Conceptions of the Human (Interpersonality II): The Limits of Regret

Abstract

The chapter expands the notion of Talmudic refuting to translate it into a certain structure of personhood in an interpersonal relationship. It stages a conception of personhood, which neither “subjectivist” nor “relativist” notions of the humanity of humans can either fully grasp or fully efface. At issue is a possibility for a conception of humanity in general and of a human being that reaches beyond notions of “a human” as bestowing nonbeing on things, and in particular measuring their being. To advance this argument, the chapter engages with, and limits the applicability of, Alexey Losev’s Eastern Orthodox political aesthetics as a purported foundation of, or even a possible replacement for, political theology. The argument in the chapter arrives at the insufficiency of Losev’s political aesthetics to grasp Talmudic interpersonality grounded in self-refuting, or broader yet, in refuting as its foundation. That helps showing how Losev’s Eastern Orthodox political alternative for modern notions of either universal “human being” or of a modern notion of a “Jew” -- as not only its counterpart but also its root -- prove insufficient to grasp the interpersonal political the Talmud’s pages show emerging and disappearing.