Powers of Distinction

In this major new work, philosopher of religion Nancy Levene examines the elemental character of religion and modernity. Deep in their operating systems, she argues, are dualisms of opposition and identity that cannot be reconciled with the forms of life they ostensibly support. The missing position is neither non-dualism nor multiplication but a second dualism constitutive of mutual relation – relation that risks contestation and even violence but also supports modernity's most innovative ideals: democracy, criticism, and interpretation.

In readings from Abraham to the present, Levene recovers this dualism in its difference from its shadow partners. From Abraham we get the biblical call to give up tribal belonging for a promised land of covenantal relation. But modernity, inclusive of this call, is also the principle that critiques the promise as what divides self from other, us from them.

Drawing on a long tradition of thinkers and scholars even as she breaks new ground, Levene offers here nothing less than a new way of understanding modernity as an ethical claim about our world, a philosophy of the powers of distinction to include rather than to divide.