Levinas, Adorno, and the ethics of the material other / Eric S. Nelson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nelson, Eric Sean, HKUST., author.

Series:

SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy.

Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969.

Adorno, Theodor W.

Lévinas, Emmanuel.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (482 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Albany, New York : State University of New York Press, [2020]

Summary:

"This book sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address today's environmental and social-political situation. The chapters focus on critical natural history and the environmental crisis (part 1), religion, prophecy, and the good (part 2), and an asymmetrical account of equality, liberty, and solidarity (part 3). Eric S. Nelson presents a critical ethics of the material other, addressing the alterities, non-identities, and the good that constitute, interrupt, and reorient ethical and social-political forms of life. This ethics of the material other has significant implications. First, the self is constituted through material and communicative relations to others in "other-constitution" rather than individual or collective self-constitution. Second, encounters with the prophetic "other-power" or transcendence of the good in others-in the ordinary mundanities and sufferings of immanent material life-disturb the economies of the individual ego relishing its own happiness and collective identities that codify themselves through the subjugation and refusal of non-human and human others. Finally, the infinite ethical and social-political demand of others calls for unrestricted solidarities that can transform ethical and social-political sensibilities, if always in relation to the material and communicative conditions of contemporary global capitalism"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: On the Way to an Ethics of Material Others

Opening Reflections

Ethical Imperfection and the Priority of the Material Other

The Ethics of Alterity and the Negative Dialectics of Nonidentity

A Materialist Interpretation of Nonidentity and the Other

Other-Constitution and Aporetic Thinking

An Overview of the Work and Its Motivating Questions

Nature, Religion, and Justice

Perfection and Imperfection

Why Levinas? Why Adorno?

Three Queries about Ethics

Historical Contexts and Critical Departures

Marxism, Phenomenology, and New Critical Models

Cacophonies and Dissonances

Phenomenology and Antiphenomenology

Conclusion

Part I After Nature: Ethics, Natural History, and Environmental Crisis

1 Toward a Critical Ecological Model of Natural History

Introduction to Part One

Natural History and the Politics of Nature

Natural History and a Nature Still to Come

The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Damaged Life, and the Contemporary Ecological Crisis

Aporetic Materialism and the Dialectic of Enlightenment

Conclusion and Transition

2 Natural History, Nonidentity, and Ecological Crisis

Introduction: Kant, Constitutive Idealism, and the Mythology of Reason

Communicative Idealism or Natural History?

Nature as Ideology and Ethics

Historical Nature and Natural History

Materiality and a Critical Ethos of Nature

3 Communicative Interaction or Natural History? Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature

Introduction: The Renunciation of Nature in Habermas and Hegel

Intersubjective Idealism in Habermas's Critique of Adorno

Enlightenment and the Domination of Nature

The Asymmetrical Primacy and Intermateriality of the Object

Mimesis as Reification and Responsiveness

Art and Nature between Suffering and Happiness.

Music, Listening, and the Ethical

Mending Natural History

Animality, Happiness, and the Promises of Damaged Life

4 The Trouble with Life: Life-Philosophy, Antinaturalism, and Transcendence in Levinas

The Antinaturalism of Classical Phenomenology

Against Heidegger, Ontology, and Nature

Holy and Unholy Lands

Levinas, Heidegger, and Cryptonaturalism

Levinas and the Other-Transcendence of Life

Nature, Life, and History

Nature and Justice

Conclusion: Living beyond Idealism

5 An Ethics of Nature at the End of Nature

Introduction: Nature and History

Disturbing Nature: Levinas and the Ethics of Other Animals

Natural Histories: Adorno on Animals and Environments

Adorno and the Culture of Nature

Ethical Responsiveness, Imperfectionism, and Minimalism

Conclusion and Transition to Part Two

Part II Unsettling Religion: Suffering, Prophecy, and the Good

6 Religion, Suffering, and Damaged Life: Nietzsche, Marx, and Adorno

Introduction to Part Two

Religion as and against Power

Suffering and the Truth and Untruth of Religion

Between Marx and Nietzsche: Religion and Damaged Life

Priestly Powers, Damaged Lives, and Imperfectionist Promises of Happiness

Religion, Oppression, and Prophecy

7 The Disturbance of the Ethical: Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Abraham's Binding of Isaac

Introduction

"Here I Am" in an Intercultural Context

Confronting Abraham

The Suspension or the Provocation of the Ethical?

