Essential Vulnerabilities
Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other
1st Edition
Published on 30. June 2014
216 pages
978-0-8101-6782-7 (ISBN)
Description
In Essential Vulnerabilities, Deborah Achtenberg contests Emmanuel Levinas's idea that Plato is a philosopher of freedom for whom thought is a return to the self. To the contrary, she agrees, Plato, like Levinas, is a philosopher of the other. While they share the view that human beings are essentially vulnerable and in relation to others, they conceive human vulnerability and responsiveness differently.For Plato, when ones see beauty in others, one is overwhelmed by the beauty of what is, by the vision of eternal form. For Levinas, on the other hand, we are disrupted by the newness, foreignness, or singularity of the other. For him, the other is not eternal, but new or foreign. The other is an unknowable singularity. By bringing into focus these similarities and differences, Achtenberg resituates Plato in relation to Levinas and opens up two contrasting ways that self is essentially in relation to others.
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06/2014
Northwestern University Press
€119.20
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Content
- Intro
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I: Totality and Infinity
- Chapter 1: Violence
- Chapter 2: Freedom
- Chapter 3: Creation
- Chapter 4: Knowledge
- Part II: Otherwise Than Being
- Chapter 5: Time and the Self
- Chapter 6: Violence, Freedom, Creation, Knowledge
- Chapter 7: Glory and Shine
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
