God, Death, and Time

by Levinas, Emmanuel

• ISBN13: 9780804736664
• ISBN10: 0804736669
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

This book consists of transcripts from two lecture courses Levinas delivered in 1975-76, his last year at the Sorbonne. They cover some of the most pervasive themes of his thought and were written at a time when he had just published his most important--and difficult--book,Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence.Both courses pursue issues related to the question at the heart of Levinas's thought: ethical relation. The Foreword and Afterword place the lectures in the context of his work as a whole, rounding out this unique picture of Levinas the thinker and the teacher. The lectures are essential to a full understanding of Levinas for three reasons. First, he seeks to explain his thought to an audience of students, with a clarity and an intensity altogether different from his written work. Second, the themes of God, death, and time are not only crucial for Levinas, but they lead him to confront their treatment by the main philosphers of the great continental tradition. Thus his discussions of accounts of death by Heidegger, Hegel, and Bloch place Levinas's thought in a broader context. Third, the basic concepts Levinas employs are those ofOtherwise than Beingrather than the earlierTotality and Infinity: patience, obsession, substitution, witness, traumatism. There is a growing recognition that the ultimate standing of Levinas as a philosopher may well depend on his assessment of those terms. These lectures offer an excellent introduction to them that shows how they contribute to a wide range of traditional philosophical issues.

Author Biography

Emmanuel Levinas was Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne and Director of the Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale.

Table of Contents

Translator's Foreword	xi
Foreword	1	(6)
Jacques Rolland
PART I. DEATH AND TIME
Initial Questions
---Friday, November 7, 1975	7	(4)
What Do We Know of Death?
---Friday, November 14, 1975	11	(5)
The Death of the Other [D'Autrui] and My Own
---Friday, November 21, 1975	16	(6)
An Obligatory Passage: Heidegger
---Friday, November 28, 1975	22	(6)
The Analytic of Dasein
---Friday, December 5, 1975	28	(5)
Dasein and Death
---Friday, December 12, 1975	33	(5)
The Death and Totality of Dasein
---Friday, December 19, 1975	38	(4)
Being-Toward-Death as the Origin of Time
---Friday, January 9, 1976	42	(4)
Death, Anxiety, and Fear
---Friday, January 16, 1976	46	(4)
Time Considered on the Basis of Death
---Friday, January 23, 1976	50	(4)
Inside Heidegger: Bergson
---Friday, January 30, 1976	54	(3)
The Radical Question: Kant Against Heidegger
---Friday, February 6, 1976	57	(5)
A Reading of Kant (Continued)
---Friday, February 13, 1976	62	(4)
How to Think Nothingness?
---Friday, February 20, 1976	66	(5)
Hegel's Response: The Science of Logic
---Friday, February 27, 1976	71	(5)
Reading Hegel's Science of Logic (Continued)
---Friday, March 5, 1976	76	(3)
From the Science of Logic to the Phenomenology
---Friday, March 12, 1976	79	(5)
Reading Hegel's Phenomenology (Continued)
---Friday, March 19, 1976	84	(4)
The Scandal of Death: From Hegel to Fink
---Friday, April 9, 1976	88	(4)
Another Thinking of Death: Starting from Bloch
---Friday, April 23, 1976	92	(5)
A Reading of Bloch (Continued)
---Friday, April 30, 1976	97	(4)
A Reading of Bloch: Toward a Conclusion
---Friday, May 7, 1976	101	(5)
Thinking About Death on the Basis of Time
---Friday, May 14, 1976	106	(7)
To Conclude: Questioning Again
---Friday, May 21, 1976	113	(8)
PART II. GOD AND ONTO-THEO-LOGY
Beginning with Heidegger
---Friday, November 7, 1975	121	(5)
Being and Meaning
---Friday, November 14, 1975	126	(5)
Being and World
---Friday, November 21, 1975	131	(5)
To Think God on the Basis of Ethics
---Friday, December 5, 1975	136	(4)
The Same and the Other
---Friday, December 12, 1975	140	(4)
The Subject-Object Correlation
---Friday, December 19, 1975	144	(5)
The Question of Subjectivity
---Friday, January 9, 1976	149	(4)
Kant and the Transcendental Ideal
---Friday, January 16, 1976	153	(4)
Signification as Saying
---Friday, January 23, 1976	157	(3)
Ethical Subjectivity
---Friday, January 30, 1976	160	(3)
Transcendence, Idolatry, and Secularization
---Friday, February 6, 1976	163	(4)
Don Quixote: Bewitchment and Hunger
---Friday, February 13, 1976	167	(5)
Subjectivity as An-Archy
---Friday, February 20, 1976	172	(4)
Freedom and Responsibility
---Friday, February 27, 1976	176	(4)
The Ethical Relationship as a Departure from Ontology
---Friday, March 5, 1976	180	(5)
The Extra-Ordinary Subjectivity of Responsibility
---Friday, March 12, 1976	185	(5)
The Sincerity of the Saying
---Friday, March 19, 1976	190	(5)
Glory of the Infinite and Witnessing
---Friday, April 9, 1976	195	(3)
Witnessing and Ethics
---Friday, April 23, 1976	198	(4)
From Consciousness to Prophetism
---Friday, April 30, 1976	202	(5)
In Praise of Insomnia
---Friday, May 7, 1976	207	(6)
Outside of Experience: The Cartesian Idea of the Infinite
---Friday, May 14, 1976	213	(6)
A God ``Transcendent to the Point of Absence''
---Friday, May 21, 1976	219	(6)
Postscript	225	(18)
Jacques Rolland
Notes	243