the two reviews

Al right, HERE is Forestier’s review in Actu Philosophia, which is nicely done and to which I have no real objections.

The other one, by Charles Gerbet, is HERE, on the Jean-Clet Martin blog. That one is from April 26, so it’s surprising that it sat for that long in my bag without being carefully read until tonight. I also have no real objections to Gerbet’s review, which deals as much with Francis Ponge as with me.

I had two minor responses to Gerbet, but they’re not even worth mentioning in detail. One point was that he finds my remarks about Žižek in the book to be somewhat malicious. That isn’t the case. I have nothing but good feelings about Žižek, and was simply trying to pin him down on one or more hyper-idealist statements that make an ill fit with his claims not to be an idealist.

The other point was that Gerbet expresses mild sarcasm in one place about the idea that “Husserl vs. Heidegger” could be the foundation of a “new” ontology. My remark was that this seems to be a “French thing.” That is to say, among the young French philosophers I know, Husserl and Heidegger tend to be viewed as the very incarnation of an academic French philosophy with scholastic tendencies. Fair enough, but it doesn’t follow that nothing new can be done with these two thinkers. I’ve tried to show the contrary in all of my published works.

In any case, I think I received a perfectly fair hearing from these two nicely executed French reviews.