Author-Meets-Critics Panel on Ethics Out of Law: Hermann Cohen and the Neighbor, by Dana Hollander, August 26, 2022 (Online)

Dana Hollander, Ethics Out of Law: Hermann Cohen and the “Neighbor” (University of Toronto Press, 2021)

Twentieth Annual Meeting (September 26, 2021), SPEP 2021 (Online)

Session on the Work of Moses Mendelssohn
Moderator: Michael Rosenthal (University of Toronto)

“Mendelssohn’s Philosophy of the Human Vocation: On the Limits of the Question ‘What For?’” Anne Pollok (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)

Text Discussion: Moses Mendelssohn, Phaedon, Third Dialogue*

Nineteenth Annual Meeting (November 1, 2019), SPEP 2019 (Pittsburgh)

Political-Theology Out of Sources of Judaism

A Discussions of Andrew Benjamin’s Paper, ‘God and the Truth of Human Being’

Eighteenth Annual Meeting (October 18, 2018), SPEP 2018 (State College, Pennsylvania)

Moderator: Dustin Atlas (University of Dayton)

“Imagination, Theolatry, and the Compulsion to Worship the Invisible,” Elliot Wolfson (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Dustin Atlas (University of Dayton) led a discussion on a selection from: Elliot Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (MIT Press, 2011)

Seventeenth Annual Meeting (October 19, 2017), SPEP 2017 (Memphis)

Moderator: Paula Schwebel (Ryerson University)
“Love and Asymmetry,” Catherine Chalier (Université Paris Nanterre)

Response: James Hatley (Salisbury University)
Text Discussion: Jacob Levi (Johns Hopkins University) led a discussion on a selection from: Catherine Chalier, La Nuit, le Jour: Au diapason de la création (Seuil, 2014), forthcoming in English as Night Day: To the Tune of Creation

Sixteenth Annual Meeting (October 20, 2016), SPEP 2016 (Salt Lake City)

Moderator: Paula Schwebel (Ryerson University)

“Earth, Ground, and the Before: The Problem of Anteriority in Talmud and in Philosophy Post-Kant,” Sergey Dolgopolski (SUNY Buffalo)

Response: Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College)

Text Discussion: Sergey Dolgopolski led a discussion of selected passages from the Talmudic tractate Gittin (Divorce Bills).

Fifteenth Annual Meeting (October 8, 2015), SPEP 2015 (Atlanta)
Moderator: Paula Schwebel (Ryerson University)
“The Disobedience of Meaning: Authority and Revelation in Scholem’s and Cavell’s Readings of Kierkegaard,” Asaf Angermann (Yale University)
Text Discussion: “Scholem and the ‘Zionistic Point of Mathematics’”
Discussion Moderator: Julia Ng (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Fourteenth Annual Meeting (October 23, 2014), SPEP 2014 (New Orleans)

Moderator: Timothy Stock (Salisbury University)

“Adorno and Negative Theology,” Martin Shuster (Avila University) – Commentator: Annika Thiem (Villanova University)

“From Hermeneutics to Philosophical Midrash,” Andrew Benjamin (Monash University) – Commentator: Bettina Bergo (Université de Montréal)

Thirteenth Annual Meeting (October 26, 2013), SPEP 2013 (Eugene, Oregon)

Moderator: Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College)

“Hermann Cohen’s Other Liberalism: Socialism, Messianism, and Critical Idealism,” Annika Thiem (Villanova University)

Moderator: Timothy Stock (Salisbury University)

“Wrestling with God: Benjamin, Rosenzweig, and Cohen on the Constellation of Law, Messianism, and Divine Commandments,” James Martel (San Francisco State University)

Twelfth Annual Meeting (November 1, 2012), SPEP 2012 (Rochester)

Moderator: Timothy Stock (Salisbury University)

“Derrida’s Not-Speaking of Jewish Thought: Maimonides after Ontotheology,” Michael Fagenblat (Monash University)

Text Discussion: Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)
Discussion Moderator: Michael Fagenblat (Monash University)

Eleventh Annual Meeting (October 19, 2011), SPEP 2011 (Philadelphia)
Moderator: Andrew Benjamin (Monash University)
Mapping the Border Between Judaism and Catholicism in Interwar Jewish Philosophy, Randi Rashkover (George Mason University)

Respondent: Nitzan Lebovic (Lehigh University)

Text Discussion: Gershom Scholem, On Lament and Dirge (1917)
(translation by Paula Schwebel of ber Klage und Klagelied, in Scholem, Tagebcher, vol. 2: 1917-23 [Frankfurt: Jdischer Verlag, 2000], pp. 129-33)
Discussion Moderator: Paula Schwebel (University of Toronto)

Tenth Annual Meeting (November 4, 2010), SPEP 2010 (Montréal)
Moderator: Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College)

L’indit du Talmud, entre dit et non dit du texte biblique, Sonia Sarah Lipsyc (ALEPH – Centre d’tudes Juives Contemporaines de Montreal)

Discussion Moderator: Zachary Braiterman (Syracuse University)
Selections from the Babylonian Talmud:

