We all think that we know something about hospitality – it's an everyday experience. Yet it has also been a burning topic of philosophical and political debate over the last couple of decades, and my epigraph indicates the complexity of the hinge or brisure between politics and philosophy here. Why has hospitality recently enjoyed a renaissance? This could be related to at least three factors. The first would be recent movements of population towards, and within, an expanded Europe: what is conceived as economic immigration and also, notably, the arrival of asylum seekers and refugees. The political reaction in the nation states of the pre-expansion European community to these newcomers is often phrased in the language of (the limits of) hospitality. In France in particular there has subsequently been a significant response, not only by political scientists or sociologists, but also from the arts and philosophy, in the face of the increasing inhospitality of the French state.