L’impatience messianique: Un entretien de Danielle Cohen-Levinas avec Gérard Bensussan

Abstract

Messianism is not only incompatible with a philosophy of history but also can never agree with a political philosophy. It stands for exteriority, overflow and being elsewhere – what history and politics are made of but which nontheless radically escape the set of causalities, processes and teleologies that give meaning to them. Inspired by the thoughts of Karl Marx, Emmanuel Levinas and Franz Rosenzweig, Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Gérard Bensussan discuss the impossibility of doing away with the randomness of time and the enormous trick of the concept, which only patience is that of « refusal ». However, is it anything else but a true impatience, anything but a « refusal » constantly starting all over again? Keywords: Messianism, ontology, history, politics, ethics.