David Michael Levin's ongoing exploration of the moral character and enlightenment-potential of vision takes a new direction in The Philosopher's Gaze . Levin examines texts by Descartes, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Benjamin, Merleau-Ponty, and Lévinas, using our culturally dominant mode of perception and the philosophical discourse it has generated as the site for his critical reflections on the moral culture in which we are living. In Levin's view, all these philosophers attempted to understand, one way or another, the distinctive pathologies of the modern age. But every one also attempted to envision―if only through the faintest of traces, traces of mutual recognition, traces of another way of looking and seeing―the prospects for a radically different lifeworld. The world, after all, inevitably reflects back to us the character, the reach and range, of our vision. In these provocative essays, the author draws on the language of hermeneutical phenomenology and at the same time refines phenomenology itself as a method of working with our experience and thinking critically about the culture in which we live. "[The reader] will find that Levin is saying something very direct and very powerful: Western philosophy needs a more explicit moral dimension."--"The Phillipian "This bold and philosophically imaginative venture, problematizing the sovereignty of vision and resituating it in its relativity to the other modalities of perception, may well stand as Levin's 'consummate philosophical contribution.'"—Calvin O. Schrag, author of The Resources of Rationality "This is a unique and timely contribution. Levin's genius consists in taking material that is presumed to be familiar to philosophers and to readers of philosophy and demonstrating that something is happening in this material that was not evident before now."—Edward S. Casey, author of The Fate of Place "This bold and philosophically imaginative venture, problematizing the sovereignty of vision and resituating it in its relativity to the other modalities of perception, may well stand as Levin's 'consummate philosophical contribution.'"―Calvin O. Schrag, author of The Resources of Rationality "This is a unique and timely contribution. Levin's genius consists in taking material that is presumed to be familiar to philosophers and to readers of philosophy and demonstrating that something is happening in this material that was not evident before now."―Edward S. Casey, author of The Fate of Place David Michael Levin is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University and author of several books. Most recently he edited Language Beyond Postmodernism (1997), Sites of Vision (1997), and Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (California, 1994). The Philosopher's Gaze: Modernity in the Shadows of Enlightenment By David Michael Levin University of California Press Copyright © 1999 David Michael Levin All right reserved. ISBN: 0520217802 Outside the Text: Thoughts on a Painting by Chardin In Un Philosophe Occupé de Sa Lecture (1753), Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin depicts a well-dressed, corpulent man comfortably seated at his desk and absorbed in contemplation whilst reading a book. The painter's philosopher seems to be in repose, untroubled by the thoughts that are passing through his mind. The atmosphere of the painting is soft, the lighting gentle but sufficient to illuminate the book. Since the dawn of books, the philosopher's gaze has been absorbed in the reading of books: reading the Book of Life, the Book of Nature, reading the prescriptions of morality by the natural light of Reason, translating the presence of the Good into an archive of books for eyes to read. But what do philosophers see when they turn away from the books they are reading and writing? And what are they seeing and reading when they return from the world to their library of books? According to Jacques Derrida, "il n'y a rien hors du texte." But this does not mean that the philosopher's thought is restricted to the solitude of the library. On the contrary, his assertion breaches the walls of the library, making an opening that compels the philosopher to assume responsibility for the world outside. If the world outside is a text, then the philosopher is responsible for its interpretation: for what is seen, what is made visible by thought, and what kind of response the condition of the world outside elicits. But in truth this means: no inside, no outside. No escape from the other. In this book, the one I have authored with these questions in mind, we will undertake a reading of some philosophical texts, searching for inscriptions—or rather the tracework of inscriptions—indicating the claims of moral responsibility that bind our perception, imagination, and memory. In an important sense, therefore, our examination of the philosophical gaze constitutes an effort to break out of that peculiar absorption in the book which defines the philos