Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy: Interpretation after Levinas

by Richard A. Cohen

• ISBN13: 9780521801584
• ISBN10: 0521801583
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-07-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The reputation and influence of Emmanuel Levinas (1906-96) has grown powerfully. Well known in France in his lifetime, he has since his death become widely regarded as a major European moral philosopher profoundly shaped by his Jewish background. A pupil of Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas pioneered new forms of exegesis with his post-modern readings of the Talmud, and as an ethicist brought together religious and non-religious, Jewish and non-Jewish traditions of contemporary thought. Richard A. Cohen has written a book which uses Levinas' work as its base but goes on to explore broader questions of interpretation in the context of text-based ethical thinking. Levinas' reorientation of philosophy is considered in critical contrast to alternative contemporary approaches such as those found in modern science, psychology, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Ricoeur. Cohen explores a manner of philosophizing which he terms 'ethical exegesis'.

Table of Contents

Introduction: philosophy as ethical exegesis	1	(24)
PART I. EXCEEDING PHENOMENOLOGY	25	(118)
Bergson and the emergence of an ecological age	27	(26)
Science, phenomenology, intuition, and philosophy	53	(46)
The good work of Edmund Husserl	99	(21)
Better than a questionable Heidegger	120	(23)
PART II. GOOD AND EVIL	143	(202)
Alterity and alteration: development of an opus	145	(16)
Maternal body/maternal psyche: contra psychoanalytic philosophy	161	(55)
Humanism and the rights of exegesis	216	(50)
What good is the Holocaust? On suffering and evil	266	(17)
Ricoeur and the lure of self-esteem	283	(43)
In-conclusion	326	(19)
Index	345