JWST 350 - Confronting Modernity

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Advanced study in selected aspects of religion and contemporary philosophical and political theory. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes.

Topic for 2019/20b: Ethics: Levinas and his Others. Lithuanian-born, French-language Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has had a major impact on modern Western thought in his argument for the preeminence of ethics. The cornerstone of the course is the study of Levinas’ understanding of ethics as articulated in his close readings of texts from the Talmud. From that foundation, the course pursues comparative study of Levinas and some of his principal interlocutors, such as the relationship between his ethics and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, Judith Butler’s political philosophy and Luce Irigaray’s feminism. Andrew Bush.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS