Aspects of Alterity: Levinas, Marcel, and the Contemporary Debate

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the help and support of many other people. I wish to thank the professors who helped to inspire, shape, and encourage my own enthusiasm for philosophy. The faculty members of California State University, Long Beach, and Boston College were uniformly helpful and supportive, especially Daniel Guerrière, Richard Cobb-Stevens, and Jacques Taminiaux. Richard Kearney has, in addition to being an exceptional teacher and mentor, been a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. My friends and colleagues in the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology have provided a forum in which to develop these ideas. Jack Caputo and Merold Westphal have been particularly helpful and supportive; both have encouraged me through numerous small gestures that, while no doubt common and unremarkable from their perspectives, were from my perspective the occasion for important insights. My graduate assistants at Loyola Marymount University, Bob Robinson, Tim Chatman, and Gabriel Griffith, were instrumental in helping me to proofread and prepare the manuscript. Brad Stone, James Taylor, and Thomas Whaling provided helpful feedback as well; their input was much appreciated. This project was brought to completion with the generous support of a Summer Research Grant xi from Loyola Marymount University and a Book Subvention Grant from the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. Most importantly, I want to thank my wife, Gitty—to whom, along with my daughters, Darya and Ciara, this work is dedicated. Her love, encouragement, and patience during the long process of bringing this work to completion have been indispensable. In addition, I wish to thank Helen Tartar, Jack Caputo, and the staff at Fordham University Press for their support of this project and their work on my behalf. Finally, my thanks to the various journals and publishers who have allowed me to include sections of previously published material in this book. Part of chapter 2 appeared as ‘‘Gabriel Marcel,’’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab), http://plato.stanford.edu/ (2004). Portions of chapter 6 appeared previously in my ‘‘God and the Other Person: Levinas’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard’s Encounter with Otherness,’’ in the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 75 (2001). Elements of chapter 7 appeared in ‘‘The God Who May Be: Quis ergo amo cum Deum meum amo?’’ in Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 60 (2004), reprinted in After God, ed. John Manoussakis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005); ‘‘Plus de Secret: The Paradox of Prayer,’’ in The Phenomenology of Prayer, ed. Bruce Benson and Norman Wirzba (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005); ‘‘Judging the Other: Beyond Toleration,’’ in Interpretando la experiencia de la tolerancia [Interpreting the Experience of Tolerance], ed. Rodrigo Ferradas (Lima, Peru: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú/Fondo Editorial, 2006); and ‘‘Constellations: Gabriel Marcel’s Philosophy of Relative Otherness,’’ in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 80, no. 3 (2006). xii Acknowledgments Aspects of Alterity ...