The notion of radical passivity undoubtedly constitutes the burning question in the thought of French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. Committed to the claimthat egoism and freedom cannot give birth to generosity, Levinas presents radical passivity as a necessary condition for ethical action understood as taking responsibility for the other. In approaching another, Levinas argues, ‘something’ has overflowed my freely taken decisions, has slipped into me unbeknownst to me (CPP, 145). This something, this ‘other-within-the-self’ makes the self vulnerable to the call of the other and therefore capable of taking the other’s place, of substitution and sacrifice. Generosity and human fellowship, therefore, does not follow from a free rational consciousness capable of sympathyand compassion, but from a passivity ‘inflicted’ by an alterity at the heart of subjectivity. Levinas is not hereby saying that one should sacrifice oneself for others. He merely wants to account for its possibility. This edited collection is the first in its kind to focus on the subject of radical passivity and to directly address criticisms leveled against Levinas’s prioritization of the Other as ethical cornerstone This revaluation of Levinas’s thinking will provide a fundamental framework for reflecting on the resurgence of ethics in contemporary philosophy, literary and cultural theory INDICE: Editor’s Introduction: Rethinking Ethical Agency in Levinas; B. Hofmeyr. Introducing Radical Passivity. 2. Radical Passivity: Ethical Problem orSolution? B. Hofmeyr. Radical Passivity & Its Phenomenological Roots. 3. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: Radical Passivity in Levinas and Merleau-Ponty (Lectures 1954); B. Bergo. 4. Radical Passivity as Trans-Phenomenological Enigma; M. de Kesel. Radical Passivity & The Self. 5. Sincerely Yours; A. Peperzak. 6. Levinas and Kant on the Duties We have Towards Ourselves; J. Duyndam. Radical Passivity As Basis For Effective Ethical Action? 7. The Fundamental Ethical Experience; A. Lingis. 8. Radical Passivity as the Only Effective Basis for Ethical Action; P. Zeillinger. Radical Passivity & Levinas’s Talmudic Readings. 9. Ab-originality: Radical Passivity through Talmudic Reading; S. Hand. 10. Levinas between Philosophy and Talmudic Reading; A. Topolski. 11. Radical Passivity in Eroticism starting from the Talmudic Readings; L. Anckaert.
- ISBN: 978-1-4020-9346-3
- Editorial: Springer
- Encuadernacion: Cartoné
- Páginas: 156
- Fecha Publicación: 01/03/2009
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés