Alphonso Lingis

Every once in a while you find a voice that feels like someone smarter than you is reading your deepest inner thoughts and articulating them in ways that make sense in language. I have found this in Lingis. I have never read a theorist like him. A lot of people talk about affect theory these days, and after reading a butt-load of stuff that uses that term, it remained a foggy concept to me. Lingis doesn't use the term, rather, he enacts it. A pleasure to read, free of academicy jargon, yet steeped in the ideas of great minds, Lingis makes me believe in capital "P" Philosophy again. Through his beautiful poetic descriptions of fleeting moments, of passing glances, of flailing body parts, of the feelings that flash up and disappear again, he is able to capture what it means to be a human animal living in these times. Mixing anthropology, phenomenology and poetry, Lingis gives me hope for meaning in an otherwise dead and dying world. I know this sounds hyperbolic, but it's rare to find a voice that makes me want to proselytize, and right now I am moved to scream from this digital mountain top: READ LINGIS!… (more)