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In [[Civilization ]] and Its Discontents, [[Freud ]] made abundantly clear what he [[thought ]] [[about ]] the [[biblical ]] [[injunction]], first articulated in Leviticus 19:18 and then elaborated in [[Christian ]] [[teachings]], to [[love ]] one's [[neighbor ]] as oneself. "Let us adopt a naive attitude towards it," he proposed, "as though we were hearing it for the first [[time]]; we shall be unable then to suppress a [[feeling ]] of surprise and bewilderment." After the horrors of [[World ]] War II, the [[Holocaust]], [[Stalinism]], and [[Yugoslavia]], Leviticus 19:18 seems even less conceivable—but all the more urgent now—than Freud imagined.

In The Neighbor, [[three ]] of the most significant intellectuals [[working ]] in [[psychoanalysis ]] and critical [[theory ]] collaborate to show how this problem of neighbor-love opens questions that are fundamental to [[ethical ]] inquiry and that [[suggest ]] a new theological configuration of [[political ]] theory. Their three extended essays explore today's central historical problem: the persistence of the theological in the political. In "Towards a Political [[Theology ]] of the Neighbor," Kenneth Reinhard supplements Carl [[Schmitt]]'s political theology of the [[enemy ]] and friend with a political theology of the neighbor based in psychoanalysis. In "Miracles Happen," Eric L. Santner extends the book's exploration of neighbor-love through a bracing reassessment of [[Benjamin ]] and Rosenzweig. And in an impassioned plea for ethical [[violence]], [[Slavoj Žižek]]'s "Neighbors and [[Other ]] Monsters" reconsiders the [[idea ]] of [[excess ]] to rehabilitate a positive [[sense ]] of the inhuman and challenge the influence of [[Levinas ]] on contemporary ethical thought.

A rich and suggestive account of the interplay between love and [[hate]], [[self ]] and other, personal and political, The Neighbor will prove to be a touchstone across the humanities and a crucial [[text ]] for [[understanding ]] the persistence of political theology in secular [[modernity]].

|width="100%"| [[Slavoj Žižek|Zizek, Slavoj]], [[Eric L. Santner]], and [[Kenneth Reinhard]]. '''''[[The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology|The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology (Religion and Postmodernism Series)]]'''''. Chicago: February 14, 2006, New edition, Paperback, 240 pages, [[Language ]] [[English]], ISBN: 0226707393. <small>Buy it at [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226707393/nosubject-20/ Amazon.com], [http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226707393/nosub07-20/ Amazon.ca], [http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226707393/nosub-21/ Amazon.de], [http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226707393/nosubjencyofl-21/ Amazon.co.uk] or [http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226707393/nosub04-21/ Amazon.fr].</small>