Nine Talmudic Readings by Emmanuel Levinas

出版者:Indiana University Press

作者:Annette Aronowicz

页数:238

译者:Aronowicz, Annette

出版时间:1994-02-01

价格:USD 17.95

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780253208767

具体描述

oI know of no work that more readily opens this classic of Judaic learning to the general reader.O NThe Key Reporter oThe appearance in English of nine of LevinasOs essays on talmudic discourse, collected and beautifully translated by Aronowicz, is an important occasion...These essays are crucial to the interpretation of LevinasOs work more generally, [and] AronowiczOs excellent introduction and occasional notes are very helpful in making this work accessible to those unacquainted with either Talmud or Levinas.O NReligious Studies Review Nine rich and masterful readings of the Talmud by the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas translate Jewish thought into the language of modern times. Between 1963 and 1975, Levinas delivered these commentaries at the annual Talmudic colloquia of a group of French Jewish intellectuals in Paris. Here Levinas applies a hermeneutic that simultaneously allows the classic Jewish texts to shed light on contemporary problems and lets modern problems illuminate the texts. Besides being quintessential illustrations of the art of reading, the essays express the deeply ethical vision of the human condition that makes Levinas one of the most important thinkers of our time.

作者简介

来自维基百科Emanuelis Levinas (later adapted to French orthography as Emmanuel Levinas) received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania. After WWII, he studied the Talmud under the enigmatic "Monsieur Chouchani," whose influence he acknowledged only late in his life.

Levinas began his philosophical studies at Strasbourg University in 1924, where he began his lifelong friendship with the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot. In 1928, he went to Freiburg University to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. At Freiburg he also met Martin Heidegger. Levinas became one of the very first French intellectuals to draw attention to Heidegger and Husserl, by translating Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and by drawing on their ideas in his own philosophy, in works such as his The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, De l'Existence à l'Existant, and En Découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.

According to his New York Times obituary, Levinas came to regret his enthusiasm for Heidegger, because of the latter's lack of antipathy for the Nazis. During a lecture on forgiveness, Levinas stated "One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."[1]

After earning his doctorate Levinas taught at a private Jewish High School in Paris, the École Normale Israélite Orientale, eventually becoming its director. He began teaching at the University of Poitiers in 1961, at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris in 1967, and at the Sorbonne in 1973, from which he retired in 1979. He was also a Professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

In the 1950s, Levinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy." For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Levinas called "ontology"). Levinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). By his lights, ethics becomes an entity independent of subjectivity to the point where ethical responsibility is integral to the subject; hence an ethics of responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth."

Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness."[2]. At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one's freedom, to affirm or deny.[3] One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as an attempt to take hold of this otherness.

In Levinas's later thought following "Totality and Infinity", he argued that our responsibility for the other was already rooted within our subjective constitution. It should be noted that the first line of the preface of this book is "everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality."[4] This can be seen most clearly in his later account of recurrence (chapter 4 in "Otherwise Than Being"), where Levinas maintained that subjectivity was formed in and through our subjected-ness to the other. In this way, his effort was not to move away from traditional attempts to locate the other within subjectivity (this he agrees with), so much as his view was that subjectivity was primordially ethical and not theoretical. That is to say, our responsibility for the other was not a derivative feature of our subjectivity; instead, obligation founds our subjective being-in-the-world by giving it a meaningful direction and orientation. Levinas's thesis "ethics as first philosophy", then, means that the traditional philosophical pursuit of knowledge is but a secondary feature of a more basic ethical duty to the other.

The elderly Levinas was a distinguished French public intellectual, whose books reportedly sold well. He had a major impact on the young Jacques Derrida, a fellow French Jew whose seminal Writing and Difference contains an essay, "Violence and Metaphysics," on Levinas. Derrida also delivered a eulogy at Levinas's funeral, later published as Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas, an appreciation and exploration of Levinas's moral philosophy.

用户评价

翻开这本书，我的心头立刻涌上一股难以言喻的敬畏感。它仿佛是一座由思想的巨石垒砌而成的迷宫，每一个转角都通向一个更深邃的哲学领域。我不是在阅读，而是在进行一场精神上的攀登，试图触及那些恒久不变的真理。作者的文字如同高悬的星辰，遥远而璀璨，需要极大的耐心和专注力去解码。那种抽丝剥茧、层层深入的论证过程，让人不得不放慢呼吸，细细品味每一个词语的重量。它要求读者卸下所有预设的观念，以一种近乎虔诚的态度去面对文本。读到某些精妙之处，我常常需要合上书本，起身踱步，让那些复杂的概念在脑海中沉淀、重组。这不仅仅是智力上的挑战，更是一种对自身存在边界的审视与拓展。书中的结构安排巧妙得令人称奇，看似松散的章节实则暗含精密的内在逻辑，引导着读者一步步走向更核心的洞见。我感受到的不是被告知答案，而是被邀请参与到永无止境的追问之中，这本身就是一种极大的精神馈赠。

