An illuminating and thought-provoking study of the various meanings of distance.

«All the world is a village does not mean that everything is the same: it means that we are all uprooted with respect to something or someone». The book investigates, from different points of view, the cognitive and moral, constructive and destructive potentials of bewilderment and distance. To understand our world, suggests Ginzburg, it is necessary to find a balance between being so close to the object that our vision is warped by familiarity or so far from it that the distance becomes distorting. Why has a long tradition attributed to the gaze of the outsider – the savage, the peasant, the animal – the ability to expose society's lies? Why does reflection on myth serve to distance reality, while myth is often a political tool to control the unsuspecting? Why has style been used, as appropriate, to include or exclude cultural diversity? Moving with equal acuity from Aristotle to Voltaire, touching on philosophy, history, philology and ethics, and including examples from present-day popular culture, Wooden Eyes offers a new perspective on the universally relevant theme of distance.

New edition with a tenth essay titled: “Schemes, preconceptions, double-blind experiments. Reflections of a historian”.