The First Person Singular

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.

"This is the subject who feels more than thinks, who is moved by and in turn moves others through intimate encounters with them, who betrays and is betrayed by principles, processes and activities, who promises. The book is 'about' the range, scope and depth of such a subject. Lingis is, I believe, the most original and unique of philosophers working in the USA today." --Elizabeth Grosz, Rutgers University

"This is a visceral, embodied phenomenology, blending Whitman with Merleau-Ponty, Levinas with Nietzsche. The First Person Singular is a splendid addition to the Lingis corpus." --David C. Wood, Vanderbilt University