1: A Great Thinker
Lawlor is sort of a new name among the continental philosophy crowd, but he's nonetheless a force to be reckoned with. His first book on Derrida and Husserl probed the relationship between those titans in such depth and with such precision that, in the end, the detail wound up being a bit maddening. A tough book, but a wonderful book as well.
For those unfamiliar with Lawlor's style, a few things should be brought to your attention. Lawlor is a scholar and a gentleman, first of all, which means that he is citation crazy and often seems to lack a sense of humor. It's not that he's prolix or turgid, it's simply that he embodies one of Nietzsche's aphorisms, writing with "a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal;" and he never cracks jokes.
Second of all, this scholarly mode of exposition isn't a drawback necessarily, as he is a particularly lucid writer, especially when you consider the muddle he wafts through and the sheer immensity of the project he's undertaking---namely, investigating the "points of diffraction" between the french philosophers of the 60s and drawing some very general, and much-needed, conclusions from it all. Any reader will appreciate the care with which he treats his subjects, which if not uncontroversial in its conclusions, is always clear about the path he follows in reaching them.
Thirdly and lastly, this books here is simply a watershed, and "merely" a segment of a grand project which Lawlor has been promising since the Derrida and Husserl book. He plunges into the mucky morass of everyone from Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze, to Derrida, Levinas, and others--bouncing them off of one other with an ease that would make any aspiring philosopher green with envy.
The plot spoiler is that Lawlor feels the basic enterprise of phenomenology has been superceded by the Deleuzes, the Foucaults, and the Derridas, and, ultimately, as his next book argues, by the Bergsons. He claims we need "a name" for this new post-phenomenological enterprise, and while we may not get it here, we do get the next best thing: the understanding that goes along with it.
Highly recommended.
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