The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation
"Daniel Heller-Roazen"s archaeology of sensation casts an utterly new light on a number of essential moments in the history of philosophy and the human sciences. Yet what is most crucial about this extraordinary investigation is that it uncovers a fascinating field of research, which is of the utmost importance for contemporary thinking: that of the sense by which, before, or beyond consciousness, we sense that we exist."Giorgio Agamben, Professor of Philosophy, University of Venice"Famously, Foucault beginsLes mots et les choseswith an homage to Borges. It"s a striking meeting of the minds -- the archeologist of human sciences and the fabulist of many literaturesas Foucault surely intended it to be. Little did he know that these unlikely voices would be blended brilliantly on every page that Daniel Heller-Roazen writes inThe Inner Touch.LikeEcholalias,his essay on the forgetting of languages, this meditation on "the common sense" manifests a most uncommon intelligence. Heller-Roazen practices "comparative literature" as the greatest figures in the field have done before him -- with exacting philosophical rigor and immense cultural range. Somewhere Erich Auerbach is smiling."Hal Foster, Townsend Martin '17 Professor of Art and Architecture, Princeton University"Heller-Roazen's contribution is to remind us of a feeling we always suspected was in there, but whose name we had forgotten - and to make us pause, time and again readingThe Inner Touch, to try to feel it again." Brian Dillon London Review of Books"With his stunning erudition, fluid style, and unique tact, Daniel Heller-Roazen unearths the "common sense" which may in fact be lost to us but which we are once thought to share with beasts: it is the sense of our own perceptions, the feel of existing, the "inner touch.""Ann Smock, Professor of French, University of California, Berkeley