Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other (Suny Series in Contemporary French Thought)

A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy. This book sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the “non-identity thinking” of Adorno and the “ethics of the Other” of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and “inhuman” material others such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life. Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: On the Way to an Ethics of Material Others 12 Opening Reflections 12 Ethical Imperfection and the Priority of the Material Other 12 The Ethics of Alterity and the Negative Dialectics of Nonidentity 14 A Materialist Interpretation of Nonidentity and the Other 16 Other-Constitution and Aporetic Thinking 17 An Overview of the Work and Its Motivating Questions 19 Nature, Religion, and Justice 19 Perfection and Imperfection 21 Why Levinas? Why Adorno? 22 Three Queries about Ethics 24 Historical Contexts and Critical Departures 25 Marxism, Phenomenology, and New Critical Models 25 Cacophonies and Dissonances 28 Phenomenology and Antiphenomenology 30 Conclusion 32 Part I After Nature: Ethics, Natural History, and Environmental Crisis 34 1 Toward a Critical Ecological Model of Natural History 36 Introduction to Part One 36 Natural History and the Politics of Nature 39 Natural History and a Nature Still to Come 40 The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Damaged Life, and the Contemporary Ecological Crisis 43 Aporetic Materialism and the Dialectic of Enlightenment 44 Conclusion and Transition 49 2 Natural History, Nonidentity, and Ecological Crisis 52 Introduction: Kant, Constitutive Idealism, and the Mythology of Reason 52 Communicative Idealism or Natural History? 58 Nature as Ideology and Ethics 63 Historical Nature and Natural History 67 Materiality and a Critical Ethos of Nature 70 Conclusion 74 3 Communicative Interaction or Natural History? Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature 76 Introduction: The Renunciation of Nature in Habermas and Hegel 76 Intersubjective Idealism in Habermas’s Critique of Adorno 78 Enlightenment and the Domination of Nature 81 The Asymmetrical Primacy and Intermateriality of the Object 84 Mimesis as Reification and Responsiveness 86 Art and Nature between Suffering and Happiness 91 Music, Listening, and the Ethical 93 Mending Natural History 97 Animality, Happiness, and the Promises of Damaged Life 99 4 The Trouble with Life: Life-Philosophy, Antinaturalism, and Transcendence in Levinas 102 The Antinaturalism of Classical Phenomenology 102 Against Heidegger, Ontology, and Nature 105 Holy and Unholy Lands 107 Levinas, Heidegger, and Cryptonaturalism 109 Levinas and the Other-Transcendence of Life 112 Nature, Life, and History 114 Nature and Justice 116 Conclusion: Living beyond Idealism 121 5 An Ethics of Nature at the End of Nature 124 Introduction: Nature and History 124 Disturbing Nature: Levinas and the Ethics of Other Animals 129 Natural Histories: Adorno on Animals and Environments 141 Adorno and the Culture of Nature 151 Ethical Responsiveness, Imperfectionism, and Minimalism 153 Conclusion and Transition to Part Two 155 Part II Unsettling Religion: Suffering, Prophecy, and the Good 158 6 Religion, Suffering, and Damaged Life: Nietzsche, Marx, and Adorno 160 Introduction to Part Two 160 Religion as and against Power 163 Suffering and the Truth and Untruth of Religion 165 Between Marx and Nietzsche: Religion and Damaged Life 170 Priestly Powers, Damaged Lives, and Imperfectionist Promises of Happiness 172 Religion, Oppression, and Prophecy 177 Conclusion and Transition 179 7 The Disturbance of the Ethical: Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Abraham’s Binding of Isaac 182 Introduction 182 “Here I Am” in an Intercultural Context 183 Confronting Abraham 189 The Suspension or the Provocation of the Ethical? 192 Is the Ethical or the Religious Primary? 197 Interlude: Levinas, Moore, and the Priority of the Good 199 Aporetic Ethics in Early Daoism, Kierkegaard, and Levinas 202 Conclusion: Contesting Conventional Morality 204 8 Ethics between Religiosity and Secularity: Kierkegaard and Levinas 208 Introduction 208 Questioning Levinas Questioning Kierkegaard 209 In a Prophetic Voice 211 Pluralism, Religion, and Faith 212 Abraham, Isaac, and the Ends of the Ethical 217 Adorno, Kierkegaard, Levinas 219 Demystifying Levinas: Must One Be Religious to Be Ethical? 