Out of Control : Confrontations between Spinoza and Levinas

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, Richard A.

Series:

SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Thought

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jewish philosophy.

Philosophy, Modern.

Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677.

Spinoza, Benedictus de.

Lévinas, Emmanuel.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (372 p.)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : State University of New York Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

After the end of superstitious religion, what is the meaning of the world? Baruch Spinoza's answer is truth, Emmanuel Levinas's is goodness: science versus ethics. In Out of Control, Richard A. Cohen brings this debate to life, providing a nuanced exposition of Spinoza and Levinas and the confrontations between them in ethics, politics, science, and religion.Spinoza is the control, the inexorable defensive logic of administrative rationality, where freedom is equated to necessity—a seventeenth-century glimpse of Orwellian doublespeak and Big Brother. Levinas is the way out: transcendence not of God, being, and logic but of the other person experienced as moral obligation. To alleviate the suffering of others—nothing is more important! Spinoza wagers everything on mathematical truth, discarding the rest as ignorance and illusion; for Levinas, nothing surpasses the priorities of morality and justice, to create a world in which humans can be human and not numbers or consumers, drudges or robots.Situating these two thinkers in today's context, Out of Control responds to the fear of dehumanization in a world flattened by the alliance of positivism and plutocracy. It offers a nonideological ethical alternative, a way out and up, in the nobility of one human being helping another, and the solidarity that moves from morality to justice.

Contents:

Contents; Preface and Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; Emmanuel Levinas; Baruch Spinoza; Martin Heidegger; Friedrich Nietzsche; Introduction; Chapter One: Levinas, Spinozism, Nietzsche, and the Body; Levinas's Rejection of Spinozism; Self-Sensing; The True and the Good: "Dangerous Life"; Nietzsche's Spinozism; Nietzsche's Differences from Spinoza; From Mechanism to Vitalism; Levinas contra Nietzsche's Spinozism; Responsible Body; Chapter Two: Prophetic Speech in Levinas and Spinoza (and Maimonides); Spinoza contra Prophecy and Prophets (Theological-Political Treatise)

Levinas: "It is true that all men are prophets"7Excursus: The Sage Prophets of Maimonides; Chapter Three: Levinas and Spinoza: To Love God for Nothing; The State, Justice, and Religion; Spinoza: Knowledge and Power; Levinas: Morality and Justice; Chapter Four: Levinas and Spinoza: Justice and the State; The State, Justice, and Religion; Spinoza: Knowledge and Power; Levinas: Morality and Justice; Chapter Five: Spinoza's Prince: For Whom Is the Theological-Political Treatise Written?; The Theological-Political Treatise and Its Three Parts; Paradox of Possible Readers

From the Preface of the Theological-Political TreatiseLetter No. 30 to Oldenburg; Liberal Christian Ministers and Theologians; First Excursus: The Two Meanings of "Democracy" and of "Freedom"; Democracy; Freedom; Second Excursus: Why Take Human Laws Seriously at All?; Spinoza Shows His Hand; The Prince; Response to Steven Frankel; Profile of a Spinozist Leader: Plato's Alcibiades; Conclusion; Postscript on Leo Strauss's Reading; Chapter Six: Levinas on Spinoza's Misunderstanding of Judaism; Harry Austryn Wolfson; Yosef Ben-Shlomo; Levinas; A Christianized Judaism; Statism

Rationality without WisdomTalmudic Wisdom; Productive Integrity of Spirit and Letter; Pluralism of Persons and Readings; Virtue or Existential Self-Transformation; Authority or the Renewal of a Living Tradition; Chapter Seven: Thinking Least about Death: Mortality and Morality in Spinoza, Heidegger, and Levinas; Introduction: Life and Death; Spinoza: To Not Think of Death; Heidegger: My Mortal Being; Levinas: Dying for the Other; Suffering; Mystery; Passivity, Weakness; Futurity; Postponement; The Grim Reaper; The Doctor; Morality: Dying for the Other; Justice beyond Death; Conclusion

Chapter Eight: Spinoza's Spleen: "Babies, Fools, and Madmen"Will and Intellect (Commentary on Spinoza's Scholium to the Proof of the Corollary of the Proof of Proposition 49 of Part II, Et; Spinoza's Nightmare: Suicides, Babies, Fools, Madmen, and Women; Brief Excursus: Another Possible Angle on Spinoza's Rhetorical Spleen; Spinoza's Unwanted Babies; Not the Ill Spanish Poet Again; Born Free; So Hang Yourself; Born Adult; Conclusions; Works Cited; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

9781438461113

1438461119