Response Ethics employs vocabulary and concepts from poststructuralism, phenomenology, psychology, and psychoanalytic theory. Oliver draws heavily on the work of Levinas and Derrida, and responds to a wide range of other thinkers including Butler, Freud, Heidegger, hooks, Kant, Kittay, Kristeva, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre. Those who have interests in these philosophical methods, concepts, and thinkers, as well as those with interests in ethical theory, applied ethics, the unconscious, and subjectivity would benefit from this book. Ethics professors in particular should read this book, if only to present their students with a living philosopher active in the monumental task of working out a new ethical theory designed to address thorny current issues involving violence, identity politics, and technology.

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy

In this important collection of essays, Kelly Oliver advances, with a nod to Levinas and Derrida, an exciting new approach to ethics. Moving beyond ancient and modern traditions founded on character habits or moral rules, this emerging tradition recasts ethics as an ability to take responsibility for others in their unique singularity. But Oliver’s reflections carry her beyond contributions from major figures. Stepping back from deconstruction’s abyss of alterity, she delivers possibilities for communion. Drawing from psychoanalytic theory, she insists on responsibility for the unconscious. And alert to environmental crisis, she broadens ethics’ reach beyond our species finally to the earth itself.

Cynthia Willett, Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy, Emory University; coauthor, "Uproarious: How Feminists and Other Comic Subversives Speak Truth"

One of our leading voices in continental philosophy and feminist thought, Kelly Oliver brings together all of the themes of her prior work. Response Ethics is a remarkable synthesis but it also sheds new light on the very nature of what ethics should be, must be today, in “the age of spectacle.”

Leonard Lawlor, Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University

This rich collection of Oliver’s essays, which both articulates the philosophical basis of her original idea of response ethics and addresses crucial issues of our time, is a gift to all concerned with the issues she courageously addresses. Oliver’s work on how humans become a subject through relations with other humans allows her to make important connections between subjectivity and morality. Her work on animals shows us a different way of being with other creatures that does not fall into the dilemmas of recent post humanist literature.

Drucilla Cornell, Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and Women and Gender Studies, Rutgers University