Vladimir Jankélévitch: The Time of Forgiveness traces the reflections of the French philosopher and musicologist Vladimir Jankelevitch on the conditions and temporality of forgiveness in relation to creation, history, and memory. The author demonstrates the influence of Jewish and Christian thought on Jankelevitch’s philosophy and compares his ideas about the gift character of forgiveness, the role of retributive emotions in conceptions of justice, and the limits of reason with those of Aristotle, Butler, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Scheler, Arendt, Derrida, Levinas, and Ricoeur.
The Shoah was the pivotal historical event in Jankelevitch’s life. As this book shows, Jankelevitch’s question “Is forgiveness possible as a response to evil?” remains a potent philosophical conundrum today. Paradoxically, for Jankelevitch, evil is both the impetus and the obstacle to forgiveness.
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: In the Margins
- 1 First Philosophy
- Wholly Other: Creation
- Intervals and Instants
- Intuition
- Two Sources of Morality
- Good Will: The Future of Duty
- 2 Apophatic Approaches
- The Decay of Time and Forgetfulness
- Ataraxia and Apathy
- Megalopsychia
- The Excuse
- Total or Intellective Excuse
- Sungnômê (Understanding)
- Partitive Excuse: Between Indulgence and Severity
- Pardon and Mercy
- 3 The Temporality of Human Existence and Action
- Irreversibility
- Irrevocability
- Imprescriptibility: Axiology versus Chronology
- 4 Translating Resentment
- Aristotle’s Nemesis
- Butler’s Sermons
- Nietzsche’s Doubling
- Scheler’s Deferral
- Jankélévitch’s Protest and Fidelity
- The Duration of Justice: Values and Singularities
- Missing Humanity
- 5 The Inexcusable and the Unforgivable
- Freedom and Wickedness
- The Correlation of Punishment and Forgiveness
- The Organ-Obstacle
- More Stupid Than Wicked, More Wicked Than Stupid
- Penultimate Acts: Love Is as Strong as Evil
- 6 Love and Justice
- Two Absolutes
- Origins, Ends, and Interruptions
- Im/pure Gifts
- Gratitude and Benevolence
- Dissonances of Love
- Normative Ideal or Impossibility?
- 7 Repentance: Concerning Unconditionality
- Philosophical Conversions
- Theological Returns: Levinas’s Talmud Readings
- The Coming of the Messiah
- Motivations for Changing the Past
- In My Hands?
- Becoming Other: The Paradox of Repentance
- Hartmann, Sartre, and Kierkegaard
- A Self-Healing of the Soul: Max Scheler
- Jankélévitch’s Remorse
- Asymmetrical Reciprocity
- Negotiations
- 8 What Remains
- Biblical Metaphors
- As If . . .
- Coincidentia Oppositorum
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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