Just Athens and Jerusalem? What about Banaras? Heroes, Nomads, and Bhaktas at the Cross-cultural Roads
ATHENS JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY February 13, 2025 Thomas Sayers Ellis
Contemporary Continental philosophy uses ethnotropes—symbolic figures from literature and religion—to critique transcendental phenomenology. The Greek hero Ulysses represents Husserl's transcendental ego, which reduces the other to a transparent object of intention, erasing the ethical space between self and other. The Jewish nomad Abraham, used by Derrida and Levinas, represents a deconstructive subject who awaits the other's arrival, but this messianic structure still ties the other to future presence. The article argues that the Hindu Bhakta, specifically in the tradition of viraha bhakti (love-in-separation), offers a third ethnotrope: the other (Krishna) is withdrawing from presence, establishing a negative messianic where the other is not coming. This completes the ethical critique left unfinished by the Jewish nomad.