Levinas and the Ancients [Paperback]

The relation between the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions is the great problem of Western philosophy, according to Emmanuel Levinas. In this book Brian Schroeder, Silvia Benso, and an international group of philosophers address the relationship between Levinas and the world of ancient thought. In addition to philosophy, themes touching on religion, mythology, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics are also explored. The volume as a whole provides a unified and extended discussion of how an engagement between Levinas and thinkers from the ancient tradition works to enrich understandings of both. This book opens new pathways in ancient and modern philosophical studies as it illuminates new interpretations of Levinas' ethics and his social and political philosophy.

Thanks to the initiative of Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder, the authors of this volume not only explore the easily forgotten dimension of Levinas' debt to some early sources of European philosophy, but also focus on the manners in which he has used these sources, to show their relevance for us.

Foreword by Adriaan Peperzak
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations of Works by Emmanuel Levinas
To Return in a New Way: Introduction / Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder
1. The Breathing of the Air: Presocratic Echoes in Levinas / Silvia Benso
2. The Eternal and the New: Socrates and Levinas on Desire and Need / Deborah Achtenberg
3. Levinas Questioning Plato on Eros and Maieutics / Francisco J. Gonzalez
4. Getting under the Skin: Platonic Myths in Levinas / Tanja St?hler
5. Lending Assistance Always to Itself: Levinas' Infinite Conversation with Platonic Dialogue / Michael Naas
6. Ethics as First Philosophy: Aristotelian Reflections on Intelligence, Sensibility, and Transcendence / Claudia Baracchi
7. Aristotle and Levinas on War and Peace: The One against the Other / Catriona Hanley
8. Stoic Ethics and Totality in Light of Levinasian Alterity / Julie Piering