Is the Ethical or the Religious Primary?

Interlude: Levinas, Moore, and the Priority of the Good

Aporetic Ethics in Early Daoism, Kierkegaard, and Levinas

Conclusion: Contesting Conventional Morality

8 Ethics between Religiosity and Secularity: Kierkegaard and Levinas

Questioning Levinas Questioning Kierkegaard.

In a Prophetic Voice

Pluralism, Religion, and Faith

Abraham, Isaac, and the Ends of the Ethical

Adorno, Kierkegaard, Levinas

Demystifying Levinas: Must One Be Religious to Be Ethical?

Between Religiosity and Antireligiosity

Conclusion: Double Strategies in Levinas and Kierkegaard

9 Prophetic Time, Materiality, and Dignity: Bloch and Levinas

Introduction: Marxism and Dignity

Marxism between Dignity and Happiness

Luxemburg, Bloch, and Democratic Socialism

The History and Paradox of Dignity

Natural Law and Prophetic Critique

Prophetic Temporalities

Politics and the Dialectic of Dignity

A Dusselian Interpretation of Bloch and Levinas

A Concluding Note on Adorno

10 Ethical Imperfectionism and the Sovereignty of Good: Levinas, Løgstrup, and Murdoch

Responding to Philosophies of Life, Existence, and Being

The Problem of Moral Perfectionism

Ethical Decision or Ethical Demand?

The Ethics of Demand

The Immanence and Transcendence of the Good: Murdoch, Løgstrup, and Levinas

Naturalism, Antinaturalism, and Life's Sovereign Expressions

The Good of Ethical Life and the Good beyond Being

Suffering, Useless Suffering, and Theodicy

Conclusion and Transition to Part Three

Part III Demanding Justice: Asymmetrical Ethics and Critical Social Theory

11 Equality, Justice, and Asymmetrical Ethics

Introduction to Part Three

Asymmetry and Equality

Equality and Freedom

Habermas, Honneth, and the Problematic of Asymmetry

The Good, the Just, and the Material Other

Are Equality and Asymmetry Incompatible?

Ethics beyond the Dialectic of Recognition and Misrecognition

12 The Pathologies of Freedom and the Promise of Autonomy

Introduction: The Problem of Freedom

Liberal and Neoliberal Freedom

The Ideological Functions of Freedom.

Questionable Liberty

Asymmetrical Freedom

The Idolatry of Liberty and the Pathology of Freedom

Fraternal Republicanism and the An-archic Republic

Conclusion: The Priority of the Freedom of the Other

13 The Limits of Liberalism: Cosmopolitanism, Tolerance, and Asymmetrical Ethics

Introduction: Colonialism and the Aporias of Cosmopolitan Tolerance

The Complicity of Cosmopolitan Tolerance with Domination

Cosmopolitan Tolerance, Colonialism, and Racism

Love and Justice beyond Communitarianism and Liberalism

Hospitality, Substitution, and Tolerance

A Cosmopolitanism of the Other

Hospitality beyond Liberal Rights

14 Recognition, Nonidentity, and the Contradictions of Liberalism

Introduction: The Crises of Contemporary Forms of Life

The Good and the Subject

Repeating the Question: Why Adorno? Why Levinas?

The Contradictions of Contemporary Liberalism

The Boundaries of Universalism and the Singularity of the Material Other

The Other in the Dialectic of Recognition and Misrecognition

Beyond Consensus and Recognition: The An-archic Ethics of Material Others

Epilogue: Nourishing Life, Unrestricted Solidarity, and the Good

Against Perfection: Ethical Incompletion and the Good

The Ethical and the Political Demand

Critical Natural History and the Ethics of Materiality

Closing Words: Political Ecology and Political Economy

Notes

Bibliography

Works of Theodor W. Adorno

Works of Emmanuel Levinas

Other Works

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438480251

1438480253