Entre Nous Paperback – 13 Apr 2006

This is a beautiful book written by a brillian philosopher of the last century. He thought that philosophy should be about ethics. He speaks beautifully of finding ourselves in the face of our fellow men and women.

I don't like to speak ill of persons who have passed on, especially since the picture on the cover makes it appear that the author was a kindly individual, but this book was very disappointing. The author apparently intends to provide insights into the dynamics of human consciousness and relationships, but his writing is so convoluted that I have great difficultly understanding any of the points he is trying to make. His writing is possibly the most obscure I have ever encountered, and I have 3 post graduate degrees. My view is that he didn't put enough effort into expressing himself clearly. Perhaps he felt that the subject matter was so hard to understand that folks reading his books would expect to have difficulty. However, the more difficult the subject matter, the more it is incumbent upon a writer to put effort into expressing his thoughts clearly and succinctly.

After taking an intense and exceptionally stimulating course in Current Continental Philosophy at Texas A&M University (under Professor Steve Daniel, who has a published book that goes along with this pioneering undergraduate course), I bought this book to delve more into the highly intriguing thought of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas -- one of the most important thinkers of the day and of all time for that matter, who is usually associated with the twentieth century enterprise of Deconstruction, as of that of Jacques Derrida who is vocal in his indebtedness to the "masterful" thought of Levinas. I would very much recommend this book, but only if you have an appropriate background in philosophical context, as to accommodate to the text's highly difficult and complex prose and content.As the back cover of the book indicates, I did find this book to actually be an unexpectedly helpful and engaging guide (in spite of its difficulty) to serve as a proficient introduction to the prolific thought of this outstanding author. The essays contained in the book span over a spectrum of about forty years; so the reader is able to glimpse the progression and difference from Levinas's earlier work to his later essays, of which the book is for the better mainly comprised.For me, these essays are paradigmatic of very technical and complex philosophy mixed with soaring religious insights into the inter-human (and ultimately highly ethical) condition. In Entre-Nous, the reader meets in a face-to-face way why Levinas's work is so vital -- in which ontology is unravelled into ethics, as philosophy is ultimately undone into what is truly religious.