A selection of the writings of Alphonso Lingis, showcasing a unique blend of travelogue, cultural anthropology, and philosophy

Alphonso Lingis is arguably the most intriguing American philosopher of the past fifty yearsa 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 Lingiss work to give readers a thorough sense of his methodology and vision, the diversity of his subject matter, and the unity of his thought.

Lingiss writing evinces the many kinds of knowledge and subtle forces circulating through human communities and their environments. His unique style blends travel writing, cultural anthropology, and personal accounts of his innumerable experiences as an active participant in the adventures and relationships that fill his life. Drawing from countless articles, essays, and interviews published over fifty years, editor Tom Sparrow chose works that follow Lingiss engaging, often intimate reflections on the body in motion and the myriad influencessocial, cultural, aesthetic, libidinal, physical, mythologicalthat shape and animate it as it moves through the world, among people and places both foreign and domestic, familiar and unknown. In a substantial Introduction, Sparrow provides a biographical, critical, intellectual, and cultural context for reading and appreciating Alphonso Lingiss work.

An extended encounter with the singular philosopher, The Alphonso Lingis Reader conducts us through Lingiss early writing on phenomenology to his hybrid studies fusing philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, communication theory, aesthetics, and other disciplines, to his original, inspired arguments about everything from knowledge to laughter to death.