François Raffoul approaches the concept of responsibility in a manner that is distinct from its traditional interpretation as accountability of the willful subject. Exploring responsibility in the works of Nietzsche, Sartre, Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida, Raffoul identifies decisive moments in the development of the concept, retrieves its origins, and explores new reflections on it. For Raffoul, responsibility is less about a sovereign subject establishing a sphere of power and control than about exposure to an event that does not come from us and yet calls to us. These original and thoughtful investigations of the post-metaphysical senses of responsibility chart new directions for ethics in the continental tradition.
Author(s): François Raffoul
Series: Studies in Continental Thought
Publisher: Indiаna Univеrsity Prеss
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 361
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
List of Abbreviations......Page 12
Introduction The Origins of Responsibility......Page 18
One Aristotle: Responsibility as Voluntariness......Page 56
Two Kant: Responsibility as Spontaneity of the Subject......Page 75
Three Nietzsche’s Deconstruction of Accountability......Page 97
Four Sartre: Hyperbolic Responsibility......Page 138
Five Levinas’s Reversal of Responsibility......Page 180
Six Heidegger’s Originary Ethics......Page 237
Seven Heidegger: The Ontological Origins of Responsibility......Page 259
Eight Derrida: The Impossible Origins of Responsibility......Page 299
Conclusion The Future of Responsibility......Page 317
Notes......Page 322
Index......Page 348
