The Alphonso Lingis Reader showcases the philosophical thought and beautiful writing of Alphonso Lingis across his career. Much of his writing is a unique blend of travelogue, cultural anthropology, and philosophy.

Ò. . . a more compelling reading of Kant than any I have ever seen.Ó ÑDavid Farrell Krell In this provocative book, Alphonso Lingis argues that not only our thought is governed by an imperative, as Kant had maintained, but, rather, our ...

Collective performances cannot be understood only from the intentions of the organizers, participants and bystanders, and from their historical, political, economic and ideological contexts. Cultural performances close in on themselves and evolve with their own logic: that of ceremony and festival in which their own scenes of splendour, dance and war adjust to one another.

Un ouvrage récent de L. Villemin, Pouvoir d’ordre et pouvoir de juridiction , se penche sur l’histoire théologique de la distinction entre « pouvoir d’ordre » et « pouvoir de juridiction » pour en éprouver la validité théologique actuelle. Au fil des siècles, ce binôme a décrit des réalités très variables. En distinguant pouvoir sur le corps eucharistique et pouvoir sur le corps ecclésial, il a consacré un déplacement de la relation classique entre ecclesia et ministerium vers une relation entre (...) potestas et eucharistia. Cela n’est pas sans conséquences pour la vie ecclésiale, la théologie et le droit canonique. Or, Vatican II a choisi d’utiliser un concept unitaire du pouvoir dans l’Eglise, à savoir celui de potestas sacra. N’y a-t-il donc pas lieu d’abandonner la distinction entre ordo et iurisdictio ? Dans la foulée des conclusions de l’ouvrage, Alphonse Borras dégage des perspectives fécondes pour penser les ministères – leur attribution autant que leur exercice – et l’habilitation qu’ils impliquent à servir l’Eglise qui porte l’Evangile en ce lieu. (shrink)

"... 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 ...

Alphonso Lingis’s singular works of philosophy are not so much written as performed, and in The First Person Singular the performance is characteristically brilliant, a consummate act of philosophical reckoning. Lingis’s subject here, aptly enough, is the subject itself, understood not as consciousness but as embodied, impassioned, active being. His book is, at the same time, an elegant cultural analysis of how subjectivity is differently and collectively understood, invested, and situated. The subject Lingis elaborates in detail is (...) the passionate subject of fantasy, of obsessive commitment, of noble actions, the subject enacting itself through an engagement with others, including animals and natural forces. This is not the linguistic or literary subject posited by structuralism and post-structuralism, nor the rational consciousness posited by post-Enlightenment philosophy. It is rather a being embodied in both a passionate, intensifying activity and a cultural collective made up of embodied others as well as the social rituals and practices that comprise this first person singular. (shrink)

How is anxiety the source of knowledge? How can Heidegger identify death as nothingness? How does anxiety engender resoluteness?

Devant l’écart possible entre l’action pastorale et des dispositions canoniques, l’auteur propose quelques éléments de réflexion sur le droit en Église. Il s’interroge d’abord sur l’autorité du droit canonique dans l’Église catholique dans le contexte de la crise des héritages culturels. Il présente ensuite les caractéristiques majeures de ce droit et son rôle de promotion de la communion dès lors que celle-ci s’organise en société. Une pratique pastorale du droit implique la prise en compte de la situation ecclésiale à partir (...) de laquelle on lit, interprète et applique les dispositions canoniques. Cela pose la question d’une herméneutique du droit à la lumière de Vatican II, celui-ci interprétant celui-là et non le contraire. Cela pose en tout cas la question d’une réception en Église des dispositions canoniques. Plus un dispositif aura été réfléchi et préparé en Église, plus il aura des chances d’être reçu et appliqué. (shrink)

A summer spent in the Scandinavian Arctic changes the sense of seasons: the Sámi know eight seasons; the visitor finds summer in the valleys, winter above, in the mountains, and winter below, in the permafrost underfoot. The summer spent in movement makes one understand the force of movement and initiative in human life, the sedentary and the nomadic instincts. The seasonal migrations of reindeer and the periodicity of lemming years make one explore movements of humans that are not launched by (...) initiatives, periodic and rhythmic movements. Exploring rock paintings in Alta and the space station in Kiruna extends the space of human history from humans assembled at the foot of the retreating glacier, 7000 years ago, to human tourists in outer space. (shrink)

Paleoanthropologists have long worked with the assumption that bipedism and brain enlargement evolved together in a cycle of cause and effect powered by the production of tools and instrumental manipulation. Rather, this paper argues, following the work of Paul Shepard, that discernments, or specific kinds of mentalities, arise from the relations that mammals and hominids form with their environments, other species and within their own social groupings.

