Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophical work on ‘the Other’ offers a challenge to the discipline of anthropology that claims knowledge of the human. For Levinas, the ‘secrecy’ of subjectivity – a fundamental facet of the human condition – demands an ethics of ignorance and not-knowing; the mystery of otherness is only to be approached through ‘inspiration’. Can anthropology meet a Levinasian challenge if it would define itself as a science as well as a humanistic documentation of social life? This book endeavours to take Levinasian and anthropological precepts equally seriously and offers a radical conclusion.
“This is a compelling and thought-provoking piece of work. It offers an excellent account and application of Levinas’ work to anthropology, demonstrating the relevance of his philosophical writings to the discipline. The book is clearly written and will be of interest and relevance within the social sciences and in relation to other disciplines.” • Andrew Irving, University of Manchester
Nigel Rapport is Emeritus Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is Founding Director of the St Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. His most recent book was Cosmopolitan Love and Individuality: Ethical Engagement beyond Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019).
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Part I
Chapter 1. Cosmopolitan Anthropology: A Moral Vision of Human Being and Individual Love
Part II
Chapter 2. At Home in the Integument of the Body: Perceiving beyond Language and Culture
Chapter 3. Being Inspired to Practise an Acultural Ethical Relationality: Testifying
Chapter 4. Tracing the Density of Human Being and Loving the Invisible, Silent Other
Chapter 5. ‘Jews Belong to Eternity’: Attending Selflessly to the Dimension of Homeless Humankind
Conclusion: Another Phenomenology: Ego and Other Always and Already Conjoined in Creation
References
Index