Alphonso Lingis is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He has published several books and contributed essays to numerous volumes and journals.

"Lingis has an uncanny ability to make you sit up and take notice at the oddity of the world, how the experience of human nature and nature by far exceeds our theories. His writing is in synchrony with this excess; he interpolates personal anecdotes in ways I find utterly convincing and helpful, like jewels in a fishnet. Lingis is a unique voice in English language commentary." -- Michael Taussig

• Introduction -- Discontinuities -- Our Species: Premature, Symbiotic, Atavistic -- The Evolution of Splendor -- Quadrille -- How One Feels, How One Looks -- Dismemberments -- The Social Body -- The Physiology of Art -- Transparency -- Attachments -- Appetite -- Fetishism -- Potlatch -- Flesh Trade -- Good Deeds.