This is a remarkably detailed study, and unlike many of the large and avowed exhaustive histories of philosophy, this one makes no claim to such. Bettina Bergo does something wonderfully creative. Instead of advancing a genealogy of anxiety, she makes a double move of examining the, in fact, fear of power, the desire for liberty without responsibility, and in doing so examines the conundrums of evasion. The work is valuable as a performance of its own philosophical
concerns, and for scholars interested in fresh readings of canonical figures of Euromodern continental philosophy. This is a beautifully written, extraordinarily well-researched work that should generate a stir not only among scholars researching on the history of Euromodern philosophy, but also those
interested in a rich understanding of subjectivity beyond pronouncements of eradication of its mark—in a word, 'the' subject.'
Bettina Bergo is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal, and author of Levinas between Ethics and Politics (Springer, 1999) and co-editor of several collections, including Levinas and Nietzsche: After the Death of a Certain God (Columbia University Press, 2008). She has translated works from Emmanuel Levinas, Marlène Zarader, and Didier Franck, among others. She is the author of numerous articles on
phenomenology, psychoanalysis, the history of psychology, and in critical race theory.