The philosophy of mind envisions belief as a mental act, the individual mindtaking specific propositions to be true. But we, and scientists, do not really“believe” observation-statements about the perceived, and scientificallyobserved world. Michel de Certeau envisions belief as a social act, a sort ofcontract, that has practical effects. De Certeau’s conception of thecontractual and practical nature of belief may illuminate religious belief.Anthropologist Clifford Geertz argues that it is in ritual that the convictionthat religious conceptions are veridical and that religious directives (...) are soundis somehow generated. De Certeau and Geertz show since the 18th centuryreligious belief came to be understood as the intellectual adherence to certainempirically or logically unverified or unverifiable propositions. They showhow this mode of religious belief has lost its credibility.I find some difficulties in de Certeau’s and Geertz’s conceptions.There are also forms of belief that isolate one from others, eventually allothers, and there is a distinctive and fundamental kind of belief that is beliefin oneself.But the harrowing perplexities that confound common sense understandingand threaten the ability of people to orient themselves and act effectively inthe world, and which have led humans to believe in a fundamental reality, ina different sense and a different way from the way the common sense worldis real, have not disappeared. They recur, in new forms. I identify threepractices pursued today outside of common sense, impractical, practices thatare haunted by the intellectual, existential and ethical dilemmas that recur innew forms in our secular, scientific society, our globalized postindustrialsociety. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Impulsive Forces in and Against WordsAlphonso Lingis (bio)In his lecture "Nietzsche, le polythéisme et la parodie" given at the Collège de Philosophie in 1957 and published in 1963 in his Un si funeste désir, Pierre Klossowski explicated certain radical passages from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, a work he had newly translated into French (two prior translations existed). In the philosophical world of France where perception seemed to have found (...) its definitive elucidation in the phenomenology of perception of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945), Nietzsche's exposition of sensory experience, as Klossowski laid it out, was so radically different from that phenomenology that it could not be assimilated. In his Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux, published in 1969, Klossowski worked on texts Nietzsche left unpublished and which date from the years of The Gay Science onward. Philosophers, Nietzsche had written, do not simply coordinate and justify the works and science of society; they break at least in part with the common language by formulating their own aggressivity, tolerance, intimidation, anxieties, need of solitude, or need to forget themselves. And Nietzsche too speaks not of what is common and communicable but of what he experienced inwardly. Now Klossowski presented Nietzsche's exposition of sensory experience as an exposition of the experience peculiar to Nietzsche, in the most troubled period of his life. This experience, moreover, Klossowski aimed to show, was wholly premonitory of Nietzsche's final state, in which he could no longer say what he was experiencing nor who he was.The environment is not simply passively impressed upon our sensory surfaces; we have to awaken, move our eyes, and focus on things and circumscribe their contours with our look, and assume a posture that enables us to advance our look. When we are born, and when we awaken each day, that is, are born again to the world, we are needy and vulnerable, to be sure; the organism is porous and needs to replenish fluids and substance lost. But our organisms are material systems that generate excess energies; it is because excess energies have to be discharged that the organism moves into the environment and depletes its substance, and needs develop. Nietzsche calls these excess energies impulses, also multiple wills to power, that is, not conscious drives to acquire power, but positive forces that expand and exist only in expansion. They seek resistances on which to discharge themselves. They push against one another and become multiple.For the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the movements of perception are intentional; they are from the first correlative with objects, or, for Merleau-Ponty, intersensory things, Gestalten agglomerated by an intrinsic intelligible essence or sensory meaning, arising against a background of potential objects or latent things. Yet every glance around us encompasses innumerable unnamed and unnameable shapes, hues, textures, slidings, illuminations. Do not in fact the excess energies of life open upon an environment of swarming sensory patterns, streamings, scintillations, and shadows which quicken life before or without acquiring meaningful identities? [End Page 60]What in classical epistemology were called sensations were the information bits these forces impressed on our sensory surfaces, resulting also in sensory affects of pleasure or pain, according to the passive conception of our sensibility. For Nietzsche the multiple impulses that confront the forces of the environment are active and not reactive; confronting what is not from the first meaningful but resists or empowers, they laugh and weep, bless and curse. And it is these multiple and conflicting impulses, not a conceptual grasp of the essences of things, that know environmental events, know the forces exerted by the multiple hues, textures, glows, savors, reflections, halos, echos, projections, and shadows scattered about us.The impulses do more than know all that; they exalt and consecrate events of the world, they put over each an azure bell of blessing, they give them a space to stand forth and to dance—"they come and offer their hands and laugh and flee—and come back."1 They give themselves form and multiple forms and dance with all things. They are Apollonian and Dionysian.What is called conscious thought is elaborated in words of the common... (shrink)