这本书给我的感觉，就像是置身于一场跨越千年的对话现场。那种厚重感，并非源于晦涩的术语堆砌，而是来自字里行间弥漫出的对人类境况的深切关怀。它有一种奇特的穿透力，能够轻易地刺破日常生活的表层喧嚣，直抵我们灵魂深处最原始的困惑。我惊喜地发现，作者的叙述方式极具音乐性，那些长句的韵律感和内在的张力，使得原本可能枯燥的哲学思辨，变成了一场扣人心弦的内心独白。在阅读的过程中，我时常会产生一种强烈的共鸣，仿佛作者正在替我诉说那些我一直想表达却无从下口的感受。然而，这种共鸣并非肤浅的附和，而是建立在对复杂性的充分理解之上。每次重新拾起这本书，总能发现一些先前忽略的细微之处，它们如同隐藏的宝石，在不同的光线下折射出新的光芒。它迫使我重新审视“我”与“他者”的关系，这种对伦理基础的彻底追问，足以撼动一个人既有的世界观。

这是一本需要时间去“等待”的书。它不像快餐文学那样即时满足，而是更像一坛陈年的老酒，需要长久的酝酿才能品出其醇厚的滋味。作者的语言风格极为凝练，每一个词汇的选择都经过了近乎苛刻的打磨，不留一丝冗余。这种精准性使得文本具有极高的密度，稍微走神，就可能错过一个至关重要的逻辑环节。对我而言，阅读它更像是一种持续性的、对自我心智的训练。它揭示了语言的局限性，同时也展示了语言在试图超越自身界限时所能达到的美学高度。书中对于“他者性”的论述，那种近乎绝对的、不可被完全把握的“异在性”，在我的脑海中留下了深刻的烙印。它颠覆了我对传统形而上学“同一性”的理解，提供了一个完全不同的参照系来观察世界和人际互动。这本书不是用来“读完”的，而是用来“反复进入”的。

坦白说，初读此书，我感到有些不知所措，仿佛站在一座巨大的知识冰川面前，不知该从何处着手融化。它的篇幅和密度，注定这不是一本可以轻松消遣的作品。然而，一旦找到那个正确的切入点，那种豁然开朗的体验是其他任何阅读都无法比拟的。作者的思考路径极其迂回且精确，他似乎总能找到一条非传统的路线，将看似不相关的概念连接起来，形成一个宏大而统一的知识体系。这种思考的“异质性”正是其魅力所在。它挑战了我们习惯于线性和直白表达的阅读模式，要求我们接受一种更为复杂、多维度的世界图景。我尤其欣赏其中对“无限”与“责任”之间关系的探讨，那种将个体置于一个永恒的、不可推卸的道德义务之中的描绘，既令人感到压力，又充满了崇高的力量。读完一段，我常常需要停下来，不是为了休息，而是为了消化那种被拉伸至极限的思想张力。

如果用一个词来形容这次阅读体验，那便是“震撼”。这不是那种突如其来的、轰轰烈烈的震撼，而是一种缓慢渗透、逐渐累积的结构性冲击。作者的视角是如此独特和深刻，他似乎能够看到我们习以为常的观念背后，那层薄如蝉翼却又坚不可摧的意识结构。书中那些关于时间、临在与他者之间微妙张力的论述，如同手术刀般精准地剖析了现代经验的核心困境。它的结构本身就充满了哲学意味，并非简单地陈述观点，而是通过一系列精心构建的论证序列，引导读者亲身体验到抵达某个结论的艰难与必要性。每当我觉得自己似乎已经把握了作者的意图时，紧接着的下一页内容又会将我带入一个更加幽深、更加难以言喻的境地。这是一次对阅读耐力的考验，但最终的回报是巨大的——它改变了我看待“在场”与“缺席”的方式，留给我的是一种持久的、带着责任感的清醒。

小女子才疏学浅，读得也不够仔细，因而不觉得此书有什么特别的地方

小女子才疏学浅，读得也不够仔细，因而不觉得此书有什么特别的地方

小女子才疏学浅，读得也不够仔细，因而不觉得此书有什么特别的地方

小女子才疏学浅，读得也不够仔细，因而不觉得此书有什么特别的地方

小女子才疏学浅，读得也不够仔细，因而不觉得此书有什么特别的地方