• Tractate Sanhedrin (Mishnah at 18a, Gemara at 22a)
• Tractate Horayot (Mishnah at 10a, Gemara at 11a)
• Tractate Shabbat 88a (Gemara about Sinai over the Israelites’ heads)

Ninth Annual Meeting (October 29, 2009), SPEP 2009 (Arlington, Virginia)

Moderator: Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College)

The Inoperative Jew: Agambens Paul, Andrew Benjamin (Monash University)

Badiou, Girard, and the Pauline Event, Eleanor Kaufman (UCLA)

Jacob Taubes and the Cultural Memory of Paul, Martin Kavka (Florida State University)

Text Discussion: Jacob Taubes, Israel as the Place of Revolution and The Worldly Sphere of Apocalypticism, from Occidental Eschatology (1947)*

Discussion Moderator: Martin Kavka (Florida State University)

Eighth Annual Meeting (October 18, 2008), SPEP 2008 (Pittsburgh)

Blanchot and Levinas
Moderator: Dana Hollander (McMaster University)”Literary Unrest: Levinas, Blanchot and the Proximity of Judaism,” Sarah Hammerschlag (Williams College)

Text Discussion: Maurice Blanchot, “Etre juif”

Discussion Leader: Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College)

Seventh Annual Meeting (November 10, 2007), SPEP 2007 (Chicago)
Kabbalah and Continental Thought

Moderator: Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College)

“Light Does Not Talk But Shines: Vision and Eros in Rosenzweig’s Theopoetic Temporality”

Elliot R. Wolfson
(Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University)

Text Discussion: Giorgio Agamben, “Pardes: The Writing of Potentiality”

Discussion Leader: Silvia Benso (Siena College)

Sixth Annual Meeting (October 14, 2006), SPEP 2006 (Philadelphia)

A Program to Commemorate the Centennial of the Birth of Emmanuel Levinas

Moderator: Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College)
“Beyond Profligacy and Parsimony: Emmanuel Levinas’ Ethics of Expenditure,” Edith Wyschogrod (Rice University)
Text Discussion: Emmanuel Levinas’ Talmudic Reading “Beyond the State in the State.”

Discussion Leader: James Hatley (Salisbury University)

Fifth Annual Meeting (October 22, 2005), SPEP 2005 (Salt Lake City)

Martin Heidegger and Franz Rosenzweig: New Perspectives
Moderator: Deborah Achtenberg (University of Nevada, Reno)

“Rosenzweig’s Neues Denken and Heidegger’s Seinsdenken,” Wayne Froman (George Mason University)

“Alterity and Immanence: Reflections on Rosenzweig and Heidegger,” Peter Eli Gordon (Harvard University)

Fourth Annual Meeting (October 30, 2004), SPEP 2004 (Memphis)
Judaism and the Politics of Alterity

Moderator: Dana Hollander (McMaster University)

“Welcoming the Stranger in Our Midst: Thinking Alterity Within Tradition,” Andrew Benjamin (Monash University)

“Levinas in the Key of the Political,” Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College)

Text Discussion: Hermann Cohen, “Ethics of Maimonides,” chap. 1

Discussants: Deborah Achtenberg (University of Nevada, Reno) (Moderator); Dana Hollander (McMaster University); Alan Udoff (St. Francis College)

Third Annual Meeting (November 8, 2003), SPEP 2003 (Boston)

Presences (Two Papers with Audience Discussion)

Moderator: Claire Katz (Pennsylvania State University)

Gregory Kaplan (Rice University), “Is ‘Dialogue’ Immediate or Mediated? Martin Buber on the ‘Presence’ of the ‘Other’”

Martin Kavka (Florida State University), “The Presence of God in Levinas and R. Hayyim of Volozhin.”

Levinas and Thanksgiving: The Modim and Sotah 40A

Text Discussion led by Michael Smith (Berry College)

Second Annual Meeting (October 12, 2002), SPEP 2002 (Chicago)

Moderator: Michael Smith (Berry College)

Bettina Bergo (Loyola College of Maryland) “Readings and Counter-Readings: Where Levinas Misreads Heidegger”

*Dr. Bergo is currently translating Marlene Zarader’s La dette impense, which is the focus of her talk.

Respondent: John Drabinski (Grand Valley State University)

Text Discussion of Emmanuel Levinas’s “To Die For…” and “Is Ontology Fundamental?”

Moderator: James Hatley (Salisbury University)

Discussants: Robert Gibbs (University of Toronto); Sandor Goodhart (Purdue University); Robert Manning (Quincy University)

October 7, 2001, SPEP 2001 (Towson, Maryland) – Opening Remarks and Tentative Prospectus for the Founding of an annual conference: Continental Philosophy in a Jewish Context.

Good morning. For those who may not know me, my name is Michael Smith, and I have the honor of having been invited to open and moderate this meeting. Let me begin with a bit of background. The idea of an annual conference on continental philosophy in a Jewish context is an outgrowth of an earlier and ongoing group, a seminar on Emmanuel Levinas, which was held at Duquesne University last spring, thanks to the organizing skills of Diane Perpich. Some members of that group, including myself, Bettina Bergo, Jim Hatley and Oona Ajzenstadt, the author of the recent Driven Back to the Text: The Premodern Sources of Levinas’s Postmodernism, felt that there are important reaches within the domain of Levinasian studies that elude readers who have a philosophical disregard for the Judaic per se, and the role it may play in a fuller understanding of that author. As the e-mail dialectic developed over the ensuing summer months, the notion took hold that we might want to broaden the framework, making it less Levinas-specific.

