In the Margins of Deconstruction »

This reprint of the 1998 work by the same title, explores the connections and divisions between Levinas and Derrida as ethical thinkers. Srajek, who holds a PhD in religion and an MSW, analyzes the themes of text, the absolute, agency, and community for each thinker, investigating the sociological context for these philosophers' concerns about the political and social problems of their culture. He argues that in each case "autobiographical margins" exist to contain their texts. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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Rather than comparing the two modern thinkers, Srajek (philosophy, U. of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign) offers a reading of them against the backdrop of the philosophy of Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig and the phenomenology of Husserl and Shutz. He argues that they take similar approaches to ethics, and casts the claim in a Jewish and phenomenological framework to show what the sources of such an ethics might be. Among his perspectives are the absolute and infinite ethics, Judaism as the matrix between Levinas and Derrida, the phenomenology of the face, pure presence and the task of translation, apocalypse, differentiality and negativity, and Khora and minimal community. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.