Books by Michael B. Smith
Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
by Jean-Luc Nancy, Gabriel Malenfant, Michael B. Smith
This book is a profound and eagerly anticipated investigation into what is left of a monotheistic religious spirit―notably, a minimalist faith that is neither confessional nor credulous. Articulating this faith as works and as an objectless hope, Nancy deconstructs Christianity in search of the historical and reflective conditions that provided its initial energy. Working through Blanchot and Nietzsche, re-reading Heidegger and Derrida, Nancy turns to the Epistle of Saint James rather than those of Saint Paul, discerning in it the primitive essence of Christianity as hope.
The “religion that provided the exit from religion,” as he terms Christianity, consists in the announcement of an end. It is the announcement that counts, however, rather than any finality. In this announcement there is a proximity to others and to what was once called parousia. But parousia is no longer presence; it is no longer the return of the Messiah. Rather, it is what is near us and does not cease to open and to close, a presence deferred yet imminent.
In a demystified age where we are left with a vision of a self-enclosed world―in which humans are no longer mortals facing an immortal being, but entities whose lives are accompanied by the time of their own decline―parousia stands as a question. Can we venture the risk of a decentered perspective, such that the meaning of the world can be found both inside and outside, within and without our so-immanent world?
The deconstruction of Christianity that Nancy proposes is neither a game nor a strategy. It is an invitation to imagine a strange faith that enacts the inadequation of life to itself. Our lives overflow the self-contained boundaries of their biological and sociological interpretations. Out of this excess, wells up a fragile, overlooked meaning that is beyond both confessionalism and humanism.
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Citizenship Across the Curriculum (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning)
by Michael B. Smith, Rebecca S. Nowacek, Jeffrey L. Bernstein
Citizenship Across the Curriculum advocates the teaching of civic engagement at the college level, in a wide range of disciplines and courses. Using "writing across the curriculum" programs as a model, the contributors propose a similar approach to civic education. In case studies drawn from political science and history as well as mathematics, the natural sciences, rhetoric, and communication studies, the contributors provide models for incorporating civic learning and evaluating pedagogical effectiveness. By encouraging faculty to gather evidence and reflect on their teaching practice and their students' learning, this volume contributes to the growing field of the scholarship of teaching and learning.
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In the Time of the Nations (Continuum Impacts)
by Emmanuel Levinas, Michael B. Smith
In this major collection of essays, Emmanuel Levinas, a leading philosopher of the 20th century, considers Judaism's uncertain relationship to European culture since the Enlightenment, problems of distance and integration. The book includes five Talmudic readings from between 1981 and 1986, essays on Franz Rosenzweig and Moses Mendelssohn, and a discussion with Francoise Armengaud which raises questions of central importance to Jewish philosophy in the context of general philosophy. This work brings to the fore the vital encounter between philosophy and Judaism, a hallmark of Levinas's thought.
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