Conference brings Levinas scholars to Purdue

May 9, 2006

Conference brings Levinas scholars to Purdue

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The public is invited to attend this weekend's inaugural meeting of the North American Levinas Society at Purdue University.

The conference, Levinas and the Political, is Saturday (May 13) to Monday (May 15). The conference sessions are free and open to the public. Information about session times and meeting rooms is available online.

The society was founded in October 2005 by Purdue graduate students and faculty in the English department and the doctoral program in philosophy and literature.

Emmanuel Levinas was a 20th century French-speaking Lithuanian Jewish philosopher, writer and educator. Trained in the Talmud — which is a mode of rabbinic Biblical commentary — Levinas’s major concern was to translate Hebrew, the language of religious discourses, into Greek, the language of the academy and the philosophers.

More than 100 scholars from the United States, Canada and Mexico, as well as other countries are speaking at the conference about the relevance of Levinasian ethical thinking to political theory, literary studies, religion, gender studies, psychology and philosophy.

The keynote speakers and their topics are:

Bettina Bergo, assistant professor of philosophy at University of Montréal. "Levinas and the Paradoxes of Sensibility."

Richard A. Cohen, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "Levinas in America."

Enrique Dussel, professor of philosophy at Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México in Mexico City. "The Metaphysical Desire in Levinas and Solidarity (A Confrontation with Derrida, Nietzsche, and Schmitt)."

Sandor Goodhart, associate professor of English at Purdue University. "Reading Levinas Reading Talmud: Between Ethics and Politics, Theodicy and Midrash."

Claire Elise Katz, associate professor of philosophy at Penn State University. "The Politics of Education: Levinas, Rousseau, and the Failure of the Enlightenment."

Diane Perpich, assistant professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. "Scarce Resources? Levinas, Animals, and the Environment."

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, (765) 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Sources: Sandor Goodhart, associate professor of English, (765) 430-5024, goodhart@purdue.edu

Michael R. Michau, graduate student, (765) 404-0147, michaumi@yahoo.com

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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