Discovering Levinas

by Michael L. Morgan

• ISBN13: 9780521872591
• ISBN10: 0521872596
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-05-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In Discovering Levinas, Michael L. Morgan shows how this thinker faces in novel and provocative ways central philosophical problems of twentieth-century philosophy and religious thought. He tackles this task by placing Levinas in conversation with philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Onora O'Neill, Charles Taylor, and Cora Diamond. He also seeks to understand Levinas within philosophical, religious, and political developments in the history of twentieth-century intellectual culture. Morgan demystifies Levinas by examining his unfamiliar and surprising vocabulary, interpreting texts with an eye to clarity, and arguing that Levinas can be understood as a philosopher of the everyday. Morgan also shows that Levinas's ethics is not morally and politically irrelevant nor is it excessively narrow and demanding in unacceptable ways. Neither glib dismissal nor fawning acceptance, this book provides a sympathetic reading that can form a foundation for a responsible critique.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xix
Auschwitz, Politics, and the Twentieth Century	p. 1
Levinas on Grossman's Life and Fate	p. 1
Auschwitz and Levinas's Thought	p. 13
Political Reflections	p. 20
Zionism, Politics, and Messianism	p. 28
Responsibility and Forgiveness	p. 32
Phenomenology and Transcendental Philosophy	p. 39
A Preliminary Sketch	p. 39
Interpreting Levinas's Approach	p. 44
Transcendental Philosophy	p. 50
An Objection	p. 56
The Ethical Content of the Face-to-Face	p. 61
The Social, the Face, and the Ethical	p. 62
The Call of the Face	p. 68
The Face-to-Face and Acknowledgment	p. 71
Later Thoughts on Ethics and the Face	p. 80
Philosophy, Totality, and the Everyday	p. 85
Philosophy and the Everyday	p. 85
Totality and the Infinite	p. 88
Ethics Beyond Totality	p. 94
Levinas and Rosenzweig	p. 100
Totality, Infinity, and Beyond	p. 104
Meaning, Culture, and Language	p. 115
Meaning, Relativism, and the Ethical	p. 115
Meaning and Language	p. 124
Ethics and Communication: The Saying and the Said	p. 138
Subjectivity and the Self	p. 143
Modernity and the Self	p. 144
The Early Stage	p. 149
Responsibility and Passivity	p. 155
The Self and Contemporary Philosophy	p. 160
Levinas and Davidson	p. 163
Levinas and McDowell	p. 167
Levinas and Taylor	p. 169
God and Philosophy	p. 174
God and the Philosophical Tradition	p. 175
Early Works	p. 177
Later Stage: The Trace and Illeity	p. 183
Philosophy, God, and Theology	p. 198
God, Ethics, and Contemporary Philosophy	p. 203
Time, Messianism, and Diachrony	p. 208
Thinking about Time	p. 208
Early Reflections on Time	p. 210
Rosenzweig and Levinas on Eschatology	p. 213
Diachrony and Responsibility	p. 219
Ethical Realism and Contemporary Moral Philosophy	p. 228
Ethics and the Everyday	p. 228
O'Neill's Ethics and Practical Reason	p. 236
Levinas and O'Neill	p. 242
McDowell's Naturalism of Second Nature	p. 247
Korsgaard and the Perception of Reasons	p. 254
Levinas's Universalism and Pluralism	p. 259
Taylor's Ethical Pluralism	p. 263
What Kind of Moral Thinker Is Levinas?	p. 268
Cavell's Emersonian Perfectionism	p. 273
Is Levinas a Moral Perfectionist?	p. 277
Levinas on Ethics and Politics	p. 283
Levinas's Single-Mindedness	p. 289
Beyond Language and Expressibility	p. 300
Levinas's Language	p. 301
Levinas and Skepticism: Time and Absolute Diachrony	p. 305
Skepticism in Otherwise Than Being	p. 310
Two Interpretations of Levinas and Skepticism	p. 313
Derrida's Challenge	p. 320
Contemporary Philosophy and the Limits of Thought and Language	p. 323
Frege, Wittgenstein, and Nonsense	p. 328
Ethics and the Limits of Language	p. 332
Judaism, Ethics, and Religion	p. 336
Athens and Jerusalem	p. 338
An Austere Humanism	p. 340
Ethics and Prayer	p. 347
The Holocaust and the End of Theodicy	p. 353
Responding to Suffering	p. 366
Revelation in Judaism	p. 370
Ritual and the Law	p. 376
Ethics and Education	p. 379
Reading Jewish Texts	p. 384
Translating the Bible and the Talmud	p. 387
Interpreting Levinas on Interpretation	p. 390
Eschatology, Ethics, and Politics	p. 395
Levinas's Zionism	p. 401
Ethical Messianism	p. 412
Conclusion: Levinas and the Primacy of the Ethical - Kant, Kierkegaard, and Derrida	p. 415
Facing Reasons	p. 421
The Face as a Reason to Act	p. 421
Nagel on Agent-Neutral Reasons	p. 424
Korsgaard's Critique of Nagel	p. 434
Darwall and Intersubjective Value	p. 446
Placing Levinas	p. 448
Levinas and Contemporary Ethics	p. 451
Some Concrete Cases	p. 456
Conclusion	p. 464
Bibliography	p. 467
Index	p. 477
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