Bettina Bergo

  • Series Title: Phaenomenologica

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2077-9

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1999

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-5694-3Published: 30 April 1999

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-5214-8Published: 06 December 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-2077-9Published: 09 March 2013

  • Series ISSN: 0079-1350

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-0331

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XII, 310

  • Topics: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Phenomenology, Ontology

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