Out of Control

📖 The Scoop

 <i>Explores the  fundamental confrontations between Spinoza and Levinas in ethics, politics,  science, and religion.</i><br><br>

  After the end of superstitious religion, what is the meaning  of the world? Baruch Spinoza&rsquo;s answer is truth, Emmanuel Levinas&rsquo;s is goodness:  science versus ethics. In <i>Out of Control</i>,  Richard A. Cohen brings this debate to life, providing a nuanced exposition of  Spinoza and Levinas and the confrontations between them in ethics, politics,  science, and religion.<br><br>

  Spinoza is the control, the inexorable defensive logic of  administrative rationality, where freedom is equated to necessity&mdash;a  seventeenth-century glimpse of Orwellian doublespeak and Big Brother. Levinas is  the way out: transcendence not of God, being, and logic but of the other person  experienced as moral obligation. To alleviate the suffering of others&mdash;nothing  is more important! Spinoza wagers everything on mathematical truth, discarding  the rest as ignorance and illusion; for Levinas, nothing surpasses the  priorities of morality and justice, to create a world in which humans can be  human and not numbers or consumers, drudges or robots.<br><br>

  Situating these two thinkers in today&rsquo;s context, <i>Out of Control</i> responds to the fear of  dehumanization in a world flattened by the alliance of positivism and  plutocracy. It offers a nonideological ethical alternative, a way out and up,  in the nobility of one human being helping another, and the solidarity that  moves from morality to justice.<br><br>

  &ldquo;Cohen&rsquo;s work here is nothing short of spectacular. His  analysis of the mathematical and scientific foundations of Spinoza&rsquo;s philosophy  is exemplary. Lucidly, meticulously, and with very disciplined analysis he  conveys the force, power, and influence of Spinoza&rsquo;s philosophy on contemporary  religious thought.&rdquo; &mdash; Richard I. Sugarman, University of Vermont<br><br>

  &ldquo;Richard Cohen has managed to not merely bring these two  notoriously difficult philosophers into conversation with each other, but to do  so in an extremely readable way. Indeed, he is able to explain extremely  difficult philosophical disputes with clarity and to convey a palpable sense of  excitement.&rdquo; &mdash; Robert Erlewine, author of <i>Monotheism  and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason</i>

Genre: Philosophy / Religious (fancy, right?)