Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation

In Mourning Becomes the Law, Gillian Rose takes us beyond the impasse of post-modernism or ‘despairing rationalism withour reason’. Arguing that the post-modern search for a ‘new ethics’ and ironic philosophy are incoherent, she breathes new life into the debates concerning power and domination, transcendence and eternity. Mourning Becomes the Law is the philosophical counterpart to Gillian Rose’s highly acclaimed memoir Love’s Work. She extends similar clarity and insight to discussions of architecture, cinema, painting and poetry, through which relations between the formation of the individual and the theory of justice are connected. At the heart of this reconnection lies a reflection on the significance of the Holocaust and Judaism. Mourning Becomes the Law reinvents the classical analogy of the soul, the city and the sacred. It returns philosophy, Nietzsche’s ‘bestowing virtue’, to the pulse of our intellectual and political culture.

• Philosophical counterpart to acclaimed autobiography Love’s Work (Chatto, 1995) • Controversial - argues against post-modernism; challenges ironic philosophy of Richard Rorty • Philosophy for the non-philosopher, it addresses topics such as Schindler’s List, the paintings of Poussin, death • Well known and highly respected author

Introduction; 1. Athens and Jerusalem: a tale of three cities; 2. Beginnings of the day: Fascism and representation; 3. The comedy of Hegel and the Trauerspiel of modern philosophy; 4. ‘Would that they would forsake Me but observe my Torah’: Midrash and political authority; 5. Potter’s Field: death worked and unworked; 6. O! Untimely death/death.