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

- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-x
- Abbreviations
- pp. xi-xii
- Introduction
- pp. 1-20
- Part I. Totality and Infinity
- Chapter 1: Violence
- pp. 23-37
- Chapter 2: Freedom
- pp. 38-68
- Chapter 3: Creation
- pp. 69-95
- Chapter 4: Knowledge
- pp. 96-112
- Part II. Otherwise Than Being
- Chapter 5: Time and the Self
- pp. 115-132
- Chapter 7: Glory and Shine
- pp. 157-186
- Conclusion
- pp. 187-188
- Bibliography
- pp. 197-202
Additional Information
ISBN
9780810167827
Related ISBN(s)
9780810129948, 9780810135635
MARC Record
OCLC
881398420
Pages
224
Launched on MUSE
2014-06-13
Language
English
Open Access
Yes
Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-ND
Copyright
2014