Meaning and melancholy in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas / / Stine Holte.

• Superior document: Research in Contemporary Religion ; Volume 18
• VerfasserIn: Holte, Stine,
• Place / Publishing House: Göttingen, [Germany] : : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Research in contemporary religion ; Volume 18.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (193 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Although considered as one of the 20th century most central ethical thinkers, Emmanuel Levinas claimed that his task was not to construct an ethics, but to seek the meaning of the ethical. This claim is the point of departure of the present study, which asks how ethics could be regarded as meaningful at all in light of the crisis of meaning that according to Levinas is inherent to being. Ethical meaning is for Levinas sought "otherwise than being or beyond essence" in terms of a radical responsibility for the Other. At the same time, it is questionable whether the ethical may be said to repres

Table of Contents

Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Table of Contents; Body; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part 1: The Light And Darkness Of Phenomenological Meaning ; 1.1. The meaning of the ethical; Beyond phenomenological meaning; Ethical meaning as an epiphany of the face; Ethical meaning as a questioning of the self; 1.2. Ontology and the meaninglessness of being; darkness; Il y a and the enchainment to being; Shame and subjectivity; 1.3. Intentional meaning; light; Intentionality as sincerity; The violence of light: Derrida's reading; Intentional meaning and temporality

Husserl and the problem of representationHeidegger and the problem of imagination; 1.4. Esthetics between darkness and light; Esthetics and ethics; The exoticism of art as the involvement with darkness; The problematic consolation of beauty; The value of art; 1.5. Transcendence and the question of language; The differences between Levinas' two main works; Ontology as the amphibology of being and beings; Transcendence as reduction to pure Saying; Part 2: Transcendence And Sensibility; 2.1. Sensibility and the anarchy of the self; Sensibility as enjoyment; Ethicized sensibility

The anarchy of the singular self2.2. Responsibility and the traumatized self; Substitution and the excess of responsibility; The critique of pathology; Traumatism and psychoanalysis; Traumatism between transcendence and il y a; The problem of melancholy; 2.3. The religious dimension of sensible transcendence; Religion and phenomenology; Holiness and separation; Judaism as a religion for adults; Religious freedom and melancholy; The intrigue of God; The transcendence of subjectivity - and the return to society; Sincerity and ethical questioning of meaning; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index