Strange Wonder

Strange Wonder confronts Western philosophy'sambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of theeveryday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy.On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to beextinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder'sindeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically securesitself at the expense of its own condition of possibility.Strange Wonder locates a reopening of wonder's primordialuncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, for whom wonder is first experienced asthe shock at the groundlessness of things and then as an astonishment that thingsnevertheless are. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this doublemovement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and JacquesDerrida, ultimately thematizing wonder as the awesome, awful opening that exposesthinking to devastation as well as transformation. Rubenstein's study shows thatwonder reveals the extraordinary in and through the ordinary, and is thereforecrucial to the task of reimagining the political, religious, and ethicalterrain.