Levinas on politics, postcolonialism and globalization, animals and the environment, and science and technology.
Radicalizing Levinas initiates a third wave of Levinas scholarship. If the first wave was aimed at commentary and exposition, and the second focused on situating Levinas within the context of poststructuralism and deconstruction, the third wave is an explicit attempt to situate and explore his work in the context of current social and political problems. A short list of these are: war in the Middle East, colonialism, widespread famine, immeasurable animal suffering, environmental decay, school shootings, and increasing social and personal disorganization. How can a Levinasian ethics help us make sense of this? Levinas scholars respond and help move from theory to practice by addressing such topics as global justice, feminism, environmentalism, animal liberation, postcolonialism, radical democracy, technology and cybernetics, and psychotherapy. This book is for anyone seeking to understand better how philosophy can inform contemporary life.
“An impressive collection of essays from an outstanding group of authors.” — Howard Caygill, author of Levinas and the Political
Peter Atterton is Associate Professor of Philosophy at San Diego State University. Matthew Calarco is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton. Together they have coauthored On Levinas and coedited Animal Philosophy: Ethics and Identity;The Continental Ethics Reader; and (with Maurice Friedman) Levinas and Buber: Dialogue and Difference.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Editors’ Introduction
List of Abbreviations
Part I: Politics
1. Precarious Life Judith Butler
2. Levinas, Feminism, and Identity Politics Diane Perpich
3. Five Problems in Levinas’s View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to Them Simon Critchley
Part II: Postcolonialism and Globalization
4. Postcolonial Thought and Levinas’s Double Vision Robert Eaglestone
5. Globalization and World Hunger: Kant and Levinas Robert Bernasconi
Part III: Animals and the Environment
6. Levinas and the Elemental John Sallis
7. Pursuing Levinas and Ferry toward a Newer and More Democratic Ecological Order John Llewelyn
8. Faced by Animals Matthew Calarco
Part IV: Science and Technology
9. Levinas’s Other and the Culture of the Copy Edith Wyschogrod
10. Ethics and Cybernetics: Levinasian Reflections Richard A. Cohen
Part V: Social and Personal Disorganization
11. Education East of Eden: Levinas, the Psychopath, and the Paradox of Responsibility Claire Katz
12. “The Talking Cure”: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis Peter Atterton
