New Favorite Philosopher
It seems like every summer I read a book of philosophy that changes how I look at things very deeply. It starts as a resonance and a challenge and I get obsessed with folding it and its implications into the prior system of thought. Last summer was de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity. I've spent the year since reeling with the entailments and syncronicities of her particularly lucid and triumphant existentialism.
I was talking with James about de Beauvoir and he offered ("objected" would be too strong a word) that her philosophy may too much regard the Other as a means to personal ends, even if that Other's liberation is precisely what is adopted as ones personal ends. (Or, at least, that's how I condense the conversation in memory.)
Later, he told me that it was his reading of Levinas that had lent him this perspective. I was intrigued by what he had to say.
For some reason, that made me pick up the copy of Martin Buber's I and Thou that's been floating around my bedroom unread since I got it on an impulse buy at the Strand. I was initially skeptical, but thought it would be worth a shot dipping into.
...
It is awesome. I can't wait to tell you about it.
Check out that beard. That is the beard of a wise man.