Nietzsche and Levinas : "after the death of a certain God" / edited by Jill Stauffer, Bettina Bergo.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Stauffer, Jill, 1966-

Bergo, Bettina.

Series:

Insurrections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm.

Lévinas, Emmanuel.

Physical Description:

xiv, 272 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2009]

Summary:

The essays that Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo collect in this volume locate multiple affinities between the philosophies of Nietzsche and Levinas. Both philosophers question the nature of subjectivity and the meaning of responsibility after the "death of God." While Nietzsche poses the dilemmas of a self without a ground and of ethics at a time of cultural upheaval and demystification, Levinas wrestles with subjectivity and the sheer possibility of ethics after the Shoah. Both argue that goodness exists independently of calculative reason - for Nietzsche, goodness arises in a creative act moving beyond reaction and ressentiment; Levinas argues that goodness occurs in a spontaneous response to another person. In a world at once without God and haunted by multiple divinities, Nietzsche and Levinas reject transcendental foundations for politics and work toward an alternative vision encompassing a positive sense of creation, a complex fraternity or friendship, and rival notions of responsibility.

Stauffer and Bergo group arguments around the following debates, which are far from settled: What is the reevaluation of ethics (and life) that Nietzsche and Levinas propose, and what does this imply for politics and sociality? What is a human subject - and what are substance, permanence, causality, and identity, whether social or ethical - in the wake of the demise of God as the highest being and the foundation of what is stable in existence? Finally, how can a "God" still inhabit philosophy, and what sort of name is this in the thought of Nietzsche and Levinas?

Contents:

Abbreviations of Works by Nietzsche and Levinas XI

I Revaluing Ethics: Time, Teaching, and the Ambiguity of Forces

1 The Malice in Good Deeds / Alphonso Lingis 23

2 The Imperfect: Levinas, Nietzsche, and the Autonomous Subject / Jill Stauffer 33

3 Nietzsche and Levinas: The Impossible Relation / Jean-Michel Longneaux 48

4 Ethical Ambivalence / Judith Butler 70

5 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Thus Listened the Rabbis: Philosophy, Education, and the Cycle of Enlightenment / Claire Elise Katz 81

II The Subject: Sensing, Suffering, and Responding

6 The Flesh Made Word; Or, The Two Origins / Bettina Bergo 99

7 Nietzsche, Levinas, and the Meaning of Responsibility / Rosalyn Diprose 116

8 Beginning's Abyss: On Solitude in Nietzsche and Levinas / John Drabinski 134

9 Beyond Suffering I Have No Alibi / David Boothroyd 150

10 Levinas, Spinozism, Nietzsche, and the Body / Richard A. Cohen 165

III Heteronomy and Ubiquity: God in Philosophy

11 Suffering Redeemable and Irredeemable / John Llewelyn 185

12 Levinas's Gaia Scienza / Aicha Liviana Messina 199

13 Levinas: Another Ascetic Priest? / Silvia Benso 214

14 Apocalypse, Eschatology, and the Death of God / Brian Schroeder 232.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [249]-257) and index.

ISBN:

9780231144049

0231144040

9780231144056

0231144059

9780231518536

0231518536

OCLC:

226360282