COURSE MATERIALS

Course readings - including original-language editions of translated works we are reading (which students are encouraged to refer to to the extent possible) - as well as all background readings listed below, and additional research materials as needed, will be placed on reserve at Mills Library - e.g. for personal photocopying. To find items on reserve for a course, select "Course Reserves" from the drop-down menu here.

Jean Améry, "Resentments" (1965-66), trans. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld in At the Mind’s Limits. Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities

Original: "Ressentiments" in Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten (1966) in Werke vol. 2 [book on reserve]

September 27 (Special Meeting Location: LRW 3043A), October 4: Jankélévitch – Derrida

selections from: Vladimir Jankélévitch, Forgiveness, trans. Andrew Kelley (U of Chicago P, 2005) [purchase book / book on reserve]

Original: Le Pardon (1967), in Philosophie morale (Paris: Flammarion, 1998) [book on reserve]

Jacques Derrida, "To Forgive" (1997-1999), trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg, in Questioning God, ed. John Caputo, Mark Dooley, and John Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001)

Original: "Pardonner: l’impardonnable et l’imprescriptible" in Jacques Derrida, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet and Ginette Michaud (Paris: L’Herne, 2004) [book on reserve]

"On Forgiveness," trans. Michael Hughes, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (London: Routledge, 2001). (Note that the interviewer questions are missing from the Routledge edition.)

Original: Interview with Michel Wieviorka, "Le Siècle et le pardon," in Le Monde des Débats 9 (1999), reprinted in Foi et savoir, suivi de Le Siècle et le pardon (Paris: Seuil, 2000)

Derrida speaking on forgiveness at European Graduate School (video, 2004) - search on EGS Youtube channel.

Excerpt from the film Derrida (2002), including footage from an August 1998 lecture on forgiveness in South Africa

Interview with Professor Jacques Derrida conducted by Michal Ben-Naftali, trans. Moshe Ron (Jerusalem, January 8, 1998; posted on the website of the Shoah Research Center, Yad Vashem)

"On Forgiveness. A Roundtable Discussion with Jacques Derrida" (1999), in Questioning God, ed. Caputo et al.

"Justice et pardon," in Jacques Derrida, Sur parole. Instantanés philosophiques (Paris: L’Aube, 1999) - a compilation based on radio interviews from 1997-98

Leonard Lawlor, "Jacques Derrida" (2006-2019), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Jean-Michel Rabaté, "Jacques Derrida" in Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism, 2nd ed. (2005)

Kevin Hart, "Jacques Derrida," in Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis (eds.), The History of Western Philosophy of Religion (2009), vol. 5: Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Religion

Further Reading on Derrida:

Geoffrey Bennington, "Derridabase," in Bennington/Derrida, Jacques Derrida [book on reserve]

Jacques Derrida, "Letter to a Japanese Friend" (1985)

October 11, 18 October 25 (Special Meeting Location: LRW 3043A): Hermann Cohen on Atonement

Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (1919/1929), trans. Simon Kaplan (Scholars Press): chapters 10 and 11 [book on reserve]

Original: Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, 2nd ed., ed. Bruno Strauss (1929) [download / book on reserve]

excerpt from "Love and Justice in the Concepts of God and Man" (1900), in a draft translation by D.H.

Original: "Liebe und Gerechtigkeit in den Begriffen Gott und Mensch" in Jüdische Schriften (Berlin: Schwetschke, 1924), vol. 3

Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism: Introduction

Andrea Poma, "Hermann Cohen: Judaism and Critical Idealism," chap. 5 of Morgan/Gordon (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy (2007)

Louis Newman, "The Quality of Mercy: On the Duty to Forgive in the Judaic Tradition," Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 15, no. 2 (Fall 1987): 155-72, esp. 159 ff.

Further Reading

Michael Zank, The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (2000) [book on reserve]

Steven Kepnes, "Hermann Cohen's Liturgical Reasoning on the Moral Subject and the Moral Community," in German-Jewish Thought Between Religion and Politics. Festschrift in Honor of Paul Mendes-Flohr on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Chr. Wiese and Martina Urban (2012)

November 1: Emmanuel Levinas - A "Talmudic reading" on Forgiveness

"Toward the Other" (1963) in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz

Original: "Envers autrui" in Quatre lectures talmudiques

Annette Aronowicz, "Translator’s Introduction" to Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings


Additional Resources

"The Talmud" (2013), two-part BBC radio program

A Page of Talmud (website by Eliezer Segal, University of Calgary)

Robert Gibbs, "Returning/Forgiving: Ethics and Theology" in Caputo et al. (eds.), Questioning God

Edith Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 2nd ed. (2000): 188-94.

-----, "Repentance and Forgiveness: The Undoing of Time" in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60 (2006): 157–68.

Introductory Readings on Emmanuel Levinas

Robert Bernasconi, "Levinas, Emmanuel" (1998), in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online / Mills Reference]. To read the online article, be sure to click on the headings in the table of contents in the upper-left corner!