Before the Voice of Reason

David Michael Kleinberg-Levin

Description

Before the Voice of Reason is a phenomenological critique of reason grounded in our experience of the voices that already address us and summon us prior to the emergence of the voice of reason. In part one, David Michael Kleinberg-Levin explores the voices of nature and draws on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to offer a new way of thinking about environmental responsibility. In part two, he looks at the voice of the moral law and the voices of other human beings, advances a more nuanced account of Levinas's distinction between "Saying" and "Said," and proposes a new argument for our responsibility to the other.
Introduction

1. A Human Voice

2. The Project

3. The Ethical Root of the Voice

4. The Voice of Reason

5. Reconciling Voices: the Political Register

6. Conversation

7. Reading This Book

Part I. The Singing of the World Variations on a Theme After Merleau-Ponty

Chapter 1. The Remembrance of Nature in the Voice of the Subject 

1. Invocations of Nature

2. The Song of the Winds

3. The Song of the Earth

Chapter 2. The Question of Origins  

1. Silence

2. Song

Chapter 3. The Voice of Ecological Attunement in a Practice of Caring for the Self 

1. Prologue  

2. The Singing of Language

3. Caring for Oneself:   The Three Phase-Dimensions of the Voice  

4. Dying Echoes: What Must Be Remembered

Part II. Levinas On the Claim of the Ethical

Chapter 4. The Saying and the Said: Giving Time to the Voice of the Other

1. Unavoidable Violence   

2. Responsibility: Claiming the Voice

3. Inspiration

4. Heterology, Heteronomy: The Lyrical Voice

5. The Ethical Dimensions of the Voice 

6. Ethical Saying: The Claim in Dialogue

Chapter 5. The Pre-Originary Dimension of Saying

1. Preliminary Soundings 

2. The Voice of Reason

3. The Pre-Originary Voice

4. Palimpsest: The Trace of the Other in the Text of our Flesh, or, The  Echo of the Other in the Trembling of the Flesh

5. Enigmatic Echoes: Retrieving the Trace

Epilogue
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Éthique et morale
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Philosophy
• Ethique et morale

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 02 septembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780791477823
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

This page intentionally left blank.

Before the Voice of Reason

SUNY Series in Contemporary French Thought

David Pettigrew and François Raffoul, editors

The Creation of the World or Globalization Jean-Luc Nancy, translated and with an introduction by David Pettigrew and François Raffoul

Bergson-Deleuze Encounters: Transcendental Experience and the Thought of the Virtual Valentine Moulard-Leonard

French Interpretations of Heidegger: An Exceptional Reception edited and with an introduction by David Pettigrew and François Raffoul

Before the Voice of Reason

Echoes of Responsibility

in Merleau-Ponty’sEcology

and Levinas’sEthics

8

David Michael Kleinberg-Levin

state university of new york press

Published by

State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2008 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Published 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, electrostatic,

magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise

without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

www.sunypress.edu

Production by Kelli W. LeRoux

Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kleinberg-Levin, David Michael, 1939– Before the voice of reason : echoes of responsibility in Merleau-Ponty’s ecology and Levinas’s ethics / David Michael Kleinberg-Levin. p. com. — (SUNY series in contemporary french thought) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn978–0-7814–7549–2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908–1961. 2. Ecology—Philosophy. 3. Lévinas, Emmanuel—Ethics. 4. Ethics, Modern. 5. Responsibility. I. Title. b2430.m3764k542008 1943—d22 2007050820

1 2 3 4 5

Dedicated to Ev

From the child of joy, a song,

and friendship borne in the echoes

This page intentionally left blank.

“The need to lend a voice to suffering is a condition of all truth.”

—Theodor W. Adorno,Negative Dialectics

This page intentionally left blank.