Irrevocable: A Philosophy of Mortality

In this book, Alphonso Lingis draws on philosophy, anthropology, psychology, religion, and science to explore aspects of reality that resist measurement and categorization. Writing from personal experience and philosophical traditions including phenomenology and existentialism, he examines a world where shadows, reflections, halos, and reverberations hold significance alongside physical objects. Lingis addresses diverse subjects—religious art and ritual, suffering, war, disease, love, nature, archaeology, surfing, volcanoes, and jellyfish—with both rigor and exploratory freedom. He considers how chance shapes birth, formative life encounters, illness, accidents, and death, and asks how we recognize and understand such chance. He also examines how people continue living after tragedy while acknowledging irrevocable losses. The book includes Lingis's photographs from around the world. It balances local and global perspectives while spanning cultures and historical periods, exploring the depths of human passion and embodied experience.