Synopses & Reviews
"This is a book of scintillating intelligence, a book whose range of references, whose extraordinary ethical sensibility and linguistic creativity, set a standard for philosophy that few if any contemporary thinkers other than Derrida and Levinas themselves can match.... On every page, there is Llewelean sparkle." --David Wood
If not simple opposition or simple juxtaposition, what is the relation between the writings to which Derrida and Levinas appose their signatures? What would each endorse in the writings of the other? What is it to sign and endorse? How does one assume responsibility, and how does one avoid assuming it? These are some of the probing questions that the prominent Continental philosopher John Llewelyn takes up in Appositions, which brings together and synthesizes 15 essays written during the past 20 years. This book by a powerfully original thinker and first-rate interpreter is essential reading for all those interested in the writings of Derrida and Levinas and in the ways in which their thinking intersects.
About the Author
John Llewelyn has been Reader in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis, and the Arthur J. Schmitt Distinguished Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago. Among his publications are Beyond
Metaphysics? The Hermeneutic Circle in Contemporary Continental Philosophy; Derrida on the Threshold of Sense; The Middle Voice of Ecological Conscience; Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics; and The HypoCritical Imagination: Between Kant and Levinas.
Table of Contents
Preliminary Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction: Levinas, Derrida and Others vis-a-vis
Ethical metaphysics
Facial expression
Paradoxical proximity
The back of beyond
ONE: Responsibility with Indecidability
Use and mention
Types and performances
The paradox of quasi-analysis
Sursum corda
Before the question
TWO: Derrida, Mallarme and Anatole
First affirmation
Last testament
Limited incorporation
THREE: The Origin and End of Philosophy
Solid sense
Implex
Resource
Prote philosophia
FOUR: In the Name of Philosophy
In the name of God
Two first philosophies. Levinas and Jankelevitch
The love of wisdom and the wisdom of love
FIVE: What is Orientation in Thinking? Facing the Facts
Reason and sentiment
Individualism
Salvage and salvation
Society
The delimitation of reason alone
SIX: Amen
Rosenzweig
God's yessence
The extraordinary word
SEVEN: The Impossibility of Levinas's Death
Being dead
Why me?
Peace and quiet
The sting
Dust and ashes
EIGHT: The Possibility of Heidegger's Death
Classical modalities
The ontological difference
I die therefore I am
Summary
NINE: sELection
TEN: Jewgreek or Greekjew
Writing with both hands
Souciance
Violence and violence
ELEVEN: At this Very Moment.... A Repetition that is not One
Open opus
Other passages
Interruption
Open questions
TWELVE: Levinas and Language
Structuralism
Ontologism
Linguistic possessions
Nouns, Verbs and Verbal Nouns
Pronouns and Pronunciation
Saying, Said and Silence
The Language of Levinas's Philosophy of Language
THIRTEEN: Thresholds
What goes on between the affect and the seing?
What is the absolute difference?
What is transgression?
FOURTEEN: Semioethics
Signification
Meanings
The divine nature of language
Lessons
The word of peace
Responsibility and play
FIFTEEN: No Happy Ending
Affirmation
Universality and cultural colonization
Teleology and deontology
Infinity and totality
Woe is me
In touch
Happiness
Politics after
Notes
Index