Items related to Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations...

Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other (Rereading Ancient Philosophy) - Softcover

Deborah Achtenberg (author)

 
9780810135635: Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other (Rereading Ancient Philosophy)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0810135639 ISBN 13: 9780810135635
Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2018

Synopsis

In Essential Vulnerabilities, Deborah Achtenberg contests Emmanuel Levinas’s idea that Plato is a philosopher of freedom for whom thought is a return to the self. Instead, Plato, like Levinas, is a philosopher of the other. Nonetheless, Achtenberg argues, Plato and Levinas are different. Though they share the view that human beings are essentially vulnerable and essentially in relation to others, they conceive human vulnerability and responsiveness differently. For Plato, when we see beautiful others, we are overwhelmed by the beauty of what is, by the vision of eternal form. For Levinas, we are disrupted by the newness, foreignness, or singularity of the other. The other, for him, is new or foreign, not eternal. The other is unknowable singularity. By showing these similarities and differences, Achtenberg resituates Plato in relation to Levinas and opens up two contrasting ways that self is essentially in relation to others.

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About the Author

Deborah Achtenberg is a professor of philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the author of Cognition.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Northwestern University Press
Publication date
2018
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0810135639
ISBN 13 
9780810135635
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
224