Encounters with Alphonso Lingis is the first extensive study of this American philosopher who is gaining an international reputation to augment his national one. Lingis's books have already been translated into nearly a dozen languages, and writers from many disciplines are finding his works a source for fresh philosophical and scholarly inquiries. The distinguished contributors to this volume reflect on their own encounters with this unique American thinker as they engage his wor...

" . . . thought-provoking and meditative, Lingis's work is above all touching, and offers a refreshingly idiosyncratic antidote to the idle talk that so often passes for philosophical writing." —Radical Philosophy" . . . striking for the clarity and singularity of its styles and voices as well as for the compelling measure of genuine philosophic originality which it contributes to questions of community and (its) communication." —Research in PhenomenologyArticulating the au...

A selection of the writings of Alphonso Lingis, showcasing a unique blend of travelogue, cultural anthropology, and philosophyAlphonso Lingis is arguably the most intriguing American philosopher of the past fifty years—a scholar of transience, someone who has visited and revisited more than one hundred countries and has woven this itinerary into his writing and allowed it to give form to his thinking. This book assembles a representative selection of Lingis’s work ...

A lyrical and personal philosophical inquiry into the weight of reality, the weight of things, and the weight of life itself.Drawing from philosophy, anthropology, psychology, religion, and science, Alphonso Lingis seeks to uncover what in our reality escapes our attempts at measuring and categorizing. Writing as much from his own experiences as from his longstanding engagement with phenomenology and existentialism, Irrevocable studies the world in which sh...

This book presents some eruptions of archaic compulsions and behaviors and the forms that they acquire in contemporary societies. It explores how we see and feel our bodies and some of the ways evolution and culture are transforming them.

The essays in this volume all ask what it means for human beings to be embodied as desiring creatures—and perhaps still more piercingly, what it means for a philosopher to be embodied. In taking up this challenge via phenomenology, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of literature, the volume questions the orthodoxies not only of Western metaphysics but even of the phenomenological tradition itself. We miss much that has philosophical import when we exclude the somatic aspects...

Foreign Bodies analyzes how our culture elaborates for us the bodies we have by natural evolution. Calling on the new means contemporary thinkers have used to understand the body, Alphonso Lingis explores forms of power, pleasure and pain, and libidinal identity.The book contrasts the findings of theory with the practice of the body as formulated in quite different kinds of language--the language of plastic art (the artwork body builders make of themselves)...

" . . . thought-provoking and meditative, Lingis's work is above all touching, and offers a refreshingly idiosyncratic antidote to the idle talk that so often passes for philosophical writing." —Radical Philosophy" . . . striking for the clarity and singularity of its styles and voices as well as for the compelling measure of genuine philosophic originality which it contributes to questions of community and (its) communication." —Research in PhenomenologyArticulating the au...

Among the first and foremost of American continental philosophers, Alphonso Lingis refines his own thought through a topic usually deemed unworthy of philosophical examination—passion. Lingis criticizes traditional scientific accounts of the emotions as dividing or disrupting our lives and argues for passion as a unifying force, a concept which invites philosophical exploration. The book’s structure is twofold. First, it offers an examination of Lingis’s most recent developments through th...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Denial of Death explores how people and cultures around the world have reacted to the concept of death from celebrated cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker.Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life’s work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker’s brilliant and impassioned answer to the “why” of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles t...

In his bestselling The Soul's Code, James Hillman restored passion and meaning to the concept of identity, arguing that each of us is born with an innate character, the "daimon" or "spirit" that calls us to what we are meant to be. Now, in The Force of Character, Hillman brings the idea of character full circle, offering a revolutionary new vision of life's most feared and misunderstood chapter: old age."Aging is no accident," Hillman writes. "It is necess...

Why we are so fascinated with sex and sexuality—from the preeminent philosopher of the 20th century.Michel Foucault offers an iconoclastic exploration of why we feel compelled to continually analyze and discuss sex, and of the social and mental mechanisms of power that cause us to direct the questions of what we are to what our sexuality is.