Talmudic Self-Refutation (Interpersonality I)

Abstract

The chapter works through the emerging and disappearing notion of the political in the Talmud, with the notion and practice of refuting, and the underlying notion of interpersonality rather than intersubjectivity at the center. The analysis in the chapter advances through a case study of a particular notion of refuting in the Talmud, the notion of self-refuting or proving that an argument of one’s conversant is refuting itself. The chapter argues how neither political theology of Schmitt nor political ontology of Rancière suffice to account for interpersonal political relationships in self-refuting. In that venue, the notion of interpersonality emerges as essential for articulating the Talmudic political. That notion emerges by contrast with the intersubjectivity as the foundation of thinking the political in the modern political theory, implying as it does a fundamental loneliness of the subject, both of an individual subject and of a nation as a subject, as well.