Dangerous Emotions

Lingis is a writer of words that describe. That is to say that he writes words which describe places, events and things. When Lingis speaks you can hear the lie in his voice. He has heard that lie all his life and he has searched the world to confront it. This young farm boy who searches the world for his philosophy is a true champion of anti-nihilistic longing and flamboyant exuberance. He is a contriver of the way that words feel. He is a writer who became pre-occupied with philosophy at an early age and has not learned to escape that ordeal, but has learned to love it. This pomo Hemingway is too busy feeding his peacocks to script his own death.

In this book, Lingis presents to us a searingly poetic phenomenalistic picture of the people of the world, and offers inspiration of the highest type.

Once again, professor of philosophy Lingis has written a book so rich in feeling and poetry that it's amazing the other academics let him into their cocktail parties. My guess is, he's not around often enough to attend them, anyway; Lingis is a sort of travel-mad anthropologist, too, and this book puts him in Easter Island, Japan and Brazil, among other places. Like the earlier "Abuses," though, the book's chapters use setting as a spark or introduction for the wanderer Lingis' thoughts, not unlike Krishnamurti did in his talks. Also like Krishnamurti, Lingis is worldly, large-hearted, and almost painfully incisive, in a much different way. "There is a health beyond health, triumphant in the quantity of onslaughts, contagions and corruptions it passes through, admits into itself, and overcomes," Lingis writes -- and the reader, recognizing a soul who knows, at once is bound to him for the remainder of this lovely, lovely book.