Le visage est-il un phénomène simple ou complexe? Serait-il juste de le définir comme cet aspect de l’être humain qui dépasse tout effort de compréhension et de totalisation, ou bien y a-t-il d’autres caractéristiques de ce phénomène qu’il faut inclure dans toute définition ou description du visage? Le visage est un événement fondamental. Parmi les multiples manières d’approcher l’être, de se rapporter...

Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas are three of the most prominent Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. This paper looks at the different understandings each author offers of intersubjectivity and authentic self-hood and questions the extent to which for each author God plays a role in interpersonal relationships.

Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas are three of the most prominent Jewish philosophers of the 20thcentury. This paper looks at the different understandings each author offers of intersubjectivity and authentic self-hood and questions the extent to which for each author God plays a role in interpersonal relationships.

Although Levinas did not write about The Merchant of Venice, recent scholarship has explored Levinasian themes in the play. However, most of The Merchant instantiates not Levinasian ethics per se, but the cultural and other forces that work against ethics. In particular, theodicy, which Levinas sees as morally scandalous, is deployed by Christian characters to justify their ill-treatment of Shylock. A surface reading of the play would suggest that it is structured around clear binaries, with Christian “mercy” juxtaposed to legalistic, (...) vengeful Jewish “justice.” However, a more nuanced reading, particularly one informed by Levinas’s philosophy, reveals ways in which Shakespeare seems to call these distinctions into question, and uncovers two genuinely ethical moments in the play: Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech, and his implied, biblically informed critique of the treatment of slaves by Christians in Venetian society. (shrink)