Irrevocable: A Philosophy of Mortality

Description

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. Contents......Page 6 Part I: Outside......Page 10 Outside......Page 12 The Weight of Reality......Page 16 Doubles......Page 26 Shadows......Page 32 Part II: Chance......Page 36 Cause, Choice, Chance......Page 38 Part III: Passions......Page 52 The Altiplano......Page 54 Return of the First Person Singular......Page 62 Aconcagua......Page 72 Seduction......Page 84 Truthfulness......Page 90 Part IV: Belief......Page 92 The Stone Axe......Page 94 Angels with Guns......Page 98 Belief......Page 106 Performance......Page 118 Voyage......Page 126 Part V: Justice......Page 130 The Future of Torture......Page 132 Justice......Page 140 The System......Page 146 Truth in Reconciliation......Page 148 Part VI: Irrevocable......Page 162 The Babies in Trees......Page 164 Mortality......Page 170 Dignity......Page 180 Irrevocable Loss......Page 184 Part VII: Gratitude......Page 198 Gratitude......Page 200 Appendix: Philosophy's Tasks......Page 204 Notes......Page 224 About the Photographs......Page 236 Acknowledgments......Page 239