A New Vision for Justice

Abstract

In The Philosopher's Gaze, David Michael Levin offers a compelling and hopeful account of the potential for a new philosophical beginning in the wake of modernity's unfulfilled promise of freedom, equality, and justice. Levin sees the potential to initiate this turn of thought in the ex istential capacities of embodiment. He uses the tools of phenomenology to uncover the ways in which bodily capacities have been (mis)under stood and (mis)used by philosophers throughout much of our philosophi cal tradition. Levin demonstrates that we have taken our bodily capaci ties for granted, even deliberately diminishing or suppressing their per ceptual potential. As a result of relying too strongly upon instrumental reason, there is a pervasive philosophical vision that has grown cold and indifferent to the faces of suffering and injustice. The Philosopher's Gaze is an attempt to soften and sensitize the vision of philosophers by enhancing our perceptual capacities. In this way, Levin hopes to awaken the modem psyche from its blind and pathological adherence to instru mental reason. The Philosopher's Gaze addresses these pathologies in two ways. First, Levin diagnoses what he understands to be their source—the reifi cation of experience due to the misunderstood and undeveloped capaci ties of embodiment. Second, he wants to demonstrate how bodily ca pacities, in particular vision, can and must serve as a catalyst for justice. By revealing the hidden potential of our perceptual capacities, Levin un dermines important presuppositions of traditional metaphysical accounts of knowledge and rationality. In turn, he shakes the theoretical founda tions of many modem institutions. In the process of subverting instru mental reason and the metaphysics it spawns, Levin envisions a new ethical-political order in which those who have been marginalized are remembered and seen as co-participants in the ongoing event of Being. Levin is dealing with a familiar cast of characters in The Philoso