The political make-up of the contemporary world changes with such rapidity that few attempts have been made to consider with adequate care, the nature and value of the concept of sovereignty. What exactly is meant when one speaks about the acquisition, preservation, infringement or loss of sovereignty? This book revisits the assumptions underlying the applications of this fundamental category, as well as studying the political discourses in which it has been embedded. Bringing together historians, constitutional lawyers, political philosophers and experts (...) in international relations, Sovereignty in Fragments seeks to dispel the illusion that there is a unitary concept of sovereignty of which one could offer a clear definition. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of international relations, international law and the history of political thought. (shrink)

Business managers regularly employ metaphorical violent rhetoric as a means of motivating their employees to action. While it might be effective to this end, research on violent media suggests that violent rhetoric might have other, less desirable consequences. This study examines how the use of metaphorical violent rhetoric by business managers impacts the ethical decision making of employees. We develop and test a model that explains how the use of violent rhetoric impacts employees’ willingness to break ethical standards, depending on (...) the source of the rhetoric. The results of two experiments suggest that the use of violent rhetoric by a CEO at a competing company increases employees’ willingness to engage in ethical violations while the use of violent rhetoric by employees’ own CEO decreases their willingness to engage in unethical behavior. Furthermore, we find that participants who made less ethical decisions motivated by violent rhetoric used by a competitor’s CEO did not view their decisions as less ethical than the other participants in the experiments. The results of these studies highlight potentially harmful unintended consequences of the use of violent rhetoric, providing knowledge that should be useful to managers and academics who want to increase employee motivation without increasing a willingness to engage in unethical behavior. (shrink)

In sharp contrast with Heidegger's insistence that the metaphysics of presence, in particular the objectivation of beings in terms of their being “ready at hand” culminating in the techno‐scientific world‐view, be destructed and overcome in light of a more fundamental thinking of “presencing” or “coming into presence” (Anwesen), the philosophy of the infinitely Other introduced (or should we say: rearticulated) by Emmanuel Levinas marks a radical rupture with all ontology. Indeed, it breaks away from every thought of Being, from the (...) notion of the event or eventhood (Ereignis) of Being, but also from the notion of the gift implied in Heidegger's formula that Being “is” what “there is,” that Being “is” what essentially “gives,” or, finally, that Being “is” (what is) fundamentally given (Es gibt das Sein). From the publication of his earliest phenomenological studies in the 1930s and late 1940s onwards, but especially since the appearance, in 1961, of his first major book Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l'extériorité (Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority), Levinas has left no doubt that the central concern of his philosophical thinking was to leave the parameters – indeed, the very “climate” – of Heideggerian thought behind. This flight, as it were, not merely from ontology but also from Heidegger's later thinking‐of (Andenken) of Being consists, in its first phase, in the reorientation rather than destruction or deconstruction of traditional Western philosophy – a tradition which, according to Levinas, has been by and large a philosophy of the Same (le Même) – in the direction of the Other (l'Autre) or, more precisely, other human beings (autrui). At first glance, therefore, Levinas's first major work is characterized by the attempt to establish ethics as the genuine first philosophy. The ethical relation here is at once the primum intelligibele that puts an end to the essential arbitrariness and the anarchy of the world of opinions and truths, of appearances and idealized constructs. For all its apparent abstraction, it signals itself in the concrete event of obligation, more specifically in the introduction of a responsibility that precedes and exceeds contracts and rules, reciprocity and recognition, norms and conventions. In Totality and Infinity this relation of the self to the other is described in terms of the asymmetrical structure of discourse, of dialogue, and, most importantly, of the face‐to‐face with the other's visage. For, so the argument goes, it is solely in the face‐to‐face that the Desire (désire) for the other arouses, provokes, or evokes. It is in this singular relation without relation alone that the self is accused and made responsible. (shrink)

The apostle Paul has reemerged as a force on the contemporary philosophical scene. Some of the most powerful recent affirmations of nonrepresentational, materialist, and event-oriented philosophies repeat topics and tropes of the ancient apostle. Paul is appropriated both for and against Kantian cosmopolitanism, psychoanalytic models of subjectivity and power, Schmittian political theologies, Derridean messianism, political universalism, and an ongoing refashioning of identity politics within postsecular contexts. This book provides the most comprehensive constellation to date of current thinking about Paul and (...) his cultural or philosophical "afterlives" in ancient, modern, and contemporary contexts. (shrink)

This essay discusses Stanley Cavell’s remarkable interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought against the background of his own ongoing engagement with Wittgenstein, Austin, and the problem of other minds. This unlikely debate, the only extensive discussion of Levinas by Cavell in his long philosophical career sofar, focuses on their different reception of Descartes’s idea of the infinite. The essay proposes to read both thinkers against the background of Wittgenstein’s model of philosophical meditation and raises the question as to whether Cavell and (...) Levinas do not indirectly shed light on the early modern motif of the spiritual automaton. (shrink)

If religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In this engaging study, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, (...) and, especially, Jacques Derrida. Tracing how Derrida probes the discourse on religion, its metaphysical presuppositions, and its transformations, de Vries shows how this author consistently foregrounds the unexpected alliances between a radical interrogation of the history of Western philosophy and the religious inheritance from which that philosophy has increasingly sought to set itself apart. De Vries goes beyond formal analogies between the textual practices of deconstruction and so-called negative theology to address the necessity for a philosophical thinking that situates itself at once close to and at the farthest remove from traditional manifestations of the religious and the theological. This paradox is captured in the phrase adieu ( à dieu ), borrowed from Levinas, which signals at once a turn toward and a leave-taking from God -- and which also gestures toward and departs from the other of this divine other, the possibility of radical evil. Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day. (shrink)

What, at this historical moment "after Auschwitz," still remains of the questions traditionally asked by theology? What now is theology's minimal degree? This magisterial study, the first extended comparison of the writings of Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, explores remnants and echoes of religious forms in these thinkers' critiques of secular reason, finding in the work of both a "theology in pianissimo" constituted by the trace of a transcendent other. The author analyzes, systematizes, and formalizes this idea of an (...) other of reason. In addition, he frames these thinkers' innovative projects within the arguments of such intellectual heirs as Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, defending their work against later accusations of "performative contradiction" (by Habermas) or "empiricism" (by Derrida) and in the process casting important new light on those later writers as well. Attentive to rhetorical and rational features of Adorno's and Levinas's texts, his investigations of the concepts of history, subjectivity, and language in their writings provide a radical interpretation of their paradoxical modes of thought and reveal remarkable and hitherto unsuspected parallels between their philosophical methods, parallels that amount to a plausible way of overcoming certain impasses in contemporary philosophical thinking. In Adorno, this takes the form of a dialectical critique of dialectics in Levinas, that of a phenomenological critique of phenomenology, each of which sheds new light on ancient and modern questions of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. For the English-language publication, the author has extensively revised and updated the prize-winning German version. (shrink)

With the collapse of the bipolar system of global rivalry that dominated world politics after the Second World War, and in an age that is seeing the return of "ethnic cleansing" and "identity politics," the question of violence, in all of its multiple ramifications, imposes itself with renewed urgency. Rather than concentrating on the socioeconomic or political backgrounds of these historical changes, the contributors to this volume rethink the _concept_ of violence, both in itself and in relation to the formation (...) and transformation of identities, whether individual or collective, political or cultural, religious or secular. In particular, they subject the notion of self-determination to stringent scrutiny: is it to be understood as a value that excludes violence, in principle if not always in practice? Or is its relation to violence more complex and, perhaps, more sinister? Reconsideration of the concepts, the practice, and even the critique of violence requires an exploration of the implications and limitations of the more familiar interpretations of the terms that have dominated in the history of Western thought. To this end, the nineteen contributors address the concept of violence from a variety of perspectives in relation to different forms of cultural representation, and not in Western culture alone; in literature and the arts, as well as in society and politics; in philosophical discourse, psychoanalytic theory, and so-called juridical ideology, as well as in colonial and post-colonial practices and power relations. The contributors are Giorgio Agamben, Ali Behdad, Cathy Caruth, Jacques Derrida, Michael Dillon, Peter Fenves, Stathis Gourgouris, Werner Hamacher, Beatrice Hanssen, Anselm Haverkamp, Marian Hobson, Peggy Kamuf, M. B. Pranger, Susan M. Shell, Peter van der Veer, Hent de Vries, Cornelia Vismann, and Samuel Weber. (shrink)

This article discusses the remarkable conversation between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno regarding the relationship between utopia and death. It unpacks the antinomy of death and analyzes the m...

One can love and not forgive or out of love decide not to forgive. Or one can forgive but not love, or choose to forgive but not love the ones forgiven. Love and forgiveness follow parallel and largely independent paths, a truth we fail to acknowledge when we pressure others to both love and forgive. Individuals in conflict, sparring social and ethnic groups, warring religious communities, and insecure nations often do not need to pursue love and forgiveness to achieve peace (...) of mind and heart. They need to remain attentive to the needs of others, an alertness that prompts either love or forgiveness to respond. By reorienting our perception of these enduring phenomena, the contributors to this volume inspire new applications for love and forgiveness in an increasingly globalized and no longer quite secular world. With contributions by the renowned French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, the poet Haleh Liza Gafori, and scholars of religion, psychoanalysis, Islamic and political philosophy, and the Bible and literature, this anthology reconstructs the historical and conceptual lineage of love and forgiveness and their fraught relationship over time. By examining how we have used--and misused--these concepts, the authors advance a better understanding of their ability to unite different individuals and emerging groups around a shared engagement for freedom and equality, peace and solidarity. (shrink)

To analyse and explain Charles Taylor′s understanding of secularity in terms of “optionality” or “plurality” and to illuminate the nature of the hypothetical stance and the virtuality of beliefs it entails requires one to engage in a larger than empirical and, as it were, deeper than merely historical inquiry, one that is, if not metaphysical, then at least ontological or pre-ontological. The conditions of the secular age should, on this view, not be confused with the epistemological or, more broadly normative, (...) criteriological terms that categorize experience and the search for the spiritual “fullness”. As a consequence, neither specific elements or forms of belief nor their successive repudiation, neither historical nor empirical, neither sociological nor psychological findings will ever allow us to determine where or when, exactly, secularity begins, let alone suspect whether it might very well come to an end. What is required is, rather, to take a step back and to investigate why and how the advocacy of “public secularity” and the broader assumption of the eventual practical and existential demise or irrelevance of faith – which has been falsified by recent trends and current affairs in “global religion” – could have emerged as a theoretical construct at all. (shrink)

