The Event of the Good: Reading Levinas in a Levinasian Way - Hardcover

Christopher Buckman

Hardcover

ISBN 13: 9798855802689

Publisher: SUNY Press, 2025

Synopsis

To read Levinas in a Levinasian way means to understand this important thinker on his own terms, thinking "ethics as first philosophy," without reducing his role to that of a contributor to some other discourse, such as phenomenology, deconstruction, or religious traditions other than his own. This volume offers a variety of interventions into how the priority of the ethical-as formulated by Emmanuel Levinas and seconded by Richard A. Cohen, one of his preeminent interpreters-reorients philosophy to its own questioning-indeed, to its very sense of itself as meaningful. In the decades since Levinas first emerged as a profound and critical voice, many have used his thought to illuminate a broad range of philosophical questions. Often this has occurred in ways that have deemphasized or altered what is arguably Levinas's most radical gesture: reframing philosophy, indeed reframing the meaning of meaning, via an ethical turn. To this end, the essays in this volume, drawing especially on Cohen's reading of Levinas, offer insights into how appropriations and assessments of his philosophy might become more in line with the urgency and full meaning of his notion of the ethical. Whether discussing ethics, aesthetics, politics, or Jewish thought, when taken together, they enhance our comprehension of ethics and Levinas's philosophy of responsibility.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Marsh received his PhD in philosophy from Binghamton University, State University of New York, and is a PhD candidate in theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the coeditor (with Matthew Burch and Irene McMullin) of Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology.

Edition details

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798855802689
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352