A Saint of One's Own: Emmanuel Levinas, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, and Eulalia of Mérida

L'Esprit Créateur, Volume 50, Number 1, pp. 6-20.

 By Virginia Burrus

Shame and sanctity are intimately related in ancient "lives" of Jewish sages and Christian ascetics. Infinitely other, saints (from Eliezer to Eulalia) are also infinitely seductive in the audacity of their willful abjection. Drawing desire beyond law, hagiography evokes "not ethics alone," but "le saint, la sainteté du saint" (Levinas).

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