Minimal Theologies - Critiques of Secular Reason in Adorno and Levinas

Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-0-8018-8017-9
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 758 Seiten, Format (B × H): 166 mm x 227 mm, Gewicht: 998 g

Originally published in in 2004. What, at this historical moment "after Auschwitz," still remains of the questions traditionally asked by theology? What now is theology's minimal degree? This magisterial study, the first extended comparison of the writings of Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, explores remnants and echoes of religious forms in these thinkers' critiques of secular reason, finding in the work of both a "theology in pianissimo" constituted by the trace of a transcendent other. The author analyzes, systematizes, and formalizes this idea of an other of reason. In addition, he frames these thinkers' innovative projects within the arguments of such intellectual heirs as Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, defending their work against later accusations of "performative contradiction" (by Habermas) or "empiricism" (by Derrida) and in the process casting important new light on those later writers as well. Attentive to rhetorical and rational features of Adorno's and Levinas's texts, his investigations of the concepts of history, subjectivity, and language in their writings provide a radical interpretation of their paradoxical modes of thought and reveal remarkable and hitherto unsuspected parallels between their philosophical methods, parallels that amount to a plausible way of overcoming certain impasses in contemporary philosophical thinking. In Adorno, this takes the form of a dialectical critique of dialectics; in Levinas, that of a phenomenological critique of phenomenology, each of which sheds new light on ancient and modern questions of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. For the English-language publication, the author has extensively revised and updated the prize-winning German version.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vries, Hent

de Vries, Hent

Weitere Mitwirkende

Hale, Geoffrey

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Phänomenologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Tertium Datur
Part I. Antiprolegomena
Chapter 1. Toward a Critique of Theology
Chapter 2. A Possible Internal and External Differentiation of Habermas's Theory of Rationality
Part II. Dialectica
Chapter 3. Paradox and Aporia in Adorno's Philosophy of Nonidentity
Chapter 4. The Construction of Occidental Subjectivism: Reductio ad hominem versus Remembrance of Nature in the Subject
Chapter 5. The Breaking Apart of Western Objectivism and the Resurrection of the Particular and the Ephemeral in the Philosophy of History
Chapter 6. Metaphysical Experience
Part III. Phaenomenologica
Chapter 7. Paradox and Aporia in Levinas's Philosophy of the Ethical-Religious Other
Chapter 8. Levinas on Art and Truth
Chapter 9. The Dialectics of Subjectivity and the Critique of Objectivism
Chapter 10. Loosening Logocentrism: Language and Skepticism
Part IV. Hermeneutica Sacra sive Profana
Chapter 11. From Unhappy Consciousness to Bad Conscience
Chapter 12 "The Other Theology": Conceptual, Historical, and Political Idolatry
Appendix. The Theology of the Sign and the Sign of Theology: The Apophatics of Deconstruction
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

de Vries, Hent
Hent de Vries is Paulette Goddard Professor of the Humanities. He is Professor of German, Religious Studies, Comparative Literature, and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy. He received his BA/MA in Judaica and Hellenistic Thought (Theology), Public Finance and Political Economy (Law), at Leiden University, and obtained his PhD there in Philosophy of Religion, with a study on Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, entitled Theologie im pianissimo: Zwischen Rationalität und Dekonstruktion. Before joining NYU, de Vries directed The Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University, holding the Russ Family Chair in the Humanities with a joint appointment in Philosophy. He also taught in the Philosophy departments of Loyola University in Chicago and the University of Amsterdam, where he long held the Chair of Metaphysics and its History and co-founded and directed the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. He received visiting positions and fellowships at Harvard, Chicago, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, the Paris Collège International de Philosophie, the Université Saint Louis in Brussels, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Université de Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne. Hent de Vries is currently serving his second term as Director of the summer School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University (SCT), Ithaca. In 2018, he was the Titulaire of the Chaire de Métaphysique Étienne Gilson at the Institut Catholique, Paris. He is the Editor of the book series "Cultural Memory in the Present," published by Stanford University Press.