At this point I believe a clarification is in order. Beyond the question of the precise name of this group, there is a significant distinction to be made between a colloquium dedicated specifically to the examination of the work of Levinas per se, and one that would take its orientation from the manner in which Levinas set out to rekindle the relevancy of Judaism to what Levinas called philosophy, which corresponds more or less to what we in this country designate as “continental philosophy.”

How can we characterize that overall renewal of the relevancy of Judaism carried out by Levinas? What did it deny, what did it affirm? Overlooking for the moment the nuances of the evolution within Levinas’s own thought on this topic, I believe it would be fair to say that Levinas rejected all forms of return to a separatist Jewish orthodoxy that turns its back on both philosophy and Christianity. Quite to the contrary—and I understand that the Levinasian scholar Catherine Chalier in France is currently working with Marc Faessler, the Christian theologian from Geneva who has written so profoundly on God in Levinas, to prolong the Jewish-Christian dialog in a milieu that was dear to Levinas’ heart and in which he took an active role—quite to the contrary, there is ample indication that Levinas’s thought is largely dependent even for its articulation on the encounter between the Judaic and the non-Judaic.

But as strongly as he advocated dialog and encounters between Christianity and Judaism, or Judaism and philosophy (whose Greekness he emphasized), he rejected any sort of compromise that would lessen the distinctness and sometimes sharp opposition between those historic traditions and living doctrines. Levinas devoted incisive pages specifically to figures who felt that dual solicitation—to Franz Rosenzweig in particular. And we have several transcriptions of dialogues between Levinas and Christian theologians that may serve as examples of how interfaith dialogue can be both brutally frank and yet respectful—or should I say respectful precisely by being brutally frank. I am thinking here especially of the discussion of the idea of kenosis in the published discussion following the lecture Transcendence et intelligibilité (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984).

But of more relevance here is the relationship between Judaism and philosophy. In founding a group that asserts the importance of a Jewish “context,” would it not be fair to object that philosophy is essentially that form of thought that transcends the specificity of cultures, cults and sociological contexts of all descriptions? That is not to say that sociology may not offer insights into the development and exercise of philosophical thought, but just that the spirit of philosophy is to transcend these contexts, in its effort to attain the level of truth itself.

Now most of us sitting here would probably be doubtful about the success of an enterprise that pretended to be context-free, liberated from the so-called prison-house of language or the fetters of history and culture. Paradoxically, it was precisely through Judaism that Levinas believed he could designate a locus beyond cultural relativity: that domain was, for him, the ethical. What exactly is that Jewish humanism, and what are the universal traits of Judaism that prompt us to speak of a relative-absolute when we attempt to give a synoptic view of Levinas’s Judaism? Whatever they are, they have at least as much right to be taken seriously, I would suggest, as Western or Greek philosophy’s claim to universality. The style and movement of Talmudic thought is quite distinct from that of the Platonic dialogues, but Levinas’s Talmudic lessons succeed in addressing questions in their own way that are just as universal and perennial as those of the Republic.

Furthermore, it seems that the fideistic tendencies of Christianity may have erected barriers between theological and philosophical thought that Judaism does not share, or at least not to the same degree. This circumstance favors our enterprise, the encounter of Judaic and philosophical thought.

Before turning to some of the many specific questions (whether we wish to meet under the auspices of the Society for Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy being perhaps the foremost among them) that we need to discuss today, let me conclude with a brief statement with which André Chouraqui concludes his “La pensée juive,” which is very much in the Levinasian spirit, and which I translate freely.

The essential function of the thought that we have just described has been to demystify the universe, to liberate man from the illusions of the myths, the seductions of magic, the horror of certain forms of slavery. It has constantly tended to free man, be it from the prison of his carnal nature or from his thought. But have the idols that the prophets denounced truly fallen from their thrones? The idolatry of the modern world, the more or less subtle forms of servitude that it justifies—are they any less destructive, hateful, frightening and inhuman than the cult of Moloch?¹

Our group may draw inspiration from the proceedings of the Colloques des intellectuels juifs de langue française, the group in which Levinas played such an active role in Paris, and which Annette Aronowicz describes so vividly in her Nine Talmudic Readings.² We hope to attract Annette, as well as many others, Jews and non-Jews, who are interested in going further in a quest and a dialogue for which Levinas has done much to set a propitious tone and context.

Now I shall slip into my role as moderator, and open the discussion to all present. I will ask Jim Hatley to be so kind as to take notes for this initial meeting of what we have tentatively agreed to call the “Society for Continental Philosophy in a Jewish Context” (SCPJC).

¹ André Chouraqui, La pensée juives (Paris :PUF, Que sais-je? Series, 1968), 124.

² Annette Aronowicz, Nine Talmudic Readings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. xxxiii.