Suchergebnisse

In his explorations of the relations between the sacred and violence, René Girard has hit upon the origin of culture - the way culture began, the way it continues to organize itself. The way communities of human beings structure themselves in a manner that is different from that of other species on the planet. Like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, Martin Buber, or others who have changed the way we think in the humanities or in the human sciences, Girard has put forth a set of ideas that have altered our perceptions of the world in which we function. We will n

This essay initially cites the ways Levinas has been read to date—in philosophy, feminism, and Jewish Studies—noting the absence of midrashic reading, and especially one identified as akin to literary reading. It next defines midrash as the Rabbis and Jewish Studies scholars describe it (for example, in Genesis 22), and proceeds to examine a sample of midrashic reading—Levinas's "Promised Land or Permitted Land?"—perusing this text in four ways: (1) for the Biblical scripture (in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah) the Talmudic rabbis read; (2) for the Talmudic commentary in Sotah that Levinas examines; (3) for Levinas's ethical commentary; and (4) for my own prophetic account of Levinas's commentary upon Talmud's scriptural reading. These four roughly correspond, the essay suggests, with the four traditional levels of interpretation— pshat, remez, d'rash , and sod —about which the Rabbis speak or the four levels about which Christian hermeneuts speak: plain sense, allegorical, moral, and anagogic.

The contribution of this book to the field of reconciliation is both theoretical and practical, recognizing that good theory guides effective practice and practice is the ground for compelling theory. Using a Girardian hermeneutic as a starting point, a new conceptual Gestalt emerges in these essays, one not fully integrated in a formal way but showing a clear understanding of some of the challenges and possibilities for dealing with the deep divisions, enmity, hatred, and other effects of violence.