Out of Control

<p><b>Explores the fundamental confrontations between Spinoza and Levinas in ethics politics science and religion.</b></p><p>After the end of superstitious religion what is the meaning of the world? Baruch Spinoza's answer is truth Emmanuel Levinas's is goodness: science versus ethics. In <i>Out of Control</i> Richard A. Cohen brings this debate to life providing a nuanced exposition of Spinoza and Levinas and the confrontations between them in ethics politics science and religion.</p><p>Spinoza is the control the inexorable defensive logic of administrative rationality where freedom is equated to necessity-a seventeenth-century glimpse of Orwellian doublespeak and Big Brother. Levinas is the way out: transcendence not of God being and logic but of the other person experienced as moral obligation. To alleviate the suffering of others-nothing is more important! Spinoza wagers everything on mathematical truth discarding the rest as ignorance and illusion; for Levinas nothing surpasses the priorities of morality and justice to create a world in which humans can be human and not numbers or consumers drudges or robots.</p><p>Situating these two thinkers in today's context <i>Out of Control</i> responds to the fear of dehumanization in a world flattened by the alliance of positivism and plutocracy. It offers a nonideological ethical alternative a way out and up in the nobility of one human being helping another and the solidarity that moves from morality to justice.</p>