Title
The Intrigue of Ethics : A Reading of the Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas / Jeffrey Dudiak.
ISBN
9780823293018
Published
New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2022]
Copyright
©2001
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (438 p.)
Item Number
10.1515/9780823293018 doi
Summary
This work explains how human beings can live more peacefully with one another by understanding the conditions of possibility for dialogue. Philosophically, this challenge is articulated as the problem of: how dialogue as dia-logos is possible when the shared logos is precisely that which is in question. Emmanuel Levinas, in demonstrating that the shared logos is a function of interhuman relationship, helps us to make some progress in understanding the possibilities for dialogue in this situation. If the terms of the argument to this point are taken largely from Levinas's 1961 Totality and Infinity, Dudiak further proposes that Levinas's 1974 Otherwise than Being can be read as a deepening of these earlier analyses, delineating, both the conditions of possibility and impossibility for discourse itself. Throughout these analyses Dudiak discovers that in Levinas's view dialogue is ultimately possible, only for a gracious subjectivity already graced by God by way of the other, but where the word God is inseparable from my subjectivity as graciousness to the other. Finally, for Levinas, the facilitation of dialogue, the facilitation of peace, comes down to the subject's capacity and willingness to be who he or she is, to take the beautiful risk of a peaceful gesture offered to the other, and that peace, in this gesture itself. As Levinas himself puts it: "Peace then is under my responsibility. I am a hostage, for I am alone to wage it, running a fine risk, dangerously." Levinas's philosophical discourse is precisely itself to be read as such a gesture.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
Series
Perspectives in Continental Philosophy
Available in Other Form
print 9780823220939
Frontmatter
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Preface: Dialogue and Peace
PART I: THE IDEA OF DISCOURSE
1 The Impasse of Dialogue
2 Original Plurality: The Terms of Discourse
3 Discourse as the Condition of Possibility for Dialogue
PART II The Possible Impossibility
INTRODUCTION TO PART II
4 The Two Aspects of Language: The Saying and the Said
5 The Two Directions in Language: The Reductive and the Re-constructive
6 The Moment of Responsibility: Time and Eternity
PART III Discourse, Philosophy, and Peace
7 Levinas' s Philosophical Discourse
8 The Im/possibility of Peace
A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
