Description: Martin Kavka challenges the ancient opposition between Athens and Jerusalem by retrieving the concept of meontology (the doctrine of nonbeing) in one strand of the Jewish philosophical and theological tradition. Kavka's study also offers new interpretations of important contributors to contemporary Continental philosophy. They critique arguments about the role of lived religion in the thought of Jacques Derrida, the role of Greek philosophy in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, and the ethical importance of the thought of Franz Rosenzweig.
Review Quotes: "Exceeding all other work on modern Jewish thought, this book engages the history of philosophy and the history of Jewish philosophy. The question of the me on, the not-being, is a central question for both traditions, leading from pre-Socratics, through Plato and Aristotle, and then obsessing certain thinkers until today...[the author's] relentless philosophical voice allows him to delve into extremely complex and challenging questions with astonishing clarity. Because he is asking for a specific purpose, he can plumb the depths of the relation of being and non-being, without drowning the reader in jargon or metaphysical haze. No reader will fail to learn a great deal from his enquiry and his argument." Robert Gibbs, author of Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas and Why Ethics? Signs of Responsibilities