1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910806107203321

Autore

Hammerschlag Sarah

Titolo

Broken tablets : Levinas, Derrida and the literary afterlife of religion / / Sarah Hammerschlag ; cover design, Lisa Hamm

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Columbia University Press, , 2016

©2016

ISBN

0-231-54213-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (270 p.)

Disciplina

194

Soggetti

Jüdische Philosophie

Literatur

PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Deconstruction

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- 1. "What Must a Jewish Thinker Be?" -- 2. Levinas, Literature, and The Ruin of The World -- 3. Between The Jew and Writing -- 4. To Lose One's Head: Literature and The Democracy to Come -- 5. Literature and The Politicaltheological Remains -- Epilogue: "There is Not a Pin to Choose Between Us" -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Over a span of thirty years, twentieth-century French philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida held a conversation across texts. Sharing a Jewish heritage and a background in phenomenology, both came to situate their work at the margins of philosophy, articulating this placement through religion and literature. Chronicling the interactions between these thinkers, Sarah Hammerschlag argues that the stakes in their respective positions were more than philosophical. They were also political. Levinas's investments were born out in his writings on Judaism and ultimately in an evolving conviction that the young state of Israel held the best possibility for achieving such an ideal. For Derrida, the Jewish question was literary. The stakes of Jewish survival could only be approached through reflections on modern literature's religious legacy, a line of thinking that provided



him the means to reconceive democracy. Hammerschlag's reexamination of Derrida and Levinas's textual exchange not only produces a new account of this friendship but also has significant ramifications for debates within Continental philosophy, the study of religion, and political theology.