Sharon Cameron
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226413907
- eISBN:
- 9780226414232
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226414232.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This essay engages two strains of Tolstoy’s writing. In the first, the sight of death is the foundation of ethical understanding; in the second, if ethical understanding is practiced, there is no ...
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This essay engages two strains of Tolstoy’s writing. In the first, the sight of death is the foundation of ethical understanding; in the second, if ethical understanding is practiced, there is no death of any consequence. The latter half of the essay turns to Bresson’s L’Argent, a filmic adaptation of Tolstoy’s “The Forged Coupon” which transforms Tolstoy’s gospelized ethics to an immanent ethics, raising the question of whether ethics is phenomenal and embodied (as in Levinas and Derrida) or whether it is evental (as in Badiou). An examination of aspects of Wittgenstein’s writing on ethics, T. J. Clark’s The Sight of Death, and Tolstoy’s fable “Alyosha Gorshok” sharpen the consideration of whether ethics is natural or supernatural.Less
This essay engages two strains of Tolstoy’s writing. In the first, the sight of death is the foundation of ethical understanding; in the second, if ethical understanding is practiced, there is no death of any consequence. The latter half of the essay turns to Bresson’s L’Argent, a filmic adaptation of Tolstoy’s “The Forged Coupon” which transforms Tolstoy’s gospelized ethics to an immanent ethics, raising the question of whether ethics is phenomenal and embodied (as in Levinas and Derrida) or whether it is evental (as in Badiou). An examination of aspects of Wittgenstein’s writing on ethics, T. J. Clark’s The Sight of Death, and Tolstoy’s fable “Alyosha Gorshok” sharpen the consideration of whether ethics is natural or supernatural.
