The Self-Emptying Subject : Kenosis and Immanence, Medieval to Modern / Alex Dubilet.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dubilet, Alex, Author.

Contributor:

Modern Language Initiative.

Series:

Modern language initiative.

The modern language initiative

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Eckhart, Meister, -1327.

Eckhart.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich.

Incarnation.

Ethics.

Other (Philosophy).

Self (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (248 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

Against the two dominant ethical paradigms of continental philosophy–Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of the Other and Michel Foucault’s ethics of self-cultivation—The Self-Emptying Subject theorizes an ethics of self-emptying, or kenosis, that reveals the immanence of an impersonal and dispossessed life “without a why.” Rather than aligning immanence with the enclosures of the subject, The Self-Emptying Subject engages the history of Christian mystical theology, modern philosophy, and contemporary theories of the subject to rethink immanence as what precedes and exceeds the very difference between the (human) self and the (divine) other, between the subject and transcendence. By arguing that transcendence operates and subjects life in secular no less than in religious domains, this book challenges the dominant distribution of concepts in contemporary theoretical discourse, which insists on associating transcendence exclusively with religion and theology and immanence exclusively with modern secularity and philosophy. The Self-Emptying Subject argues that it is important to resist framing the relationship between medieval theology and modern philosophy as a transition from the affirmation of divine transcendence to the establishment of autonomous subjects. Through an engagement with Meister Eckhart, G.W.F. Hegel, and Georges Bataille, it uncovers a medieval theological discourse that rejects the primacy of pious subjects and the transcendence of God (Eckhart); retrieves a modern philosophical discourse that critiques the creation of self-standing subjects through a speculative re-writing of the concepts of Christian theology (Hegel); and explores a discursive site that demonstrates the subjecting effects of transcendence across theological and philosophical operations and archives (Bataille). Taken together, these interpretations suggest that if we suspend the antagonistic relationship between theological and philosophical discourses, and decenter our periodizing assumptions and practices, we might encounter a yet unmapped theoretical fecundity of self-emptying that frees life from transcendent powers that incessantly subject it for their own ends.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction

1. Meister Eckhart’s Kenotic Lexicon and the Critique of Finitude

2. Conceptual Experimentation with the Divine

3. From Estrangement to Entäußerung: Undoing the Unhappy Consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit

4. Hegel’s Annihilation of Finitude

5. Sans Emploi, Sans Repos, Sans Réponse: Georges Bataille’s Loss without a Why

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

This edition previously issued in print: 2018.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

9780823281633

0823281639

9780823279487

0823279480

9780823279494

0823279499

OCLC:

1002826204