David Hodge

“Even the most careful and sophisticated readers,” suggests Davis, “are frequently left mystified” by Levinas’s writing. In such a climate it would be beneficial, if not obligatory, to develop a clear exposition of Levinas’s project, which does not sacrifice philosophical acumen in an effort to be lucid; it is of little help to have introductions to Levinas that are more impenetrable than Levinas’s own writing. Davis has managed to write an introduction to Levinas’s thought that retains a respect for its complexity while concomitantly presenting it in a way that clearly illuminates its signature features and Levinas’s most compelling concerns.

In one of his earliest essays, Stanley Cavell says that “... we must keep in mind how different their arguments sound, and admit that in philosophy it is the sound which makes all the difference”. This is so whether we discuss the antiphony between Wittgenstein and American Pragmatism, or from within Cavell's own writings. Timothy Gould has set himself to the task of showing how the sound of Cavell's texts—specifically in the form of his voice—is the constituting feature of a philosophical method. This enterprise evolves into a protracted exercise of listening to Cavell's voice for the purpose of working out how that sound can disclose another way that philosophy can be conducted. Gould's text recounts what he has heard, and why the sound of Cavell’s voice makes a difference to philosophy.