A Covenant of Creatures

Levinas's Philosophy of Judaism

Michael Fagenblat

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780804774680
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

"I am not a particularly Jewish thinker, " said Emmanuel Levinas, "I am just a thinker." This book argues against the idea, affirmed by Levinas himself, that Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being separate philosophy from Judaism. By reading Levinas's philosophical works through the prism of Judaic texts and ideas, Michael Fagenblat argues that what Levinas called "ethics" is as much a hermeneutical product wrought from the Judaic heritage as a series of phenomenological observations. Decoding the Levinas's philosophy of Judaism within a Heideggerian and Pauline framework, Fagenblat uses biblical, rabbinic, and Maimonidean texts to provide sustained interpretations of the philosopher's work. Ultimately he calls for a reconsideration of the relation between tradition and philosophy, and of the meaning of faith after the death of epistemology.

Table of contents

• Cultural Memory in the Present
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface: Judaism as a Philosophical Way of Life
• Acknowledgments
• 1 - Levinas’s New Creation
• 2 - From Chaos to Creation
• 3 - Ethics in the Image of God
• INTERLUDE
• 4 - Ethical Negative Theology
• 5 - Secularizing the Covenant
• 6 - The Ambivalence of Fraternity
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Cultural Memory in the Present