“Kaddish Yatom”
“Kaddish Yatom”
DOI:
10.46551/issn.2317-0875v27n2p.97-108Keywords:
Emmanuel Levinas, History, Temporality, FutureAbstract
Is there still time for history? What does it mean to curate the past when the future is in doubt? Staring down the cataclysmic effects of climate change, it can seem “out of time” to reckon with the past, especially given the possibility that there will soon be no one left to read what we write. In the present essay, I begin with Emmanuel Levinas’s 1934 essay on “the philosophy of Hitlerism” in an effort to explore what it means to engage in history (or philosophy) when the end seems imminent. As with the Shoah, I argue, the work of the historian consists wholly of paying a debt to the fallen, whatever the future might hold. Turning to the fifteenth-century discovery and colonization of Madeira, I conclude that non-human Others likewise exact this debt.
Downloads
References
BENJAMIN, Walter. Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken, 1969.
GOMES, Diogo. As relações do descobrimento da Guiné e das ilhas dos Açores, Madeira e Cabo Verde. https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/asrelaesdodescob00gome
HANSEL, Joëlle. “Emmanuel Levinas: la philosophie de l’Hitlérisme”. Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah, no. 207, 2017, pp. 311-27.
LEVINAS, Emmanuel. “La compréhension de la spiritualité dans les cultures française et allemande”. 1933. Cités, no. 25, 2006, 126-37.
LEVINAS, Emmanuel. “Quelques reflections sur la philosophie de l’Hitlérisme.” Esprit, vol. 3, no. 26, 1934, pp. 199-208.
LEVINAS, Emmanuel. “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism.” Translated by Seán Hand, Critical Inquiry, vol. 17, no. 1, 1990, pp. 62-71.
PATTEN, Alan. “The Most Natural State: Herder and Nationalism”. History of Political Thought, vol. 31, no. 4, 2010, pp. 657-89.
POLLAN, Michael. The Botany of Desire: A Plants-Eye View of the World. Random House, 2001.
“Pombo-trocaz”. Direção Regional do Património e Informática (Madeira). 8 Apr. 2021, ifcn.madeira.gov.pt/biodiversidade/projetos/pombo-trocaz.html.
SCHMIDT, Royal J. “Cultural Nationalism in Herder”. Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 17, no. 3, 1956, pp. 407-41.
WHITMAN, James Q. Hitler’s American Model: The United States and The Making of Nazi Race Law. Princeton UP, 2017.
WOEZIK, Cian van. “Hölderlin: The I and its Ground”. God--Beyond Me: From the I's Absolute Ground in Hölderlin and Schelling to a Contemporary Model of a Personal God. Brill, 2010, pp. 189-258.