What, if anything remains of religion after the demise of traditional theism and the theologies based upon it? What are the consequences of so-called Post-theism for the modern scholarly study of religion (in Religionswissenschaft and philosophical theology or church dogmatics, in the philosophy of religion as well as in the more recent phenomenon of comparitive religious studies)? This volume collects some thirty articles written in honor of Professor Hendrik Johan Adriaanse whose intellectual trajectory, recounted here in extensive personal reflections, has (...) lead to an incisive inquiry into the possibilities of thinking and experiencing "After Theism" (the title of a fundamental article reprinted here). Post-theism : Refraiming the Judeo-Christian Tradition raises this question from three different perspectives : first, by spelling out the historical and intellectual backgrounds that have led to the supposed end of theism as it had been known through the ages; secondly, by discussing the systematic relationship between the disciplines of theology and competing concepts of rationality; and, thirdly, by sketching out the contours of a philosophical thought that ventures beyond the most tenacious classical and modern presuppositions of theism. Along the way, the contributors explore a variety of ways in which the concepts and arguments, imagery and rhetoric of the Judeo-Christian traditions are in need and in the process of being constantly displaced. Henri Krop, Arie L. Molendijk and Hent de Vries teach Philosophy, the history of Christianity, and Metaphysics, respectively, at the Erasmus University, The University of Groningen, and the University of Amsterdam. (shrink)

This essay discusses Stanley Cavell’s remarkable interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought against the background of his own ongoing engagement with Wittgenstein, Austin, and the problem of other minds. This unlikely debate, the only extensive discussion of Levinas by Cavell in his long philosophical career sofar, focuses on their different reception of Descartes’s idea of the infinite. The essay proposes to read both thinkers against the background of Wittgenstein’s model of philosophical meditation and raises the question as to whether Cavell and (...) Levinas do not indirectly shed light on the early modern motif of the spiritual automaton. (shrink)

The Dutch philosopher of religion Hent de Vries has explored and complicated the boundaries between religion and modern thought in order to create the space for an innovative “minimal theology.” This article reconstructs de Vries's interpretation of the changes in Theodor W. Adorno's thought between Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics in order to demonstrate its fecundity for a philosophical account of otherness. It also examines and defends de Vries's own rhetorical mode of reading texts as an exemplary approach (...) to philosophical dialogue. Finally, however, the essay challenges de Vries's privileging of the religious as the site of ethical relationality and his intentional bracketing of Adorno's critical social theory. (shrink)

The Dutch philosopher of religion Hent de Vries has explored and complicated the boundaries between religion and modern thought in order to create the space for an innovative “minimal theology.” This article reconstructs de Vries's interpretation of the changes in Theodor W. Adorno's thought between Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics in order to demonstrate its fecundity for a philosophical account of otherness. It also examines and defends de Vries's own rhetorical mode of reading texts as an exemplary approach (...) to philosophical dialogue. Finally, however, the essay challenges de Vries's privileging of the religious as the site of ethical relationality and his intentional bracketing of Adorno's critical social theory. (shrink)

This book presents critical engagements with the work of Hent de Vries, widely regarded as one of the most important living philosophers of religion. Contributions by a distinguished group of scholars discuss the role played by religion in philosophy; the emergence and possibilities of the category of religion; and the relation between religion and violence, secularism, and sovereignty. Together, they provide a synoptic view of how de Vries's work has prompted a reconceptualization of how religion should be studied, especially (...) in relation to theology, politics, and new media. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars of religious studies, theology, and philosophy. (shrink)

The author places this book as the last of a trilogy of which his Philosophy and the Turn to Religion and Religion and Violence are the first two. In a fresh approach to religious philosophy, de Vries brings to us the similarities in the thoughts of Adorno and Levinas, and shows us how taken together, they have much deeper impact, than considered separately. That the author discussed this book with Emmanuel Levinas in person adds authenticity to the work.

In Minimal Theologies Hent de Vries offers a revision of his German language edition of Theologie im pianissimo published in 1989. There has been an impressive amount of scholarly work on Adorno and Levinas since 1989, “but this literature pays no attention to a systematic confrontation between their respective philosophical projects, if it mentions their names in conjunction at all”. What his work contributes is an analysis of the works of Adorno and Levinas as being focused on a common (...) project. That project is the exploration of “native modalities of the performative contradiction of argumentative discourse as it seeks to come to terms with its other”. Further, he contrasts these with the later Habermas and early Derrida. This is a meticulous work that provides important insights into these thinkers and religious philosophy. It is directed at a scholarly audience and could be of use in a graduate seminar focusing either on these thinkers or on contemporary issues surrounding the relationship between faith and reason. (shrink)