It is about time philosophers got a coffee table book. For that is what this book is, most obviously: a book for display and grazing, by visitors, by oneself on Sunday afternoons. And it is about time, too, that a book by a philosopher about the visual gives primacy to the visual. Eyes is a translation of Michel Serres’ Yeux1 which faithfully reproduces the lavish colour illustrations and attention to textual layout of the original. Serres did not just supply the text for this book. He also ‘curated’ the images which adorn nearly every page, and which invariably dominate the text which comments on them. There are two levels to this text. The main text discusses related themes, while a smaller caption addresses the image more directly, and gives its title or describes its content. The whole is organised by chapters which for the most part name types of eyes: sea eyes, glass eyes, animal eyes, literary eyes, and so on. The text itself is a rather loose weave of anecdotal autobiography (scenes from Serres’ early days as a sailor, his experiences mountain climbing, a television appearance, and so on) and reflections on the central theme of eyes, which Serres sees in the world in myriad and surprising ways. Ostensibly, this is a book about painting. Serres introduces it as the latest in a series he has written about the arts; it is preceded by, among other writings, the books Music and Statues (on sculpture).2 He writes, ‘a scattering of my essays describe paintings signed by Carapaccio, Bellini, Pousin and Turner, without ever questioning painting itself. Will I finally be able to do this here?’ (p. 8). We cannot easily answer in the affirmative that he has succeeded. While a good number of the images are paintings, just as many are not, and the themes discussed usually seem a long way from art history or aesthetics, or painting itself. Vision, and ‘eyes’ in a much broader and freer way, seem to be the dominant theme. As for the paintings themselves that do appear, it is notable that there is not much in the way of modern or contemporary art. A couple of Giacommo Ballas, a Gustav Klimt, a Piet Mondrian, an Yves Klein, and a René Magritte. The most contemporary is a painting by Sam Berger from 1981. Far more copious are paintings from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century: Botticelli, Raphael, Carravagio, Rembrandt, Verrocchio, Poussin, to name a few. What we do not get here, then, is much reflection on the avant-garde, or on the vexed status of painting in the contemporary art scene. Briefly, Serres connects the modern love for abstract painting with the ‘iconoclasts’ of 730AD Byzantium, who asserted that the divine could not be represented. Modern painting, he suggests, finds refuge in abstraction because it distinguishes art from the onslaught of images in popular culture. Surprisingly, there is also a section of the book entitled ‘The Poverty of Images,’ in which Serres asserts that sound gives more information than images, and that ‘films without a script quickly become trashy. Textbooks are full of images that are nevertheless a thousand times less effective than the text.’ (p. 185) Neither then is the book a revaluation of the visual in terms of the dominant hierarchies of philosophical knowledge. Along the way, Serres introduces elements of his wider philosophical reflections. For example, he tells us that

中文翻译：

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眼睛

现在是时候让哲学家得到一本咖啡桌书了。因为这就是这本书，最明显的是：这是一本供游客在星期日下午亲自展示和放牧的书。同样是时候了，哲学家写的关于视觉的书将视觉置于第一位。Eyes是Michel Serres的Yeux1的译文，它忠实地复制了丰富的彩色插图并关注原始文本的文本布局。Serres不仅提供了本书的文字。他还“整理”了几乎每一页上装饰的图像，这些图像始终占据着对它们进行评论的文本。本书分为两个层次。正文讨论了相关主题，而较小的标题则更直接地处理图像，并给出其标题或描述其内容。整个过程由各章组成，其中大部分名称指定了眼睛的类型：海眼，玻璃眼，动物眼，文学眼等。文本本身是轶事自传的一种较松散的编织方式（塞雷斯作为水手的早期场景，他的登山经历，电视露面等）以及对眼睛中心主题的反思，这是塞雷斯在世界上看到的以各种令人惊讶的方式。表面上，这是一本关于绘画的书。塞雷斯（Serres）将其介绍为他撰写的有关艺术的最新系列文章。在他的著作中，有《音乐与雕像》（关于雕塑）等书籍。[2]他写道：“我的散文描述了卡拉帕乔，贝里尼，普桑和特纳签名的绘画，而从未质疑绘画本身。我终于可以在这里做到这一点吗？” （第8页）。我们不能轻易肯定他的成功。尽管很多图像是绘画，但很多图像不是绘画，而且所讨论的主题通常离艺术历史或美学或绘画本身很远。视觉和更广泛，更自由的“眼睛”似乎是主要主题。至于确实出现的绘画本身，​​值得注意的是，现代或当代艺术的方式并不多。几个贾科莫·巴拉斯（Giacommo Ballas），古斯塔夫·克里姆特（Gustav Klimt），彼得·蒙德里安（Piet Mondrian），伊夫·克莱因（Yves Klein）和勒内·马格利特（RenéMagritte）。最现代的是1981年山姆·伯格（Sam Berger）的画。从文艺复兴时期到19世纪的画作更为丰富：波提切利，拉斐尔，卡拉瓦乔，伦勃朗，韦罗基奥，普桑等。因此，我们没有想到的是对前卫的反思，或在当代艺术界中绘画的烦恼状态。简而言之，Serres将现代对抽象绘画的热爱与​​730AD拜占庭的“象破石人”联系起来，后者声称无法代表神圣。他建议说，现代绘画在抽象上寻求庇护，因为它将艺术与大众文化中图像的冲击区分开来。出人意料的是，这本书的标题为“图像的贫穷”的那一部分，其中塞雷斯断言声音比图像提供了更多的信息，并且“没有剧本的电影很快就变成了垃圾”。教科书中充斥着图像，但其效果却比文字低一千倍。” （第185页）这本书也不是从哲学知识的主导层次上重新评估了视觉。一路上，塞雷斯介绍了他更广泛的哲学思考的内容。例如，他告诉我们