Bearing witness to epiphany : persons, things, and the nature of erotic life /

Russon (U. Guelph) sets himself a difficult task of providing a broadly stroked, philosophically unconventional, Heidegger-inspired, phenomenological descriptive-interpretive story of "all there is" in the world of lived (rather than ideal/abstract/logical existence) relationships involving one's everyday experiential participation in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, art, and psychology. The essence of humanity is experienced in caring relationships that are the basis for human expression and interpersonal bonds. Russon employs a sustained metaphor of musical structure and harmony that representatively maps one's participation in worldly relationships. Besides this sustained metaphor, the author draws illustrative examples from the behavior and thoughts of fictional characters, and personal reminiscences from memory, along with identifying prominent patterns in the possible roles people take in a process of self-transformation. Witnessing epiphanic erotic engagements with one another is commonplace, he claims, and one develops uniform ways of experiencing and interpreting them in a self-therapeutic way. The reader must assume a lot and suspend skepticism for this process to work, as the book includes no endnotes/footnotes and no consideration of contrary claims for critical comparison. Familiarity with existentialist, phenomenologist, and related writings would contribute to understanding this work. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty/researchers. J. Gough Red Deer College