In this Book
Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other
Book
2014
Published by:
Northwestern University Press
Series:
Rereading Ancient Philosophy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
summary
In Essential Vulnerabilities, Deborah Achtenberg contests Emmanuel Levinas’s idea that Plato is a philosopher of freedom for whom thought is a return to the self. To the contrary, she agrees, Plato, like Levinas, is a philosopher of the other. While they share the view that human beings are essentially vulnerable and in relation to others, they conceive human vulnerability and responsiveness differently.
For Plato, when ones see beauty in others, one is overwhelmed by the beauty of what is, by the vision of eternal form. For Levinas, on the other hand, we are disrupted by the newness, foreignness, or singularity of the other. For him, the other is not eternal, but new or foreign. The other is an unknowable singularity. By bringing into focus these similarities and differences, Achtenberg resituates Plato in relation to Levinas and opens up two contrasting ways that self is essentially in relation to others.
For Plato, when ones see beauty in others, one is overwhelmed by the beauty of what is, by the vision of eternal form. For Levinas, on the other hand, we are disrupted by the newness, foreignness, or singularity of the other. For him, the other is not eternal, but new or foreign. The other is an unknowable singularity. By bringing into focus these similarities and differences, Achtenberg resituates Plato in relation to Levinas and opens up two contrasting ways that self is essentially in relation to others.
Table of Contents
ISBN | 9780810167827 |
---|---|
Related ISBN(s) | 9780810129948, 9780810135635 |
MARC Record | Download |
OCLC | 881398420 |
Pages | 224 |
Launched on MUSE | 2014-06-13 |
Language | English |
Open Access | Yes |
Creative Commons | CC-BY-NC-ND |
Copyright
2014