Theology

Ethics of In-Visibility

Imago Dei, Memory, and Human Dignity in Jewish and Christian Thought
Ed. by Claudia Welz

[Ethik der Un-Sichtbarkeit. Gottebenbildlichkeit, Erinnerung und Menschenwürde in jüdischem und christlichem Denken.]

2015. VIII, 289 pages.

Religion in Philosophy and Theology 77

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sewn paper
ISBN 978-3-16-153810-0
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Published in English.
If originating from acts of (in)visibilization, the visible and invisible are ethically imbued. This volume outlines an ethics of in-visibility in an interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy and theology, cultural history, art and media theory, sociology, literary and gender studies.
The hyphenated phrase 'in-visibility' indicates that the visible and the invisible are inseparable and yet in tension with each other. If originating from acts of (in)visibilization, both the visible and the invisible are ethically imbued. Whether we see or overlook each other, respect or dismiss another's dignity, remember or forget a history of crimes against humanity, our (over)sight has an impact on our interaction. What, then, is implied in seeing the human being as created in the image of an invisible God, as imago Dei? Which (re)sources in Judaism and Christianity can counter idolatry in the sense of cognitive captivity and experiences of abandonment after the Shoah? In addressing such questions, this volume outlines an ethics of in-visibility in an interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy and theology, cultural history, art and media theory, sociology, literary and gender studies.
Survey of contents
Claudia Welz: Introduction: Dialectics of In-Visibility in Religion, Art, and Ethics

I. Ethics, Media, Monstration
Arne Grøn: Ethics of In-Visibility – Daniel Dayan: Embattled Visibilities: Major Media and Visibility Entrepreneurs – Hannes Langbein: The Gaze and the Image: Some Reflections on the Phenomenology of the Image of God in the Face of Marina Abramović

II. Memory, Forgetting, and the Misuse of Images
Alana M. Vincent: Imitation and Finitude: Towards a Jewish Theology of Making – Melissa Raphael: Antidotes to Captivation and Spell-Bound Forgetting: The Counter-Idolatrous Figure of the Human in Modern Jewish Theology and Art – Christina von Braun: The Symbol of the Cross: A Visual Symbol Become Flesh in Anti-Semitism

III. Religious Heritage in Humanism, Modernity, and Postmodernity
Iben Damgaard: 'Who will not wonder at this Chameleon'? Pico and Kierkegaard on Human Dignity and Imago Dei – Paul Mendes-Flohr: Jewish Intellectuals Confront Modernity: Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber, and Leo Strauss – Elliot R. Wolfson: Givenness and the Disappearance of the Gift: Ethics and the Invisible in Marion's Christocentric Phenomenology

IV. Jewish Thought after the Shoah
Christian Wiese: God's Passion for Humankind and Human Responsibility for the Divine: Anthropology and Ethics in Hans Jonas's and Abraham J. Heschel's Post-Holocaust Interpretation of Imago Dei – N. Verbin: Protest and Resentment as Theological Responses to the Shoah – Claudia Welz: Imago Dei and Crimes against Humanity: Jewish Perspectives on an Ethics of In-Visibility
Authors/Editors

Claudia Welz Born 1974; studied theology and philosophy in Tübingen, Jerusalem, Munich and Heidelberg; PhD and habilitation at the Institute for Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion, University of Zurich; since 2010 Professor of Systematic Theology with special responsibilities in Ethics and Philosophy and Religion, and since 2014 Director of the Center for the Study of Jewish Thought in Modern Culture at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6682-9722

Reviews

The following reviews are known:

In: Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift — 78 (2015), S. 366–367 (Ege Kofod Schjorring)
In: Theologische Zeitschrift — 71 (2015), S. 370–371 (Malte Dominik Krüger)
In: Theologische Literaturzeitung — 140 (2015), S. 1272–1274 (Ulrich Schmiedel)
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