Broken tablets : Levinas, Derrida and the literary afterlife of religion / Sarah Hammerschlag ; cover design, Lisa Hamm.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hammerschlag, Sarah, author.

Contributor:

Hamm, Lisa, book designer.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lévinas, Emmanuel.

Derrida, Jacques.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, 2016.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Over a span of thirty years, twentieth-century French philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida held a conversation across texts. Sharing a Jewish heritage and a background in phenomenology, both came to situate their work at the margins of philosophy, articulating this placement through religion and literature. Chronicling the interactions between these thinkers, Sarah Hammerschlag argues that the stakes in their respective positions were more than philosophical. They were also political. Levinas's investments were born out in his writings on Judaism and ultimately in an evolving conviction that the young state of Israel held the best possibility for achieving such an ideal. For Derrida, the Jewish question was literary. The stakes of Jewish survival could only be approached through reflections on modern literature's religious legacy, a line of thinking that provided him the means to reconceive democracy. Hammerschlag's reexamination of Derrida and Levinas's textual exchange not only produces a new account of this friendship but also has significant ramifications for debates within Continental philosophy, the study of religion, and political theology.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

1. "What Must a Jewish Thinker Be?"

2. Levinas, Literature, and The Ruin of The World

3. Between The Jew and Writing

4. To Lose One's Head: Literature and The Democracy to Come

5. Literature and The Politicaltheological Remains

Epilogue: "There is Not a Pin to Choose Between Us"

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780231542135

0231542135

OCLC:

956139487