Out of Control: Confrontations between Spinoza and LevinasSUNY Press, 9 mei 2016 - 288 pagina's <i>Explores the fundamental confrontations between Spinoza and Levinas in ethics, politics, science, and religion.</i><br><br> After the end of superstitious religion, what is the meaning of the world? Baruch Spinoza’s answer is truth, Emmanuel Levinas’s is goodness: science versus ethics. In <i>Out of Control</i>, Richard A. Cohen brings this debate to life, providing a nuanced exposition of Spinoza and Levinas and the confrontations between them in ethics, politics, science, and religion.<br><br> Spinoza is the control, the inexorable defensive logic of administrative rationality, where freedom is equated to necessity—a seventeenth-century glimpse of Orwellian doublespeak and Big Brother. Levinas is the way out: transcendence not of God, being, and logic but of the other person experienced as moral obligation. To alleviate the suffering of others—nothing is more important! Spinoza wagers everything on mathematical truth, discarding the rest as ignorance and illusion; for Levinas, nothing surpasses the priorities of morality and justice, to create a world in which humans can be human and not numbers or consumers, drudges or robots.<br><br> Situating these two thinkers in today’s context, <i>Out of Control</i> responds to the fear of dehumanization in a world flattened by the alliance of positivism and plutocracy. It offers a nonideological ethical alternative, a way out and up, in the nobility of one human being helping another, and the solidarity that moves from morality to justice.<br><br> “Cohen’s work here is nothing short of spectacular. His analysis of the mathematical and scientific foundations of Spinoza’s philosophy is exemplary. Lucidly, meticulously, and with very disciplined analysis he conveys the force, power, and influence of Spinoza’s philosophy on contemporary religious thought.” — Richard I. Sugarman, University of Vermont<br><br> “Richard Cohen has managed to not merely bring these two notoriously difficult philosophers into conversation with each other, but to do so in an extremely readable way. Indeed, he is able to explain extremely difficult philosophical disputes with clarity and to convey a palpable sense of excitement.” — Robert Erlewine, author of <i>Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason</i> |
Inhoudsopgave
Introduction | 1 |
Levinas Spinozism Nietzsche and the Body | 31 |
Prophetic Speech in Levinas and Spinoza and Maimonides | 57 |
Levinas and Spinoza To Love God for Nothing | 83 |
Levinas and Spinoza Justice and the State | 103 |
Spinozas Prince For Whom Is the TheologicalPolitical Treatise Written? | 119 |
Levinas on Spinozas Misunderstanding of Judaism | 189 |
Thinking Least about Death Mortality and Morality in Spinoza Heidegger and Levinas | 237 |
Spinozas Spleen Babies Fools and Madmen | 279 |
| 317 | |
| 323 | |
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Out of Control: Confrontations between Spinoza and Levinas Richard A. Cohen Gedeeltelijke weergave - 2016 |