Enlightenment ideals of a society rooted in liberationist reason and morality were trampled in the wake of the savagery of the Second World War. That era's union of cold technology and ancient hatreds gave rise to a dark, alternative reason--an ethic that was value-free and indifferent with regard to virtue and vice, freedom, and slavery. In a world where "the unthinkable" had become reality, it is small wonder that theorists would turn to the writings of a man whose eighteenth-century imagination (...) preceded twentieth-century history in its unbridled exploration of viciousness, perversion, and monstrosity: the Marquis de Sade. Klossowski was one of the first philosophers in postwar Europe to ask whether Sade's reason, although aberrant and perverted to evil passions, could be taken seriously. Klossowski's seminal work inspired virtually all subsequent study of Sadean thought, including that of de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Derrida, Bataille, Blanchot, Paulhan, and Lacan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.4 (2001) 11-21 [Access article in PDF] Alphonso Lingis's We—A Collage, not a Collective Alexander E. Hooke Alphonso Lingis. Abuses. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. [AB]________. The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. [COMM]________. Dangerous Emotions. Berkeley: U of California P, 2000. [DE]________. Foreign Bodies.New York: Routledge, 1994. [FB]________. The Imperative Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998. [IMP] For Walt Fuchs (...) 1 Alphonso Lingis is unabashed in his uses of we. He does not speak about a privileged we, an exemplary or hegemonic we, or "we." According to this American philosopher, the various ways critics qualify their references to first person plural (we, us, our) are unnecessary, if not unjustifiable. Their caution and skepticism about any direct use of we invariably lead one to focus on this important pronoun as if it were a rhetorical sleight of hand, an ironic twist, a sign of embarrassment or elitism. Worse, their gradual cynicism diminishes or derides the reality of those whose contact with others can only be articulated in terms of we or our. Thus readers, and students subject to these theoretical reservations, are tempted to circumvent any substantive meaning to first-person plural in their own reflections and research. Given the persuasive charms of these reservations, to admit a genuine or lived we involves the risk of being charged with superficiality, a lack of sophistication, nostalgia, or political naiveté. 1In the face of this risk, Lingis writes in first-person plural without apology. Seemingly oblivious to the ongoing controversies over any legitimate use of we—as if it connoted self-indulgence or self-delusion, Lingis depicts experiences and contacts that embody a substance to first-person plural. These contacts are presented directly and with little hesitation, as they often move one to awaken to daring, brazen, or unfamiliar individuals in their contexts and surroundings. To present them requires an air of innocence to the extent that the contacts appear as new to the writer as they are to the reader. [End Page 11]They encompass more than surprise and spectacle. They also initiate beliefs and emotions that embrace other truths: unfamiliar expressions of gods, strange forms of human commitments, eccentric relations humans have with the past and future, but also with animals, trees, and unseen spirits. These truths evoke the kinds of genuine goods and values that are better conceived not as potential instantiations or counterexamples to our generalizations and conventions, but rather as compelling additions to our own senses of reality and truth.In writing about we or us, however, Lingis also raises some critical stakes. While conversant with most of the influential figures and themes discussed under the postmodern rubric, Lingis extends their central ideas to new levels and fields of inquiry. Instead of scrutinizing the uses of first-person plural or maintaining a respectable distance from them, his philosophical endeavors are distinct insofar as they address: How do we, he and his audience, respond to the many kinds of contact that are readily dismissed insofar as they overlooked in our scholarly and philosophical endeavors? What might these other uses and realities of the first-person plural say that affirm, question, or contest us? Can his own work, lucidly presented in five recent books, contribute to contemporary discussions about the possibilities and pitfalls of human relations, cultural and political entities, social and biological communities, and the theoretical or critical reflections on them? 2 Lingis's answers are guided by looking at we more as a collage and less as a collective. A collage, unlike a collection, emphasizes or highlights the unpredictable ways that humans and other life forms come together. The use of we as a collective—whether the result of unconscious drives, chosen ideologies, an intersubjective ethic, or rational communication acts—emphasizes certain values, particularly those that help us to distinguish whether the experiences of we can be understood or appreciated in terms of true or false, good or bad, genuine or superficial, beautiful or ugly, familiar and significant terms for making judgments about moral, social, and... (shrink)

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)

Inspired both in the biblical witness of God's call to persons throughout salvation history and in St. Ignatius Loyola's own personal experience of God-as-God under God's own pedagogical training and the subsequent transposition of this his personal experience into his book of the Spiritual Exercises , this article aims at drawing on Ignatius as a master pedagogue of genuine spiritual experience, as evidenced in the profound dynamics of his Exercises, to show how, in the light of Spiritual Theology, such a (...) genuine experience of God-as-God can be an effective channel of God's Spirit for interreligious dialogue. (shrink)

