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BOOK REVIEW
I Think Therefore We Are
Inter-subjectivity is when "Moi, l’individu" is replaced by Moi, l’Humanité", and Villemot is right to place it at the center of the phenomenological project. From here it is a small ethical step to theological topics, of which phenomenology in general and the French version in particular are not afraid. Readers quickly understand that this book lies within the so-called Theological Turn of French Phenomenology (by Dominique Janicaud), and in fact Villemot makes a point of defending Michel Henry against charges of being a theologist and not a phenomenologist. Why bother with all this? Because the stakes are much greater than dry quarrels about arcane minutia; the inter-subjective We, if it opens phenomenology to theological-sounding discussions, also gives this branch of philosophy real teeth for investigating the sense of life and human nature, and for applying those findings to life-in-the-world. Furthermore, the intellectual rigor of the author is such that it ensures that the book’s insights fall on the believer and the unbeliever alike.
An example of the thinness of the line separating philosophy and theology is Villemot’s demonstration of the material emphasis practiced by those phenomenologists who are most affected by the Christian notion of incarnation, and the resulting— and paradoxical — effectiveness of their arguments against excessively materialist positions. Another can be found in the passage where the author debates with an imaginary Christian believer the definition of man, countering the latter’s fideism with a definition of humankind based on Husserl’s shortfall between the I of cogito and the objectification of the same I in the body. As for applications, Villemot has a happy tendency to troll through contemporary debate for illustrations of his theses, as in his attack on the dangerous certitudes of those who refuse to recommence in Cartesian doubt and who finish by blowing up the Tube in London or "profane the Coran and torture suspects at Guantanamo".