Geoffrey Holsclaw(back to Levinas. The 3rd party must wait for meaningless philosophy!) The reasion I am (dis)interested in Levinas is because of many contrasting themes and approaches to other philosophers I’ve been reading (of which I’ve already noted from Badiou and Zizek), all of which have political/ethical ramifications. Briefly, concerning Lacan, I note: 1) the similarity […]
(Let’s take a break from philosophy) Senator Lieberman has lost his bit for re-election in the primary for Connecticut, but has decided to run as an independent candidate. Now many in the EC and beyond are talking about what it means for the church to be political (does the Church have its own politic, if […]
(I posted this over at churchandpomo.org, but I thought since it also rings true for this blog, that I might as well…) Many of you have probably heard of the slow food movment (against the fast food industry), and perhaps even a slow life city (heralding a slow pace, slow education, slow industry, and slow […]
(More on the in-breaking of the Infinite from Levinas) So far my theme from Levinas has been the infinite, not to the neglect of the Other, a persistent theme of L.’s, but rather as a way of understanding how, beyond the phenomenological horizon, the Other break in from a height, from an elevation of transcendence, […]
Recently I’ve been working through Badiou’s and Zizek’s complaints with Levinas, so I thought that perhaps I ought to work through Levinas himself. So here are some quotes/thoughts from his Basic Philosophical Writings (all paginations from this text). The themes which interest me (and I know Levinas hates the ‘thematic’) are ‘subjectivity’, the Infinite, and […]
The idea of “community” is like the sun. The more we stare at it the less we see. Or rather, community is like Happiness, which if pursued outright always escapes us, leaving a narcissistic void (much like most discusions of worship seem to miss the essence). Rather than a direct apprehesion or formation of community, […]
the simulacra of community: the gathering of individuals. where is community? What does it look like? too often our search for community ends in a cheap simulation, a simulacra, and the church is most complicit in this illusion. Churches aren’t called “Church” anymore; they’re called “communities” of Christ, faith, friendship, whatever you want. Yet rarely […]
While the argument in this essay meanders among many topics (as do all of Zizek’s writing), I’m going to focus on the twists and turns of Zizek’s complaint against Levinas. Summary In the face of our neighbor, do we glimpse the Other as transcendent ground of ethical relations, or spy a terrifying monstrosity from which […]