16 jul 2005

I keep wanting to react to this post at Cahiers de Corey. I'm not sure why I care particularly, since I'm not Jewish, but I can't go along with the reduction of the Jewish ethical tradition to a series of negative prohibitions, "thou shalt nots." It seems a little strange to me that Josh associates Christianity with a lot of vibrant popculture spiritual phenomena (Narnia!) while being so cut off from his own tradition--Judaism--that he is somehow unable to recognize Levinas as the specifically Jewish philosopher he is. After describing Levinas's conflation of ethics and transcendence, Josh says that he distrusts this conflation because of his own "latent Judaism." Maybe I'm misreading the argument here? It would seem that he could put Levinas (and kristeva for that matter) in his own list of Jewish writers like Benjamin, Kafka, Adorno, Jabès...

3 comentarios:

Ernesto dijo...

...and you wouldn't?

Completely different thinkers, but Levinas and Buber -and Jankelevich, and Rosenzweig share the same shelf in my bookcase. Underneath, Benjamin, Kafka, Adorno, Edmond Jabés, Arendt...

Jonathan dijo...

No, of course I would. That's my point.

Ernesto dijo...

Oh. That's what I thought. ;)