Powers of Distinction: On Religion and Modernity

In this major new work, philosopher of religion Nancy Levene examines the elemental character of religion and modernity. Deep in their operating systems, she argues, are dualisms of opposition and identity that cannot be reconciled with the forms of life they ostensibly support. These dualisms are dead ends, but they conceal a richer position—another kind of dualism constitutive of mutual relation. This dualism is difficult to distinguish and its concept of relation difficult to commit to. It risks contention and even violence. But it is also the indispensable support for modernity’s most innovative ideals: democracy, criticism, and interpretation.   In readings from Abraham to the present, Levene recovers this richer dualism in its difference from the alternatives—other dualisms, nondualism, multiplication. From Abraham we get the biblical call to give up tribal belonging for a promised land of covenantal relation. Yet modernity, inclusive of this call, is also the principle that critiques the promise when it 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.  

Politics & Social Sciences

Levene, Nancy

Philosophy

University of Chicago Press

In this major new work, philosopher of religion Nancy Levene examines the elemental character of religion and modernity. Deep in their operating systems, she argues, are dualisms of opposition and identity that cannot be reconciled with the forms of life they ostensibly support. These dualisms are dead ends, but they conceal a richer position—another kind of dualism constitutive of mutual relation. This dualism is difficult to distinguish and its concept of relation difficult to commit to. It risks contention and even violence. But it is also the indispensable support for modernity’s most innovative ideals: democracy, criticism, and interpretation. In readings from Abraham to the present, Levene recovers this richer dualism in its difference from the alternatives—other dualisms, nondualism, multiplication. From Abraham we get the biblical call to give up tribal belonging for a promised land of covenantal relation. Yet modernity, inclusive of this call, is also the principle that critiques the promise when it 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.

Textual Reasoning is the name a family of contemporary Jewish thinkers has given to its overlapping practices of Jewish philosophy and theology. This collection represents the most public expression to date of the shared work, over a period of twelve years, of this society of 'textual reasoners'. Although the movement of textual reasoning is diverse and pluriform, it is characterised at bottom by the pursuit of the claim that there are significant affinities between Jewish forms of reading and reasoning and postmodern thought. these affinites are presently being pursued by scholars throughout Jewish studies, in fields such as Bible, Talmud, Midrash, medieval philosophy, Kabbalah, and the Jewish phenomenology of Rosenzweig and Levinas among others. As the essays here amply convey, their work has stimulated a lively and creative re-engagement with the philosophical dimensions of Jewish texts and, even more, the textual dimensions of Jewish reasoning. In large part this new energy has come from a conception of the postmodern as a place where some of the most distictive features of Jewish reasoning can be elucidated as well as challenged.

Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century (Radical Traditions)

Ochs, Peter

SCM Press

Peach Pit Popularity

Vacationing at a lake, Alex learns about the Christian values of love, patience, and goodness after playing a practical joke on some "popular" girls who dress and act alike and ridicule Alex for being an individual.

Children's Books

Simpson, Nancy

Literature & Fiction

Chariot Family Pub

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Levene, Nancy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Levene, Nancy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Levene, Nancy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Powers of Distinction: On Religion and Modernity

Powers of Distinction: On Religion and Modernity

Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century (Radical Traditions)

Peach Pit Popularity