221 Between Religiosity and Antireligiosity 226 Conclusion: Double Strategies in Levinas and Kierkegaard 228 9 Prophetic Time, Materiality, and Dignity: Bloch and Levinas 230 Introduction: Marxism and Dignity 230 Marxism between Dignity and Happiness 232 Luxemburg, Bloch, and Democratic Socialism 235 The History and Paradox of Dignity 238 Natural Law and Prophetic Critique 240 Prophetic Temporalities 242 Politics and the Dialectic of Dignity 244 A Dusselian Interpretation of Bloch and Levinas 247 A Concluding Note on Adorno 249 10 Ethical Imperfectionism and the Sovereignty of Good: Levinas, Løgstrup, and Murdoch 252 Introduction 252 Responding to Philosophies of Life, Existence, and Being 254 The Problem of Moral Perfectionism 256 Ethical Decision or Ethical Demand? 257 The Ethics of Demand 258 The Immanence and Transcendence of the Good: Murdoch, Løgstrup, and Levinas 259 Naturalism, Antinaturalism, and Life’s Sovereign Expressions 263 The Good of Ethical Life and the Good beyond Being 266 Suffering, Useless Suffering, and Theodicy 268 Conclusion and Transition to Part Three 269 Part III Demanding Justice: Asymmetrical Ethics and Critical Social Theory 272 11 Equality, Justice, and Asymmetrical Ethics 274 Introduction to Part Three 274 Asymmetry and Equality 275 Equality and Freedom 278 Habermas, Honneth, and the Problematic of Asymmetry 279 The Good, the Just, and the Material Other 283 Are Equality and Asymmetry Incompatible? 288 Ethics beyond the Dialectic of Recognition and Misrecognition 293 Conclusion 295 12 The Pathologies of Freedom and the Promise of Autonomy 296 Introduction: The Problem of Freedom 296 Liberal and Neoliberal Freedom 298 The Ideological Functions of Freedom 300 Questionable Liberty 303 Asymmetrical Freedom 308 The Idolatry of Liberty and the Pathology of Freedom 313 Fraternal Republicanism and the An-archic Republic 318 Conclusion: The Priority of the Freedom of the Other 319 13 The Limits of Liberalism: Cosmopolitanism, Tolerance, and Asymmetrical Ethics 322 Introduction: Colonialism and the Aporias of Cosmopolitan Tolerance 322 The Complicity of Cosmopolitan Tolerance with Domination 325 Cosmopolitan Tolerance, Colonialism, and Racism 328 Love and Justice beyond Communitarianism and Liberalism 331 Hospitality, Substitution, and Tolerance 337 A Cosmopolitanism of the Other 339 Hospitality beyond Liberal Rights 341 Conclusion 342 14 Recognition, Nonidentity, and the Contradictions of Liberalism 344 Introduction: The Crises of Contemporary Forms of Life 344 The Good and the Subject 345 Repeating the Question: Why Adorno? Why Levinas? 347 The Contradictions of Contemporary Liberalism 350 The Boundaries of Universalism and the Singularity of the Material Other 353 The Other in the Dialectic of Recognition and Misrecognition 356 Beyond Consensus and Recognition: The An-archic Ethics of Material Others 357 Epilogue: Nourishing Life, Unrestricted Solidarity, and the Good 360 Against Perfection: Ethical Incompletion and the Good 360 The Ethical and the Political Demand 362 Critical Natural History and the Ethics of Materiality 363 Closing Words: Political Ecology and Political Economy 365 Notes 368 Bibliography 438 Works of Theodor W. Adorno 438 Works of Emmanuel Levinas 439 Other Works 441 Index 470 "This book sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address today's environmental and social-political situation. The chapters focus on critical natural history and the environmental crisis (part 1), religion, prophecy, and the good (part 2), and an asymmetrical account of equality, liberty, and solidarity (part 3). Eric S. Nelson presents a critical ethics of the material other, addressing the alterities, non-identities, and the good that constitute, interrupt, and reorient ethical and social-political forms of life. This ethics of the material other has significant implications. First, the self is constituted through material and communicative relations to others in "other-constitution" rather than individual or collective self-constitution. Second, encounters with the prophetic "other-power" or transcendence of the good in others-in the ordinary mundanities and sufferings of immanent material life-disturb the economies of the individual ego relishing its own happiness and collective identities that codify themselves through the subjugation and refusal of non-human and human others. Finally, the infinite ethical and social-political demand of others calls for unrestricted solidarities that can transform ethical and social-political sensibilities, if always in relation to the material and communicative conditions of contemporary global capitalism"-- Provided by publisher This book sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the ?non-identity thinking? of Adorno and the ?ethics of the Other? of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical status of nature and ?inhuman? material others such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life __A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy.__