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Lecture by Professor Rein Raud
Lecture by Professor Rein Raud
(cosponsored by the School of Sociology & Philosophy)
I was our pleasure to host, on December 6, 2011, Professor Rein Raud (Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Helsinki, and Professor of Asian and Cultural Studies, Tallinn University), who delivered a lecture full of provocative insight at the Brookfield HSC, accompanied by his usual elegant power-point images. The lecture (see the abstract, below) was well received by an audience of teaching and research staff, graduate students and visitors from the community.
One of the central notions in the late work of Emmanuel Levinas is substitution, the idea that the ethical self must substitute itself for the Other in absolute passivity, a process he describes sometimes in terms of extreme violence. The idea of giving oneself up for an Other — Amida Buddha — is also central in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, and notably in the works of Shinran Shonin. The talk explores the possibilities of comparison and the points of divergence in these ways of thinking the self and its ethical obligations.