Strange Wonder confronts Western philosophy's ambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically secures itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility. Strange Wonder locates a reopening of wonder's primordial uncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, for whom wonder is first experienced as the shock at the groundlessness of things and then as an astonishment that things nevertheless are. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this double movement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Derrida, ultimately thematizing wonder as the awesome, awful opening that exposes thinking to devastation as well as transformation. Rubenstein's study shows that wonder reveals the extraordinary in and through the ordinary, and is therefore crucial to the task of reimagining political, religious, and ethical terrain.

Western philosophy's relationship to "wonder" is deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished. This study argues that by endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy, philosophy has secured itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility.Strange Wonder locates a reopening of this primordial uncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, whose "wonder" oscillates between a shock at the groundlessness of things and an astonishment that things nevertheless are. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this double movement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Derrida, tracing wonder as an awesome, awful opening that exposes thought to devastation as well as transformation. Insofar as wonder reveals the extraordinary through the ordinary, Rubenstein argues it is crucial to the task of reimagining political, religious, and ethical possibilities.

About the Author
Mary-Jane Rubenstein is assistant professor of religion at Wesleyan University, where she teaches in the fields of philosophy of religion, modern Christian thought, and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies.

Reviews
One of the most gripping and timely accounts of Continental Philosophy... The reader can only come to the end of this book astonished. -- Catherine Keller Modern Theology In all, the book offers a new understanding of an influential sector of twentieth-century philosophy. -- Jonathan Malesic Journal of the American Academy of Religion ...passionately argued and engagingly written. -- Paul A. Macdonald Jr. Scottish Journal of Theology a fun read. -- George Pattison Reviews in Religion and Theology



Book Information
ISBN 9780231146333
Author Mary-Jane Rubenstein
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press