Neighborliness: Poetics, Politics, and Practices of Neighbor-Love

The figure of the neighbor — whether in the guise of the Good Samaritan, an adversary, a traitor, an injured person in need of help, or simply an indifferent everyman — embodies the relationship between the individual, community, and sovereignty. But who qualifies as a neighbor? And what are we to make of the different conceptions of neighborly love and community across the boundaries of culture, ethics, and faith? These questions are fundamental to contemporary debates about war, migration, and shifting scapegoating mechanisms — and to the challenges we all face as neighbors.

In this volume ten leading international scholars present a wide range of approaches that integrate concepts from Western1 philosophy and literary studies, phenomenology, theology, psychoanalysis and political theory.