A Short History of British Medical Ethics

from its content. It is not an easy read. The writing is highly technical and will be difficult to follow for those previously unacquainted with this particular branch of philosophy. This is particularly true of the sections explaining the phenomenological work of Levinas and Kierkegaard, which make up the majority of the book. Technical terms are introduced and used without proper definition. Moreover, it is not clear that the length and complexity of these passages are justified by the conclusions drawn from them in later sections when they are applied to addiction. Such difficulties might in part be accounted for by the complexities in the writings of Levinas and Kierkegaard themselves, but one would have hoped that these concepts could have been simplified and made more accessible. Finally, Westin could surely have been served better by her editor in this book’s production. The text is marred by an unusual number of grammatical errors. On one occasion, almost an entire paragraph is duplicated at two different points in a section (pp. 102–103). It would be remiss to overlook such shortcomings, which make this book on such an important topic into a somewhat onerous read. Nevertheless, Westin has embarked on an ambitious project, engaging with the large corpus of work of two eminent thinkers. By bringing their thought into contemporary discourse she shows us how a new perspective can give us a broader and deeper understanding of the experience of addiction. In this respect at least, it is a valuable contribution to the literature.