226 pages

English

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Ethics and Selfhood , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - James R. Mensch

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226 pages

English

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Description

According to James R. Mensch, a minimal requirement for ethics is that of guarding against genocide. In deciding which races are to live and which to die, genocide takes up a standpoint outside of humanity. To guard against this, Mensch argues that we must attain the critical distance required for ethical judgment without assuming a superhuman position. His description of how to attain this distance constitutes a genuinely new reading of the possibility of a phenomenological ethics, one that involves reassessing what it means to be a self. Selfhood, according to Mensch, involves both embodiment and the self-separation brought about by our encounter with others—the very others who provide us with the experiential context needed for moral judgment. Buttressing his position with documented accounts of those who hid Jews during the Holocaust, Mensch shows how the self-separation that occurs in empathy opens the space within which moral judgment can occur and obligation can find its expression. He includes a reading of the major moral philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Arendt, Levinas—even as he develops a phenomenological account of the necessity of reading literature to understand the full extent of ethical responsibility. Mensch's work offers an original and provocative approach to a topic of fundamental importance.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Selfhood and Certainty

2. Empathy and Self-Presence

3. The Divided Self: A Phenomenological History of Ethics

4. Rescue and the Origin of Responsibility

5. An Ethics of Framing

6. Freedom and Alterity

7. Alterity and Society

Notes

Bibliography

Name Index

Subject Index

Sujets

Philosophie

Éthique et morale

Ethique et morale

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780791486696
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Ethics and Selfhood

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Ethics and Selfhood

Alterity and the Phenomenology of Obligation

James Richard Mensch

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, elec-trostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY, 12207

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mensch, James R. Ethics and selfhood : alterity and the phenomenology of obligation / James Richard Mensch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–7914–5751–6 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0–7914–5752–4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Ethics. 2. Phenomenology. 3. Self (Philosophy). 4. Other (Philosophy) I. Title.

B945.M4853 E84 2003 170—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2002030482

This book is dedicated to Jessica Claire Mensch and to the promise of her work

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Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Selfhood and Certainty

Contents

2. Empathy and Self-Presence

3. The Divided Self: A Phenomenological History of Ethics

4. Rescue and the Origin of Responsibility

5. An Ethics of Framing

6. Freedom and Alterity

7. Alterity and Society

Notes

Bibliography

Name Index

Subject Index

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Acknowledgments

ome of the chapters appearing in this volume are reworked versions S of previously published articles. Acknowledgment is made to the fol-lowing publishing houses, periodicals and persons for their kind permis-sion to republish all or part of the following articles: “Selfhood and Politics,”Symposium, Journal of the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought6:1 (2002), “Crosscultural Understanding and Ethics,” inNew Europe at the Crossroads I, ed. U. Beitter (New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1999), “Rescue and the Face to Face: Ethics and the Holocaust” inNew Europe at the Crossroads II, ed. U. Beitter (New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2001), and “Literature and Evil” inEthics and Literature, ed. Dorothee Gelhard (Berlin: Galda and Wilch, 2002). I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, the Director, Department for the Righteous, for permission to quote from the mate-rial at the Archives at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Without Dr. Paldiel’s assistance and encouragement, a crucial chapter of this book could not have been written. I also wish to thank the director of the Husserl Archives in Louvain, Professor Rudolph Bernet, for extending me the hospitality of the Archives and granting me permission to quote from theNachlass. Finally, grateful acknowledgment is due to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a grant sup-porting the research that made this volume possible.