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Locating Responsibility After Heidegger: Levinas and Nancy

Larson, Michael

Abstract Details

2008, Master of Arts, University of Toledo, Philosophy.
The thesis explores the intertwining of the ethical and the ontological, contrasting the works of Jean Luc Nancy and Emmanuel Levinas around central themes and questions posed, in part, by Martin Heidegger. The thesis evaluates their respective approaches to relationality and responsibility in relation to a number of central questions including finitude and the infinite, situatedness and the everyday, and their respective approaches to freedom and decision. While taking seriously the infinitely demanding sense of responsibility in Levinas's work, I find the conceptions of relationality and responsibility in Levinas to be lacking with concern to situatedness and political considerations. These issues are connected to how Levinas conceives of ethical subjectivity. In response, Nancy's thinking of relationality opens up an approach to ethical responsibility which is entirely rooted in our finite situatedness, and thus does not place the ethical apart from the ontological.
Benjamin S. Pryor, PhD (Advisor)
Ashley E. Pryor, PhD (Committee Member)
Charles V. Blatz, PhD (Committee Member)
119 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Larson, M. (2008). Locating Responsibility After Heidegger: Levinas and Nancy [Master's thesis, University of Toledo]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1216730094

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Larson, Michael. Locating Responsibility After Heidegger: Levinas and Nancy. 2008. University of Toledo, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1216730094.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Larson, Michael. "Locating Responsibility After Heidegger: Levinas and Nancy." Master's thesis, University of Toledo, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1216730094

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)