One of the most pressing concerns for contemporary society is the issue of violence and the factors that promote it. In Altared Ground: Levinas, History and Violence Brian Schroeder stages an engagement between Emmanuel Levinas, one of the leading figures in 20th century Continental philosophy, and Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and others in the history of ideas. Not merely an exposition of Levinas' original and complex thinking, Brian Schroeder seeks to re-read the history of Western philosophy and religion by going beyond Levinas' alternatives to traditional theories of the self in order to suggest a notion of subjectivity that is not grounded in violence.
Schroeder examines the link between subjectivity and violence. Through an exposition of Levinas' thought he seeks to move away from traditional theories of the self towards an inter-subjectivity in a postmodern context.
