And G-d Created Wife: How Did the Modern Other Emerge?

Sergey Dolgopolski

doi:10.3390/rel12100863

Abstract

Asking the question of the emergence of the modern other, the paper explores the inversion of relationships between wife and woman, husband and man in an archeological analysis of a Talmudic reading by Emmanuel Levinas “And God Created Woman.” The theoretical framework of inquiry focuses on the development of relationships between the human on the one hand and the thinking and acting subject on the other. The guiding question is that of defining modern subjectivity by the disappearance of rabbinic discourse from its horizon.

Highlights

When and how did the modern other emerge? This would be the other of the modern subject; the modern human being
A philosophical position of Levinas as a reader and interpreter of the Talmud cannot be false, yet its truth is to be defined by the context of modern subjectivity and the modern human subject, against which Levinas both reads the Talmud and advances his ethics of responsibility toward the other
Modern subjectivity features a reversal in relationships be‐ tween wife and woman, husband and man as versions of human subjects

Summary

Introduction

When and how did the modern other emerge? This would be the other of the modern subject; the modern human being. Libera does so by reclaiming the suppressed role of philosophical work in the seemingly purely theological corpora of the church fathers and medieval schoolmen This hitherto overlooked work is the bedrock of the notions of the human being and of the relationship between humanity and subjectivity, he argues. It further leads to the task of rethinking the modern scholarship on the Talmud, predicated as it has been on modern subjectivity as the self‐understanding of the Talmud researchers It is in this context that the present essay asks the question of the emergence of the other in the modern philosoph‐ ical discourse on the Talmud, focusing on Emmanuel Levinas as the leading thinker of the last century to combine the inquiry into the Talmud with the inquiry into the other. How the modern other emerged becomes a guiding question in reevaluating Lev‐ inas’s Talmud, and, and more importantly, the rabbinic thought, of which the Talmud is a central text, on the intellectual map of the West.

Results

Discussion

Conclusion