Jean-Luc Nancy was an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy whose work delves into the fundamental questions of existence, meaning, and the human condition. His writings explore the nature of being and its relationship to the world, focusing on themes such as freedom, presence, and plurality. Nancy's approach is characterized by its depth and nuanced examination of complex philosophical concepts. His contributions invite readers to contemplate the essential aspects of human experience and the meaning of life.
Originally written for an exhibition Nancy curated at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon in 2007, the text addresses the medium of drawing in light of form in its formation, of form as a formative force, opening drawing to questions of pleasure and desire.
"A leading philosopher reflects on how our experience of the world in changing in these crisis-ridden times"-- Provided by publisher
Is there a world anymore, let alone any sense of it? Acknowledging the lack of meaning in our own time, and the lack of a world at the centre of meanings we try to impose, Jean-Luc Nancy presents a critique of discourses that talk and write their way around these absences in our lives.
In the past, pandemics were considered divine punishment, but we now understand the biological characteristics of viruses and we know they are spread by social interaction and the movement of people. What used to be divine has become human – all too human, as Nietzsche would say. But while the virus dispels the divine, we are discovering that living beings are much more complex and harder to define than we had previously thought, and also discovering that the nature and exercise of political power are more complex than we may have thought. And this, argues Nancy, helps us to see why the term ‘biopolitics’ fails to grasp the conditions in which we now find ourselves. Life and politics challenge us together. Our scientific knowledge tells us that we are dependent only on our own technical power, but can we rely on technologies when knowledge itself includes uncertainties? If this is the case for technical power, it is much more so for political power, even as it presents itself as guided by objective data and responding to legitimate expectations. The virus is a magnifying glass that reveals the contradictions, limitations and frailties of the human condition, calling into question as never before our stubborn belief in progress and our hubristic sense of our own indestructibility as a species.
Coming by Jean-Luc Nancy is a lyrical examination of the French notion of jouissance. How did jouissance evolve from referring to the pleasure of ownership to the pleasure of orgasm? The philosophers Adèle van Reeth and Jean-Luc Nancy engage in a lively dialogue touching on authors as varied as Spinoza, the Marquis de Sade, and Henry Miller, and on subjects ranging from consumerism to mysticism.
A leading philosopher argues that anti-Semitism is rooted in the structures of Western thought--
Jean-Luc Nancy and Irving Goh discuss how a deconstructive approach to sex helps us negotiate discourses about sex and reconsider our relations to ourselves and others through sex.
This book uses a deconstructive method to bring together the history of Western Monotheism (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) and reflections on contemporary atheism. It develops Nancy's concepts of sense, world, and exposure.
Sexistence develops a new philosophical account of sexuality that troubles our conceptions of existence.
How have we thought 'the body'? How can we think it anew? This title incorporates the body of mortal creatures, the body politic, the body of letters and of laws, and the 'mystical body of Christ'. It offers us an encyclopedia and a polemical program - reviewing classical takes on the corpus from Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Paul to Descartes.