Intertwinings

This anthology offers a comprehensive introduction to the contemporary phenomenologist James R. Mensch, exploring his oeuvre and thought. Mensch's extensive body of work spans several decades, often concretely engaging with three intersecting conditions of dialogue: Alterity, Intersubjectivity, and Embodiment. By intertwining these concepts, Mensch exposes the ever-threatening soliloquy of modern reason, calling upon us to deconstruct the conflation of human freedom with sovereignty that figures at the core of Western political thought and practice. The contributors to this book pick up these themes and explore the fragility and potentiality of our conceptions of discourse, dialogue, and the political. Moreover, and in applying Mensch's idea of a post-foundational phenomenology, this anthology honors Mensch's expansive work, which spans key thinkers such as Husserl, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Patočka, and delves into subjects ranging from perception and time to ethics and ecology. The volume is meant for students and researchers and explores these three interwoven conditions in various ways.