Libido: The French Existential Theories

Alphonso Lingis’s engaging book studies the phenomenological and postphenomenological theories of sexuality of six contemporary French philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. After centuries of philosophical silence on the matter, these writers, during the last fory years, have undertaken the first extended exploration of human sexuality in Western philosophical literature. Lingis presents the arguments developed by the six philosophers, critically assesses them, and offers his own explanation of how the libidinal body can be characterized, what the libidinal drive is, and what alterity commands in the erotic imperative.