In this book, David J. Gauthier offers a comparative study of the works of Martin Heidegger and Emmanual Levinas on the question of place. Gauthier argues that the question of place is a crucial one under modern conditions because we face two competing trends; that is, under modern conditions we are witness to processes of globalization that bring us closer together, but we are also witness to “a resurgence of tribalism” (p. 155). The author, then, draws out the political implications of the different approaches of Heidegger and Levinas in order to develop a politics of place that can find a middle ground between these two tendencies.

Gauthier's work is largely exegetical and covers some already well-worn ground, but it is ambitious in that it attempts to cover the entire corpus of two exceedingly nuanced and difficult thinkers and, then, bring them into dialogue. This book should be of interest to those interested in questions of being at home in the world, as Hannah Arendt would put it, as well as those looking for an introduction, of sorts, to the work of Heidegger and Levinas.

Gauthier opens his study with an attempt to underscore the importance of considerations of home to modern philosophy. He introduces this problem by way of looking at “Socrates's relationship to home,” Hegel's reading of Socrates, and Hegel's own attempt to reconcile individual and community through the modern state. Gauthier argues that both Heidegger and Levinas are centrally concerned with the problem of homelessness, which is set in motion by Hegel, and this sets the stage for his study of their responses to this dilemma.

In Chapter 2, Gauthier moves to an analysis of Heidegger's Being and Time, the critique of modernity that is implicit in that work, and Heidegger's account of how Da-Sein (which we might read as “human being”) can be at home in the world. The chapter provides a fine, if contestable, introduction to Heidegger's thought in Being and Time and attempts an analysis that shows how, exactly, Heidegger's analysis of anxiety leads toward a return to the volk as the ground of authenticity. Gauthier rightly points out that Heidegger's suspicion toward the modern public makes it surprising that he would turn to the volk as the ground of authentic action.

Chapters 3 and 4 turn to Heidegger's work from the 1930s through the 1960s. Gauthier focuses on Heidegger's “Origin of the Work of Art” and “Building, Dwelling, and Thinking.” In these chapters, he makes a convincing case that Heidegger is concerned with the project of homecoming and the issue of homelessness in the modern world. He argues that Heidegger's aesthetics fit very nicely with his political participation in the Nazi Party because he saw the founding of the polis as akin to the creation of a work of art that founds a people and discloses their self-understanding. Heidegger, then, seems to desire a rooted politics. Gauthier looks at Heidegger's later turn toward a “vision that deprecates political-philosophical action in favor of building, dwelling, and thinking” (p. 71). In this later thought, Gauthier finds that Heidegger's work “is essentially apolitical” (p. 77), though anguished, as Heidegger finds that man is condemned to be homeless.

Chapters 5 and 6 turn to Levinas's critique of Heidegger on the issue of place. Levinas, it seems, argues that Heidegger's focus on place is tyrannical in its implications because it is tied to a politics of exclusion. Levinas, though, argues that a politics of place has to be replaced by a politics of “hospitality” (p. 125). This is a politics that is “responsive to the needs of strangers” (p. 151).

The stage is now set for Gauthier's attempt, in his conclusion, to develop an intermediate path between Heidegger's politics of rootedness and Levinas's politics which seems to point toward “a rootless cosmopolitanism” (p. 17). Gauthier does not offer a unified theoretical set of solutions to the problem of homelessness, but concludes by offering a set of further questions launched by the dialogue between Heidegger and Levinas.

While I found Gauthier's focus to be quite illuminating, the book poses a number of problems for careful readers of Heidegger and, I would imagine, Levinas. These are problems that tend to call into question the book's central claims and the accuracy of some of his interpretations of Heidegger, at least. Some of these problems have to do with the ambitions of Gauthier's study; that is, he provides an almost breathless account of a number of major thinkers, and this leads to some oversights or, at least, points of concern. For instance, he claims that “no thinker was more concerned with the problem of homelessness than Heidegger” (p. 6). One must wonder if this is true in any simple sense; after all, Heidegger's lecture courses on Aristotle, religion, and the history of the concept of time, from 1918 until the publication of Being and Time in 1927, do not raise this issue in any straightforward way. It may have helped Gauthier's case to substantiate this central claim in his first chapter through textual evidence. He cites a number of leading scholars in Heidegger studies, but one wonders why he wouldn't substantiate this point through Heidegger's texts.

Gauthier also attempts to treat the entire corpus of Heidegger's thought as though it is concerned with the project of effecting “a homecoming for Western man” (p. 7). I found this claim to be unconvincing. While the author points to the fact that there may be different periods of Heidegger's thought, he does not adequately address the issue that reading Heidegger as though he were always concerned with place is controversial. Certainly, the issue of Heidegger's Kehre needs to be addressed and the claim that there is a continuity of his project must be defended.

This leads to a final point of concern. Gauthier attempts to move through much of Heidegger's thought in a quick manner—for instance, Heidegger's concepts of resoluteness, guilt, conscience, and death are all mentioned in one page (p. 37)—which leads one to wonder if Gauthier is really doing justice to Heidegger's thought. For instance, he argues that “[r]esoluteness entails an inner transformation that … resembles nothing so much as a religious conversion” (pp. 37–8).

This is certainly a potential reading of the text, but it is one rejected by Hubert Dreyfus (among others), who read this concept in terms of our capacity to act holistically and quickly in ways that are not rule bound. This is not a small issue, because if it were taken seriously—Gauthier mentions Dreyfus's work in this chapter, but neglects his reading of resoluteness and anxiety—then it would seriously complicate Gauthier's story because the political implications of the concept, which he sees as tied to Heidegger's Nazism, would be much less clear. On this note, Gauthier may have been helped by taking into account the tension in Heidegger's account of Das Man between a necessary degree of social conformity and a critique of social conformism. I wonder what Gauthier, who argues that Heidegger is critical of the public through and through, would make of his claim that authenticity must rely on an “existentiell modification of das Man as an essential existential” (Heidegger, Being and Time 1962, 168).

This is all meant to point to the fact that Gauthier's study leaves one wondering if Heidegger (and perhaps Levinas) actually shared his concern with the politics of place. While I do believe that the study has much to offer to those interested in considering the politics of place, those more interested in questions of Heidegger's and, perhaps, Levinas's politics will find that the study covers some well-worn territory and, more importantly, may not always do justice to their projects.