Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World: Columbia University Press

Published by Columbia University Press 2015

Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World

Edited by: Hent de Vries and Nils Schott

Volume 24 in the series Religion, Culture, and Public Life

https://doi.org/10.7312/de-v17022

Overview
Contents

About this book

By reorienting our perception of these enduring phenomena, the contributors to this volume inspire new applications for love and forgiveness in an increasingly globalized and no longer quite secular world. By examining how we have used—and misused—these concepts, the authors advance a better understanding of their ability to unite different individuals and emerging groups around a shared engagement for freedom and equality, peace and solidarity.

One can love and not forgive or out of love decide not to forgive. Or one can forgive but not love, or choose to forgive but not love the ones forgiven. Love and forgiveness follow parallel and largely independent paths, a truth we fail to acknowledge when we pressure others to both love and forgive. Individuals in conflict, sparring social and ethnic groups, warring religious communities, and insecure nations often do not need to pursue love and forgiveness to achieve peace of mind and heart. They need to remain attentive to the needs of others, an alertness that prompts either love or forgiveness to respond.

By reorienting our perception of these enduring phenomena, the contributors to this volume inspire new applications for love and forgiveness in an increasingly globalized and no longer quite secular world. With contributions by the renowned French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, the poet Haleh Liza Gafori, and scholars of religion (Leora Batnitzky, Nils F. Schott, Hent de Vries), psychoanalysis (Albert Mason, Orna Ophir), Islamic and political philosophy (Sari Nusseibeh), and the Bible and literature (Regina Schwartz), this anthology reconstructs the historical and conceptual lineage of love and forgiveness and their fraught relationship over time. By examining how we have used—and misused—these concepts, the authors advance a better understanding of their ability to unite different individuals and emerging groups around a shared engagement for freedom and equality, peace and solidarity.

Author / Editor information

Hent de Vries is director of the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University, where he holds the Russ Family Chair in the Humanities and Philosophy. He is also director of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. He is the author of Minimal Theologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas; Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida; and Philosophy and the Turn to Religion and the editor of Religion Beyond a Concept.

Nils F. Schott is James M. Motley Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. The author of The Conversion of Knowledge: Enlightenment and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Catechisms, he has also translated several works, most recently Vladimir Jankélévitch's Henri Bergson, which he coedited with Alexandre Lefebvre.

Reviews

Sarah Beckwith, Duke University:
This timely and highly stimulating set of essays examines the theological, historical, literary, dramatic, political, and theological resources of love and forgiveness in the world today. The authors find love and forgiveness to be centrally related to questions of justice and recognition, to the alert and attentive desire to see the world and each other aright. I highly recommend this bracing and thought-provoking book.

Willemien Otten, University of Chicago:
Engaging scholars in a debate that is situated on the cutting edge of critical theory and contemporary philosophy, Hent de Vries and Nils F. Schott have succeeded beautifully in shifting perspective toward a more totalizing philosophy in conversation with ethics, religion, theology, and literature.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface and acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
HUMAN ALERT. Concepts and Practices of Love and Forgiveness Hent de Vries and Nils F. Schott Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. ORANGE ALERT Haleh Liza Gafori Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
2. WHAT LOVE KNOWS Jean-Luc Marion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
3. UNPOWER. An Interview with Hugues Choplin Jean-Luc Marion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	36
4. REVENGE, FORGIVENESS, AND LOVE Regina M. Schwartz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
5. LOVE AND LAW. Some Th oughts on Judaism and Calvinism Leora Batnitzky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
6. “A MOTHER TO ALL”. Love and the Institution of Community in Augustine Nils F. Schott Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
7. LOOKING EVIL IN THE EYE/I. The Interminable Work of Forgiveness Orna Ophir Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
8. BEYOND RIGHT AND WRONG. An Exploration of Justice and Forgiveness Albert Mason Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
9. REMARKS ON LOVE Jacques Derrida Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
10. TO FORGIVE. The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible Jacques Derrida Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
11. THOUGHTS ON LOVE Sari Nusseibeh Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
12. THE PASSIONATE UTTERANCE OF LOVE Hent de Vries Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Suggested Reading Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 7
- Other: 7 b&w photographs and a color frontispiece

eBook

Published: November 3, 2015
ISBN: 9780231540124