God, Death, and Time

by Emmanuel Levinas, Bettina Bergo (Translator), Jacques Rolland (Foreword by)

Overview

This book consists of transcripts from two lecture courses Levinas delivered in 1975-76, his last year at the Sorbonne. They cover some of the most pervasive themes of his thought and were written at a time when he had just published his most important—and difficult—book, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence. Both courses pursue issues related to the question at the heart of Levinas's thought: ethical relation. The Foreword and Afterword place the lectures in the context of his work as a whole, rounding out this unique picture of Levinas the thinker and the teacher.

The lectures are essential to a full understanding of Levinas for three reasons. First, he seeks to explain his thought to an audience of students, with a clarity and an intensity altogether different from his written work. Second, the themes of God, death, and time are not only crucial for Levinas, but they lead him to confront their treatment by the main philosphers of the great continental tradition. Thus his discussions of accounts of death by Heidegger, Hegel, and Bloch place Levinas's thought in a broader context. Third, the basic concepts Levinas employs are those of Otherwise than Being rather than the earlier Totality and Infinity: patience, obsession, substitution, witness, traumatism. There is a growing recognition that the ultimate standing of Levinas as a philosopher may well depend on his assessment of those terms. These lectures offer an excellent introduction to them that shows how they contribute to a wide range of traditional philosophical issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804736664
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2000
Series:	Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

	Translator's Foreword	xi
	Foreword	1
Part I.	Death and Time
	Initial Questions--Friday, November 7, 1975	7
	What Do We Know of Death?--Friday, November 14, 1975	11
	The Death of the Other [D'Autrui] and My Own--Friday, November 21, 1975	16
	An Obligatory Passage: Heidegger--Friday, November 28, 1975	22
	The Analytic of Dasein--Friday, December 5, 1975	28
	Dasein and Death--Friday, December 12, 1975	33
	The Death and Totality of Dasein--Friday, December 19, 1975	38
	Being-Toward-Death as the Origin of Time--Friday, January 9, 1976	42
	Death, Anxiety, and Fear--Friday, January 16, 1976	46
	Time Considered on the Basis of Death--Friday, January 23, 1976	50
	Inside Heidegger: Bergson--Friday, January 30, 1976	54
	The Radical Question: Kant Against Heidegger--Friday, February 6, 1976	57
	A Reading of Kant (Continued)--Friday, February 13, 1976	62
	How to Think Nothingness?--Friday, February 20, 1976	66
	Hegel's Response: The Science of Logic--Friday, February 27, 1976	71
	Reading Hegel's Science of Logic (Continued)--Friday, March 5, 1976	76
	From the Science of Logic to the Phenomenology--Friday, March 12, 1976	79
	Reading Hegel's Phenomenology (Continued)--Friday, March 19, 1976	84
	The Scandal of Death: From Hegel to Fink--Friday, April 9, 1976	88
	Another Thinking of Death: Starting from Bloch--Friday, April 23, 1976	92
	A Reading of Bloch (Continued)--Friday, April 30, 1976	97
	A Reading of Bloch: Toward a Conclusion--Friday, May 7, 1976	101
	Thinking About Death on the Basis of Time--Friday, May 14, 1976	106
	To Conclude: Questioning Again--Friday, May 21, 1976	113
Part II.	God and Onto-Theo-Logy
	Beginning with Heidegger--Friday, November 7, 1975	121
	Being and Meaning--Friday, November 14, 1975	126
	Being and World--Friday, November 21, 1975	131
	To Think God on the Basis of Ethics--Friday, December 5, 1975	136
	The Same and the Other--Friday, December 12, 1975	140
	The Subject-Object Correlation--Friday, December 19, 1975	144
	The Question of Subjectivity--Friday, January 9, 1976	149
	Kant and the Transcendental Ideal--Friday, January 16, 1976	153
	Signification as Saying--Friday, January 23, 1976	157
	Ethical Subjectivity--Friday, January 30, 1976	160
	Transcendence, Idolatry, and Secularization--Friday, February 6, 1976	163
	Don Quixote: Bewitchment and Hunger--Friday, February 13, 1976	167
	Subjectivity as An-Archy--Friday, February 20, 1976	172
	Freedom and Responsibility--Friday, February 27, 1976	176
	The Ethical Relationship as a Departure from Ontology--Friday, March 5, 1976	180
	The Extra-Ordinary Subjectivity of Responsibility--Friday, March 12, 1976	185
	The Sincerity of the Saying--Friday, March 19, 1976	190
	Glory of the Infinite and Witnessing--Friday, April 9, 1976	195
	Witnessing and Ethics--Friday, April 23, 1976	198
	From Consciousness to Prophetism--Friday, April 30, 1976	202
	In Praise of Insomnia--Friday, May 7, 1976	207
	Outside of Experience: The Cartesian Idea of the Infinite--Friday, May 14, 1976	213
	A God "Transcendent to the Point of Absence"--Friday, May 21, 1976	219
	Postscript	225
	Notes	243

Editorial Reviews

"This book serves as a supplement to Levinas's other works. . . . Whether or not on agrees with Levinas's unique reading and criticism of Western philosophy and theology, this book must be appreciated for its radical approach to ethics and theology. It deserves careful engagement by all Christian theologians and ethicists whose common intellectual background is the very target of Levinas's criticism."

Theological Studies

"There is no other primary source that would be a more accessible introduction to Levinas's work."

Religious Studies Review

"Whether or not one agrees with Levinas's unique reading and criticism of Western philosophy and theology, this book must be appreciated for its radical approach to ethics and theology. It deserves careful engagement by all Christian theologians and ehticists whose common intellectual background is the very target of Levinas's criticism."—Theological Studies

"This book serves as a supplement to Levinas's other works. . . . Whether or not on agrees with Levinas's unique reading and criticism of Western philosophy and theology, this book must be appreciated for its radical approach to ethics and theology. It deserves careful engagement by all Christian theologians and ethicists whose common intellectual background is the very target of Levinas's criticism."—Theological Studies

From the Publisher

Transcripts of two lecture courses on ethical relations that the 20th- century French philosopher delivered in 1975-76 explore some of the most pervasive themes of his thought, and were written when he had just published his most important and difficult book, . They were first published as in 1993 by Editions Grasset and Fasquelle. They are not indexed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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