The Step Back: Ethics And Politics After Deconstruction

by Wood, David

• ISBN13: 9780791464649
• ISBN10: 0791464644
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780791483213
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-01
• Publisher: STATE UNIV OF NEW YORK PRESS
• More Book Details

Summary

This original contribution to the ethical and political significance of philosophy addresses a number of major themes-identity, violence, the erotic, freedom, responsibility, religious belief, globalization-and critically engages with the work of Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida, and Levinas. It promotes a unique blend of deconstructive critique and a certain English skepticism, leading to the affirmation of a negative capability-a patience and vigilance in the face of both human folly and philosophy's own homegrown pathologies. The author argues for the extension of our sense of openness and responsibility to animal life, and indeed life in general, and not just to the human. Book jacket.

Author Biography

David Wood is Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction
Toward a Negative Capability	1	(10)
Part I Philosophy and Violence
Identity and Violence	11	(16)
The Philosophy of Violence :: The Violence of Philosophy	27	(26)
Where Levinas Went Wrong: Some Questions for My Levinasian Friends	53	(20)
Addendum
Twenty Theses on Violence	69	(4)
Part II Singular Encounters
The First Kiss: Tales of Innocence and Experience	73	(12)
Thinking God in the Wake of Kierkegaard	85	(24)
Dionysus in America	109	(22)
Part III Ethics and Politics after Deconstruction
Notes toward a Deconstructive Phenomenology	131	(8)
Responsibility Reinscribed (and How)	139	(10)
What Is Ecophenomenology?	149	(20)
Globalization and Freedom	169	(26)
Postscript
Philosophy: The Antioxidant of Higher Education	189	(6)
Notes	195	(34)
Index	229