Death, Time and the Other: Ethics at the Limit of Metaphysics

Description

“In this work Saitya Brata Das is concerned with the limit of philosophyunderstood as ‘ontology of presence’ or as ‘metaphysics of subjectivity’. Dasundertakes to follow the thread of the ‘limit’ of a thought that makes equivalentnot only presence and subjectivity, but also being and totality, and as I see it, tothink the limit itself as the place where is played out quasi-phenomenologically-orwould appear in some ways under a name as ‘blind spot’- the unthought ofdifference. This difference is straight away, without immediately mentioningthe name of Emmanuel Lévinas, is determined as ethics. It is around thisquestion of ethics in its precise effects of deconstruction of metaphysics – effectsthat philosophy is incapable of incorporating – that Das’s work is organized andstructured. In this respect I praise a work whose contribution is incontestable,and which is a testimony of the refined and vibrant understanding of the textsthat he activates and of the thoughts that he on his own thinks. Throughouthis investigation, Das shows a true philosophical temperament, which isproductive and promising.”
—Gérard Bensussan, University of Strasbourg (France)

Saitya Brata Das teaches philosophy and literature at the Centre for EnglishStudies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is the author of The Political Theologyof Schelling (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016).