Levinas and the Trauma of Responsibility

The Ethical Significance of Time

Cynthia D. Coe

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780253031969
• eBook ISBN:
  9780253031983
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Levinas's account of responsibility challenges dominant notions of time, autonomy, and subjectivity according to Cynthia D. Coe. Employing the concept of trauma in Levinas's late writings, Coe draws together his understanding of time and his claim that responsibility is an obligation to the other that cannot be anticipated or warded off. Tracing the broad significance of these ideas, Coe shows how Levinas revises our notions of moral agency, knowledge, and embodiment. Her focus on time brings a new interpretive lens to Levinas's work and reflects on a wider discussion of the fragmentation of human experience as an ethical subject. Coe's understanding of trauma and time offers a new appreciation of how Levinas can inform debates about gender, race, mortality, and animality.

Table of contents

• Cover
• LEVINAS AND THE TRAUMA OF RESPONSIBILITY
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• 1 Deformalizing Time
• 2 The Traumatic Impact of Deformalized Time
• 3 The Method of An-Archeology
• 4 Between Theodicy and Despair
• 5 The Sobering Up of Oedipus
• 6 Anxieties of Incarnation
• 7 Rethinking Death on the Basis of Time
• 8 Animals and Creatures
• Conclusion: Inheriting the Thought of Diachrony
• Bibliography
• Index