Philosopher
Jean-Luc Nancy
1940–2021
French philosopher of community and "being-with" who argued that the longing for a closed, unified community lies behind much modern political violence.
Jean-Luc Nancy was born in 1940 at Caudéran, near Bordeaux, and grew up in a Catholic milieu in Bergerac. He graduated in philosophy in Paris in 1962 and from 1968 taught in Strasbourg, where he wrote a doctorate on Kant under Paul Ricœur and spent the rest of his career. His first book, written with his close collaborator Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, was a critical study of Lacan; Derrida, who sat on the jury of his second doctorate, was a decisive influence. At the end of the 1980s a heart transplant and a long struggle with cancer forced him to give up teaching for years.
He became widely known with The Inoperative Community, which deconstructs the dream of restoring an intimate community, and Being Singular Plural continued the question of how a “we” is possible. He also wrote on Kant, Hegel, Descartes and Heidegger, on globalisation and the deconstruction of Christianity, and on art and literature.
Key ideas
- Against immanentism
- Western political thought longs for a lost, intimate community. Nancy calls this desire for a closed, self-present identity “immanentism”, and finds it both in nations guarding their identity and in communism’s promise of a society without alienation.
- To exist is to co-exist
- Taking up Heidegger, he holds that being in the world is always already being with others. Community is not a shared substance such as a race or identity, but this being-with itself.
- Being singular plural
- The question for today is how we can still say “we” without turning the plurality of people into one exclusive identity.
- The world is sense
- Even atheism shares Christianity’s assumption that meaning must be given to existence from outside. Nancy argues instead that the world does not have a sense; it is sense, and we are exposed to it without a presupposed meaning of life.
- Tradition
- Western
- Region
- France
- Period
- Contemporary
Influences
Influenced by
Jean-Luc Nancy1940–2021
Influenced
Influenced by
Jean-Luc Nancy1940–2021
Influenced
Where these links come from
- Jean-Luc Nancy drew on Immanuel Kant. Source: Ignaas Devisch, Jean-Luc Nancy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Jean-Luc Nancy drew on Martin Heidegger. Source: Ignaas Devisch, Jean-Luc Nancy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Jean-Luc Nancy drew on Jacques Derrida. Source: Ignaas Devisch, Jean-Luc Nancy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Giorgio Agamben drew on Jean-Luc Nancy. Source: Catherine Mills, Giorgio Agamben, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Key works
- The Title of the Letter (with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe) (Le titre de la lettre), 1973
- The Inoperative Community (La communauté désoeuvrée)
- The Experience of Freedom (L’expérience de la liberté), 1988
- Being Singular Plural (Être singulier pluriel)
Sources
- Ignaas Devisch, Jean-Luc Nancy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy