Description: Meditation on the character of the Eleatic Stranger in Plato's late dialogues, arguing that the prominent place afforded to this foreigner-the other-represents an important philosophical and political legacy regarding the way thought, and life in the community, is understood.
Brief description: Rodolphe Gasché is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Eugenio Donato Professor of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. His many books include Storytelling: The Destruction of the Inalienable in the Age of the Holocaust, also published by SUNY Press.
Review Quotes:
"In addition to offering solid and largely compelling interpretations of the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, Gasché presents us with an intriguing argument that both philosophy and politics, even for Plato, requires an Auseinandersetzung with 'the other' in order to ground itself and allow its movement toward its own self-flourishing. Gasché provides a fascinating and provocative argument that a xenological thinking-a philosophy of Otherness-is located within Plato's thought." - S. Montgomery Ewegen, Trinity College