Arendt, Levinas and a Politics of Relationality

by Anya Topolski

Overview

By bringing Hannah Arendt’s politics into dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics, this book develops an approach to the political that is relational, inclusive, and empowering.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783483419
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/01/2015
Series:	Reframing the Boundaries: Thinking the Political
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Anya Topolski is a FWO postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments / Abbreviations / Introduction: In Search of a Politics of Relationality / Part I: Bridges and Breaks / 1. Biographical and Philosophical Intersections / 2. Divided by Disciplinary Confines / Part II: On Hannah Arendt / 3. The Political: From Ashes to Hope / 4. An Ethics from Within the Political / Part III: On Emmanuel Levinas / 5. Levinas’ Ethics of Alterity / 6. A Politics from Within Ethics / Part IV: From Plurality and Alterity to Relationality / 7. From Arendt and Levinas To Relationality / 8. The Promise and Pitfalls of Relationality / A.Works Cited / B. Related Works / Index

Editorial Reviews

This persuasive and passionate book stages a long overdue encounter between Arendt’s notion of plurality and Levinas’s ethics of alterity, in order to construct an affirmative politics of relationality that is richly informed by the Judaic. Working beyond categorical differences between politics and ethics, Topolski presents this ‘post-foundationalist’ relationality as a moving commitment to hope in divisive and dangerous times.

Seán Hand

This lucid and probing book offers a new way to understand the political and ethical philosophies of Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas in relation to one another and to the broader questions raised by ethical and political philosophy. Bold, clear, and provocative, this book initiates a set of critical conversations that we have yet to see.

Judith Butler

This persuasive and passionate book stages a long overdue encounter between Arendt’s notion of plurality and Levinas’s ethics of alterity, in order to construct an affirmative politics of relationality that is richly informed by the Judaic. Working beyond categorical differences between politics and ethics, Topolski presents this ‘post-foundationalist’ relationality as a moving commitment to hope in divisive and dangerous times.

Seán Hand

This persuasive and passionate book stages a long overdue encounter between Arendt’s notion of plurality and Levinas’s ethics of alterity, in order to construct an affirmative politics of relationality that is richly informed by the Judaic. Working beyond categorical differences between politics and ethics, Topolski presents this ‘post-foundationalist’ relationality as a moving commitment to hope in divisive and dangerous times.

From the Publisher