The Intersubjectivity of Time: Levinas and Infinite Responsibility

Acknowledgments

vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Time for Levinas is intersubjective. It is the interruption of the other person demanding me to respond, speak, and listen. In this sense, this book is not only a material object one can pick off the shelf, hold, smell, and browse through. It is an occasion, a temporal event. It developed from listening and responding to my teachers, students, colleagues, and family who have inspired and influenced my life and philosophical thinking. These interruptions are the bedrock of this book. This book grew out of my dissertation at the New School for Social Research, New York. I am grateful to all my teachers at the New School for the opportunity to learn from them how to approach philosophical questions and for opening before me new ways of thinking about my own field of interest. I am particularly thankful to Richard J. Bernstein, my PhD advisor, whose openness and nondogmatic approach to philosophy as well as to students has become my model as a researcher and teacher. Agnes Heller, my MA advisor, taught me to read closely the philosophical text before turning to secondary material. Simon Critchley and James Miller, who served on my dissertation committee, offered comments and observations that enabled me to develop and enrich ideas presented in this book. I am especially obliged to Hagi Kenaan from Tel Aviv University who was the first to guide me in finding my way and voice in the wonderful world of philosophy. To paraphrase what Levinas says of Rosenzweig in the preface to Totality and Infinity, he is too often present in this book to be cited. I am also indebted to the Goldstein-Goren International Center for Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, for the generous postdoctoral fellowship that allowed me to write the last chapters of this book. I am grateful to the members of the department of Jewish viii Acknowledgments Thought for providing the perfect environment for researching Levinas’s Jewish texts and for the advice and assistance they offered. I am particularly thankful to Haim Kreisel the head of the center for his support; to Yaakov Blidstein, who read portions of the book and offered insightful suggestions; and to Uri Erlich, with whom I had a meaningful conversation about prayer that lead to the development of chapter 5. It has been a pleasure to work with Susan Wadsworth-Booth, the director of Duquesne University Press. I have benefited enormously from her professional guidance and the seriousness with which she approached the manuscript. I am grateful to Brock Bahler for his meticulous editorial work. His careful reading, queries, comments, and style improvement are greatly appreciated. I also thank two anonymous referees and the in-house readers of Duquesne University Press. I hope they will see the improvements their comments brought. Portions of this book appeared in earlier and different versions. Much of chapter 3 appeared as “Finding Time for a Fecund Feminine in Levinas’s Thought” in Philosophy Today 53, no. 2 (2009): 179–90. Part of the introduction and afterthoughts appeared in an article entitled “The Torah of Levinasian Time” in The Heythrop Journal 53, no. 1 (2012): 81–99. I wish to thank these publishers for permission to reprint this material. Finally, my deepest and infinite gratitude goes to my family—my (immemorial) past, my present (instant), and my (fecund) future. I am indebted to my parents, Etty and Michael, whose infinite responsibility , love, generosity, and support are a model for my own parenting. My mother’s fortitude and exceptional determination and my father’s humbleness and extraordinary intelligence have tremendously influenced my life and work. Many thanks go to my brothers, sisters, and in-laws who have been a source of encouragement. While they taught my sons to appreciate cooking, music, catching waves, hiking, computer games, basketball, art, theater, and science, I was able to focus on writing. I thank Sivan Cohen, my sister-in-law, who read portions Acknowledgments ix of the book and always had insightful suggestions. Finally, special thanks go to Ori and Ido, my two wonderful sons, who are always a happy interruption, and to my husband, Itai. Without his love and faith in me, I would have not been able to complete this book. I dedicate this book to them. ...