Can evil create? Lévinas in conversation with tikkun olam and Kierkegaard
Westin, Anna (2018-05-29)
Westin, Anna
the Donner Institute
29.05.2018
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2019050314228
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2019050314228
Tiivistelmä
In this article, I look at the phenomenological expression of creativity through language as a way of relating to the self and others. Employing the Jewish concepts of the yetzerim, or impulses, philosophically, I suggest that these instances of existential engagement further develop the ethical act of tikkun olam, or the mending of the relational world. Moving beyond theodicies of good and evil, I will develop this account of relation by drawing on Emmanuel Lévinas’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy of subjectivity. I argue, therefore, that language can express particular accounts of relationality that can serve to clarify the ambiguous relationship between good and evil.