Customer Reviews

Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud

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In my not-so-humble opinion, Walter Davis's Inwardness and Existence is the most important work of philosophy since Sartre's Being and Nothingness. In this book Davis attempts an astonishing synthesis of 4 seemingly irreconcilable schools of thought: Hegel's self-consciousness, Heidegger's Existentialism, Marxist concepts of ideology and subjectivity, and Freudian psychoanalysis. His goal is a comprehensive and intellectually rigorous theory of "subjectivity," of what we are and how we got that way. Along the way he finds time to write a prose Ode to Death, explore the psychological mysteries of sexuality, provide the best explanation ever written of the Marxist concept of ideology, and intellectually skewer the phony "radical" Professors of academic deconstruction. This is a profound, challenging, wide-ranging book that deserves to be read, re-read, argued with, and discussed. "Put down thy Derrida; open thy Davis!"

As a first year graduate student in mathematics at the Ohio State University in the summer of 1989, I had the good fortune to wander quite at random into one of Walter Davis' English classes. I was immediately hooked. Over the next three years I took three more of his courses. "Inwardness and Existence" was just into print then, and although it pales in comparison with his outstanding live presentation of similar themes (Davis is an accomplished stage actor in his spare time), I've treasured this book for many years for the memories it brings back of these immensely rewarding (and oftentimes themselves quite theatrical) classroom episodes.

Now, I don't read Hegel, Heideggar, Marx or Freud...though I did once enjoy the latter three...and don't see many of the things of value in their writings that Davis culls from them and brings to life. Hegel, in particular, strikes me as an utter windbag. The strategy here, though, is merely to draw ideas from the writings, discarding whatever encumbering nonsense enshrouds the germs of inspiration. For example, Davis develops a convincing analogy between the stoic/skeptic/unhappy consciousness triad of Hegel and the structuralist/post-structuralist/existentialist triad of 20th century French "thought", hinting that existentialism could be resuscitated. This is presented with a full awareness of the things that made it so deservedly unfashionable in the first place, and a surprisingly compelling case is made. In the psychoanalysis chapter, Davis talks, in a non-schmaltzy manner, about active engagement in traumatic experience being a key to self-actualization (the schmaltzy expression is mine, not his), concluding with the insight that "love is not about finding the right person--it's about becoming the right person." This is an idea that concurs with my own evolutionary intuitions, though he of course gets there via a different route. In a marvelous final chapter, Davis ties it all together with a discussion of his general methodology...a dialectic he calls a "hermeneutics of engagement". I doubt there is a better explanation of or justification of the contemporary relevence of dialectical thinking anywhere.

G.H. Hardy criticized criticism generally, on the basis that the talented should create, rather than commentate. I think this book proves that idea to be ill-founded. Five stars here is a no-brainer. Be warned, however...its overriding advice is to deepen your engagement with your most difficult issues, rather than extricate yourself from them...a process that, when worked out correctly, never actually ends. The implication is that anything less is a waste of life. Even if you find yourself in the most-likely-reader mould, it's almost inevitable that you'll resist...indeed, it probably took me ten years from the time I last saw Davis to realize how right he was with regard to me.

I came across this book wandering through a bookstore in 1989. It had a section on Hegel's famous chapter on "Lordship and Bondage," and I thought Davis might have something interesting to add to my already considerable library on the subject. The academic sounding book title suggested a Ph.d thesis turned book or something from the mills of postmodernism, in those years grinding out mind-numbing book-length footnotes to Derrida et al.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! The pages showed an intellect and heart breathtakingly alive and engaged. Despite forbidding sounding chapter titles the prose was beautifully crafted and spoke to my life, my fears, my evasions. I found the book more akin to a sort of wisdom literature, maybe something Ralph Waldo Emerson could have written towards the end of the 20th Century. I read it 2-3 times. Gave it to friends along with advice to ignore the forbidding title and titles to sections.

Later I searched academic journals for reviews and, as I had expected, found none. There is something discomfiting about Davis' book. Maybe Davis meant to scratch your conscience, grapple with intellectual and emotional honesty and courage, put a tack in life's chair -- do those things, that is, that tend to not get one the big symposia at the academic conference. I'm not sure what Davis meant to do, but I have never read such engaged presentations of the likes of Hegel, et al, that so gently yet so relentlessly made me look at the question of how I live.

So, wandering through the Amazon.com jungle, I was greatly encouraged to see that, 12 years later, Davis' book is still available. Give it a try.

Like a previous reviewer, I came across this book unheralded while searching through racks at a bookstore. As a psychologist, psychoanalyst and theologian, I see the topic of inwardness and subjectivity as much discussed today and often fading into greater obscurity for all the analysis. Davis's book manages to retain perspective on the actual phenomenology of subjectivity and addresses each of these four major approaches to the topic - Hegelian, Existential, Marxist and Psychoanalytic (which he addresses from the actual current state of the field, not simply returning to the Freudian model long since left behind) - without allowing his thought to be captured by any one of them. He achieves a true conversation amongst them, allowing each to inform the other and offering us a creative combination that permits the experience of subjectivity to be rediscovered from within that conversation. A well-researched, solid, accessible, excellent book.