Suchergebnisse

Human lives are crucially shaped by encounters of otherness – or, rather, various othernesses. This book explores the ethical challenge of developing an appropriate and respectful relation to other human beings by analyzing a number of historical and cultural cases of relating to the other. The topics range from barbarism, racist stereotypes, female rhetoric, and vampires to philosophical analyses of Finnish writers like Eino Leino and Väinö Linna, and from lyrical depictions of pain to an "antitheodicist" reflection on Primo Levi's Holocaust writing. A chapter on what it means to take a critical distance to other human beings in the context of the covid-19 pandemic concludes the volume. The authors approach these diverse issues (which are all aspects of the same basic problem of understanding and acknowledging otherness) from the perspective of an interdisciplinary humanistic reflection integrating literary analysis and philosophical argumentation.

This book defends antitheodicism, arguing that theodicies, seeking to excuse God for evil and suffering in the world, fail to ethically acknowledge the victims of suffering. The authors argue for this view using literary and philosophical resources, commencing with Immanuel Kant's 1791 "Theodicy Essay" and its reading of the Book of Job. Three important twentieth century antitheodicist positions are explored, including "Jewish" post-Holocaust ethical antitheodicism, Wittgensteinian antitheodicism exemplified by D.Z. Phillips and pragmatist antitheodicism defended by William James. The authors argue that these approaches to evil and suffering are fundamentally Kantian. Literary works such as Franz Kafka'sThe Trial, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, are examined in order to crucially advance the philosophical case for antitheodicism