The Step Back: Ethics and Politics after Deconstruction

by David Wood

Overview

This original contribution to the ethical and political significance of philosophy addresses a number of major themes—identity, violence, the erotic, freedom, responsibility, religious belief, globalization—and critically engages with the work of Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida, and Levinas. It promotes a unique blend of deconstructive critique and a certain English skepticism, leading to the affirmation of a negative capability—a patience and vigilance in the face of both human folly and philosophy's own homegrown pathologies. The author argues for the extension of our sense of openness and responsibility to animal life, and indeed life in general, and not just to the human.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791483213
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	02/01/2012
Series:	SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	405 KB

About the Author

David Wood is Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. His many books include Thinking After Heidegger.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION: Towards a Negative Capability

PART I: Philosophy and Violence

1. Identity and Violence
2. The Philosophy of Violence: The Violence of Philosophy
3. Where Levinas Went Wrong

PART II: Singular Encounters

4. The First Kiss: Tales of Innocence and Experience
5. Thinking God in the Wake of Kierkegaard
6. Dionysus in America

PART III: Ethics and Politics after Deconstruction

7. Notes toward a Deconstructive Phenomenology
8. Responsibility Reinscribed (and How)
9. What Is Ecophenomenology?
10. Globalization and Freedom

POSTSCRIPT: Philosophy: The Antioxidant of Higher Education

NOTES

INDEX