This article focuses on the story of the transformation of the city called Zion. Isaiah 1:1–2:5 is the key to the book. This chapter describes the failure of Israel to be the people of God: Israel’s covenant breach, a corrupted cult and imminent punishment. It tells of the existence of two groups within Israel: the righteous remnant who would be saved and the wicked who would be judged. This chapter furthermore presents the reader with a picture of decadent Jerusalem whose (...) sacrifices are rejected and whose prayers are no longer accepted. Isaiah 1 contains a warning of judgement against Jerusalem, whereas Isaiah 2:1–5 sketches the prophetic hope for Zion, which would lead to a pilgrimage of the nations to receive the Torah on Zion. (shrink)

This article focuses on Isaiah 12 – an important text that concludes the first main section of the Book of Isaiah. The analysis focuses on the structure and redaction of this text. The text is interpreted as a meaning-making text against the background of trauma as described in this first main section of the BI.

This article focuses on Isaiah 12 – an important text that concludes the first main section of the Book of Isaiah. The analysis focuses on the structure and redaction of this text. The text is interpreted as a meaning-making text against the background of trauma as described in this first main section of the BI.

"... 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 ...

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 ...

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.

This article focuses on Malachi’s distinctive claims that guarantee a well-ordered community, namely the validity and feasibility of a Torah-compliant community. Since Torah compliance is a fundamental core of Israel’s life, in the book of Malachi, Yahweh’s Torah functions as the reliable and invariable authority for the community well-being as a whole. Community well-being as pictured by Malachi is created not only by Yahweh but also as the consequent contemplation and action of community. Malachi notes clearly that it is the (...) sins of the community as a whole that renders it inconceivable that Yahweh’s blessings should attend to them as they are now, and Malachi demands certain definite and substantial actions as preconditions to the manifestation of the desired expectations. To him the secret of creating and maintaining a healthy, viable community and living as people in covenant relationship with Yahweh, is by ‘remembering’ (upholding and practicing) Yahweh’s Torah. Accordingly, Malachi enjoined his audience to remember the Torah of Moses, which constitutes the fundamental dimensions of their relationship with Yahweh. This article is thus an attempt to understand Malachi’s concept of a Torah-compliant community and its associated blessings of happiness and shalom. (shrink)

This article focuses on Malachi’s distinctive claims that guarantee a well-ordered community, namely the validity and feasibility of a Torah-compliant community. Since Torah compliance is a fundamental core of Israel’s life, in the book of Malachi, Yahweh’s Torah functions as the reliable and invariable authority for the community well-being as a whole. Community well-being as pictured by Malachi is created not only by Yahweh but also as the consequent contemplation and action of community. Malachi notes clearly that it is the (...) sins of the community as a whole that renders it inconceivable that Yahweh’s blessings should attend to them as they are now, and Malachi demands certain definite and substantial actions as preconditions to the manifestation of the desired expectations. To him the secret of creating and maintaining a healthy, viable community and living as people in covenant relationship with Yahweh, is by ‘remembering’ (upholding and practicing) Yahweh’s Torah. Accordingly, Malachi enjoined his audience to remember the Torah of Moses, which constitutes the fundamental dimensions of their relationship with Yahweh. This article is thus an attempt to understand Malachi’s concept of a Torah-compliant community and its associated blessings of happiness and shalom. (shrink)

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), biography, anthropology and literature. Lingis explains how (...) we experience our own powers of perception, our postures, attitudes, gestures and purposive action; how our susceptibility to pain and excitability by pleasure acquiesce in and resist the ways they are identified and manipulated today; how cultures code our sensuality with phallic and with fluid identities; how others dress appeals to and puts demands on us. (shrink)

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

"Dangerous Emotions is a sustained philosophical, phenomenological, and personal series of reflections on the role of passions and emotions, visceral responses, and human reactions which bypass and surpass the role of reason. Lingis has a unique perspective, a position already well fortified in many texts he has published, whereby he blends elements of philosophical texts (most notably Heidegger, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas, and Neitzsche) with strange and intense experiences from everyday life across different geographies and cultures. He is clearly one of (...) the most brilliant philosophers of his generation. His book explores those moments and events usually unnoticed by philosophy, which philosophy needs to address if it is to provide us with a way of understanding life and living it well."—Elizabeth Grosz, author of Fluid Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. (shrink)

_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)

"Alphonso Lingis analyzes with power and depth the meaning of subject, time and nature throught the lens of the death of the other"--Jacket.