_The Visible and the Invisible _contains the unfinished manuscript and working notes of the book Merleau-Ponty was writing when he died. The text is devoted to a critical examination of Kantian, Husserlian, Bergsonian, and Sartrean method, followed by the extraordinary "The Intertwining--The Chiasm," that reveals the central pattern of Merleau-Ponty's own thought. The working notes for the book provide the reader with a truly exciting insight into the mind of the philosopher at work as he refines and develops new pivotal (...) concepts. (shrink)

Lingis contests holistic conceptions of phenomenology and existential philosophy, and he refutes the primacy of perception and the practicable world. By contrast, he seeks to elucidate the substantive body. He shows that in contact with other sentient beings, an imperative that is addressed to us precedes and makes possible their capacity to order us with the meanings of their words and gestures. Written in clear, vivid language free of all unnecessary technical jargon.

When someone there is standing before us, we have been cautioned that he is not speaking with his own voice but speaking the language of his gender, his family, his class, his education, his culture, his economic and political interests, his unconscious drives, indeed his state of physical health and alertness. Are we then doing no more than interpreting what he says and does? Do we ever make contact with what he means for himself when he says “I”—with his visions, (...) the story he tells himself of his life? (shrink)

In his latest book, the prolific writer and thinker Alphonso Lingis brings interdisciplinarity and lyrical philosophizing to the weight of reality, the weight of things, and the weight of life itself. Drawing from philosophy, anthropology, psychology, religion, and science, Lingis seeks to uncover what in our reality escapes our attempts at measuring and categorizing. Writing as much from his own experiences and those of others as from his longstanding engagement with phenomenology and existentialism, Irrevocable studies the world in (...) which shadows, reflections, halos, and reverberations count as much as the carpentry of things. Whether describing religious art and ritual, suffering, war and disease, the pleasures of love, the wonders of nature, archaeological findings, surfing, volcanoes, or jellyfish, Lingis writes with equal measures of rigor and abandon about the vicissitudes of our practices and beliefs. Knowing that birth, the essential encounters in our lives, crippling diseases and accidents, and even death are all determined by chance, how do we recognize and understand such chance? After facing tragedies, what makes it possible to live on while recognizing our irrevocable losses? Lingis’s investigations are accompanied by his own vivid photographs from around the world. Balancing the local and the global, and ranging across vast expanses of culture and time, Irrevocable sounds the depths of both our passions and our impassioned bodies and minds. (shrink)

L’ouvrage de Mgr Rouet et de ses collaborateurs traite de l’expérience des « communautés locales » dans le diocèse de Poitiers, projet diocésain qui repose sur la vocation baptismale des chrétiens et leur capacité de porter la mission de l’Église, en dialogue avec la société. Cette expérience donne à penser en matière de théologie pratique par sa cohérence ecclésiologique et son articulation avec la réalité ambiante. Elle appelle cependant un approfondissement théologique de ses présupposés et quelques précisions canoniques.

Excerpt from Le Mobilisme Moderne Comme au temps de l'eleate, 1'un et l'immuable s'erigeni donc, realite unique, devant la pluralite et le mouvement, apparences qu'un souffle eternel emporte et qui ne sont pas, ne pouvant pas etre penses c'est-a - dire reduits ala logiti cation tres particuliere dont la substance intellectuelle de notre race s'impregne des lors. Socrate est venu par la suite adoucir ce que l'eleatisme avait d'absolu et d'un peu repu gnant pour notre ame occidentale, attenuer l'aneantisse ment (...) de toutes les individuations mouvantes dans l'etre immuable et eternel, en proposant cette conciliation de l'l'n et du Multiple qui constitue le concept. Maisla dialectique des modernes est demeuree neanmoins, jusqu'a ces derniers temps, conforme a l'argumentation mysterieuse de Zenon d'elee, toute en faveur de l'un contre le Multiple et ses variations desordonnees. Le probleme se pose donc encore et se resout le plus souvent dans le sens eleatique. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)