Powers of Distinction
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A01=Nancy Levene
Abraham
anselm
Author_Nancy Levene
badiou
belonging
Category=QRAB
christianity
covenant
democracy
devotion
divinity
dualism
enlightenment
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
exile
faithfulness
god
history
identity
judaism
kant
laws
modernity
nonfiction
old testament
opposition
philosophy
post-secularism
rabbi
religion
sacrifice
secularism
spinoza
theology
tribe
truth
vico
Product details
- ISBN 9780226507538
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 06 Dec 2017
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this major new work, philosopher of religion Nancy Levene examines the elemental character of modernity and religion. Deep in their operating system, she argues, are dualisms of opposition and identity that lead to social and personal dead ends. But alongside them we also find a hidden dualism that of mutual relation which it is our task to cultivate. Levene uncovers this lost distinction between dualistic systems. In one system, the perennial dualism of the one and the many, the terms are either opposed or identified. In the other system, the terms are held in a relation of mutuality. In readings from Abraham to the present, Levene recovers this distinction, showing how it liberates thinking and politics and renews modernity's most innovative ideals- democracy, criticism, interpretation. From Abraham we get the biblical call to give up tribal belonging for covenantal relation. Modernity, which Levene argues encompasses Abraham's call, bequeaths the political work of constituting collectives with a critique of all that divides self from other, us from them.
Drawing on a long tradition of thinkers and scholars even as she breaks new ground, Levene offers here nothing less than a new way of understanding modernity as an ethical claim about our world, a philosophy of the powers of distinction to include rather than to divide.
Nancy Levene is associate professor of religious studies at Yale University. She is the author of Spinoza's Revelation: Religion, Democracy, and Reason.
