The butler did it.
I heard some of these essays in development spoken by Lingis in his fashion. At that time, it often wearing shimmering body paint under a robe of some exotic provenance, with the only light in the room provided by a flashlight lashed to his forehead (later he acquired a miner's light, still later a small forehead strap lamp; the rig for the flashlight was wonky and sometimes distractingly hodgepodge and failblog). When asked about the reasons for all that, Lingis would shrug.
Truth be told, when pressed for reasons about most anything, Lingis would shrug, or else say that he hadn't thought of whatever it was, or else that he didn't mean that. He could be incredibly frustrating to try to engage in dialogue.
On the other hand, he was very warm as a presence, inviting to talk to. I loved listening to him speak his words. He would lose his place in his text repeatedly, partly due to darkness, partly because of his florid writing style.
On re-reading, just like on listening, I get a distressing feeling that there's less than there seems to be. I always wanted to believe he had great interior wisdom and serenity.
There's also a lot of ableism in the book, as you might expect, I guess, for 199-whatever. Or you might expect better, for someone who specifically challenged expectations of what philosophy could be and be about or what it could be inspired by.
I still enjoyed reading it again, imagining hearing him intone the sentences.