Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Beyond ethics I have no alibi

Boothroyd, David (2009) Beyond ethics I have no alibi. In: Nietzsche and Levinas: After the Death of a Certain God. Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture . Columbia University Press, pp. 150-165. ISBN 978-0-231-14404-9. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:31690)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/id/Nietzsche_a...

Abstract

The essays that Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo collect in this volume locate multiple affinities between the philosophies of Nietzsche and Levinas. Both philosophers question the nature of subjectivity and the meaning of responsibility after the "death of God." While Nietzsche poses the dilemmas of a self without a ground and of ethics at a time of cultural upheaval and demystification, Levinas wrestles with subjectivity and the sheer possibility of ethics after the Shoah. Both argue that goodness exists independently of calculative reason--for Nietzsche, goodness arises in a creative act moving beyond reaction and ressentiment; Levinas argues that goodness occurs in a spontaneous response to another person. In a world at once without God and haunted by multiple divinities, Nietzsche and Levinas reject transcendental foundations for politics and work toward an alternative vision encompassing a positive sense of creation, a complex fraternity or friendship, and rival notions of responsibility. Stauffer and Bergo group arguments around the following debates, which are far from settled: What is the reevaluation of ethics (and life) that Nietzsche and Levinas propose, and what does this imply for politics and sociality? What is a human subject--and what are substance, permanence, causality, and identity, whether social or ethical--in the wake of the demise of God as the highest being and the foundation of what is stable in existence? Finally, how can a "God" still inhabit philosophy, and what sort of name is this in the thought of Nietzsche and Levinas?

Item Type: Book section
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
Depositing User: Andrew Buller
Date Deposited: 15 Oct 2012 14:02 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:09 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/31690 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Boothroyd, David.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.