Bringing together two aspects of Thomas Aquinas's thought that have been studied separately: his theory of God's concurrence and his theory of instrumental causality, I show how he uses the latter (which I discuss first) to clarify the Proclusian principle that the first cause has a greater influence on an effect than the proximate causes. Thanks to this theory, Aquinas accounts for the fact that it is God who confers existence to every new being that is produced by natural processes, (...) without however negating the agency of secondary, created causes. (shrink)

La conception malebranchiste de la liberté est originale. Malebranche ne croit pas en une liberté d’indifférence absolue, c'est-à-dire en une capacité d’opérer un choix indépendamment de toute motivation. Il ne croit pas non plus que nous puissions indifféremment choisir entre deux motivations de force inégale : au moment où on se détermine, le bien le plus grand (du moins selon l’apparence) l’emporte. La liberté réside seulement dans le fait que l’on n’est pas obligé de se déterminer : nous pouvons toujours (...) suspendre notre consentement. Cette conception est exposée à des objections que Pierre Bayle a formulées et qui tentent de la mettre en contradiction avec d’autres thèses de Malebranche : son occasionalisme, sa théorie de la création continuée, l’obscurité de l’âme à elle-même, sa théologie des voies de l’action divine. Nous discuterons ces objections et verrons si Malebranche est en mesure de leur résister. (shrink)

An important step in In Pierre Bayle’s defense of religious tolerance is to refute St Augustine’s claim that heretics who refuse to convert to the true faith do so out of ill will. This claim legitimizes, for Augustine and his followers, the application of temporal sanctions to those heretics, in order to offset their wicked inclination and restore their free will. To counter this view, Bayle uses the theological notions of invincible ignorance and dutiful erroneous conscience, elaborated during the Middle (...) Ages. However, these notions had a very restricted scope, which needed to be extended to so-called heretical beliefs. I show how two early modern scholastics, the Jesuits Gabriel Vázquez and Rodrigo Arriaga, have prepared this evolution and have paved the way for Bayle's denunciation any form of coercion in religious matters. (shrink)

Lip reading is the ability to partially understand speech by looking at the speaker's lips. It improves the intelligibility of speech in noise when audio-visual perception is compared with audio-only perception. A recent set of experiments showed that seeing the speaker's lips also enhances sensitivity to acoustic information, decreasing the auditory detection threshold of speech embedded in noise [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109 (2001) 2272; J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108 (2000) 1197]. However, detection is different from comprehension, and it remains (...) to be seen whether improved sensitivity also results in an intelligibility gain in audio-visual speech perception. In this work, we use an original paradigm to show that seeing the speaker's lips enables the listener to hear better and hence to understand better. The audio-visual stimuli used here could not be differentiated by lip reading per se since they contained exactly the same lip gesture matched with different compatible speech sounds. Nevertheless, the noise-masked stimuli were more intelligible in the audio-visual condition than in the audio-only condition due to the contribution of visual information to the extraction of acoustic cues. Replacing the lip gesture by a non-speech visual input with exactly the same time course, providing the same temporal cues for extraction, removed the intelligibility benefit. This early contribution to audio-visual speech identification is discussed in relationships with recent neurophysiological data on audio-visual perception. (shrink)

One of the strongest strands in Nancy's philosophy is an attempt to rethink community and the very idea of the social in a way that does not ground these ideas in some individual subject or subjectivity. The fundamental argument of this book is that being is always 'being with', that 'I' is not prior to 'we', that existence is essentially co-existence. He thinks this being together, not as a comfortable enclosure in a pre-existing group, but as a mutual abandonment and (...) exposure to each other, one that would preserve the 'I' and its freedom in a mode of imagining community as neither a 'society of spectacle' nor via some form of 'authenticity'. (shrink)

A collection of five essays of French philosopher Nancy, originally published in 1985-86: The Inoperative Community, Myth Interpreted, Literary Communism, Shattered Love, and Of Divine Places.

The last and most poignant of these essays is The Intruder, Nancys philosophical meditation on his heart transplant.

_The VaKE Handbook: Theory and Practice of Values and Knowledge Education_ presents a theoretical model and many examples in various fields of education and training for the realization of the principle "Values without knowledge are blind, while knowledge without values is irresponsible".

Along with Husserl's Ideas and Heidegger's Being and Time, Being Given is one of the classic works of phenomenology in the twentieth century. Through readings of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, and twentieth-century French phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Henry), it ventures a bold and decisive reappraisal of phenomenology and its possibilities. Its author's most original work to date, the book pushes phenomenology to its limits in an attempt to redefine and recover the phenomenological ideal, which the author argues has never (...) been realized in any of the historical phenomenologies. Against Husserl's reduction to consciousness and Heidegger's reduction to Dasein, the author proposes a third reduction to givenness, wherein phenomena appear unconditionally and show themselves from themselves at their own initiative. Being Given is the clearest, most systematic response to questions that have occupied its author for the better part of two decades. The book articulates a powerful set of concepts that should provoke new research in philosophy, religion, and art, as well as at the intersection of these disciplines. Some of the significant issues it treats include the phenomenological definition of the phenomenon, the redefinition of the gift in terms not of economy but of givenness, the nature of saturated phenomena, and the question “Who comes after the subject?” Throughout his consideration of these issues, the author carefully notes their significance for the increasingly popular fields of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Being Given is therefore indispensable reading for anyone interested in the question of the relation between the phenomenological and the theological in Marion and emergent French phenomenology. (shrink)

Appearing in English for the first time, Jean-Luc Nancy’s 2002 book reflects on globalization and its impact on our being-in-the-world. Developing a contrast in the French language between two terms that are usually synonymous, or that are used interchangeably, namely globalisation (globalization) and mondialisation (world-forming), Nancy undertakes a rethinking of what “world-forming” might mean. At stake in this distinction is for him nothing less than two possible destinies of our humanity, and of our time. On the one hand, with (...) globalization, there is the uniformity produced by a global economical and technological logic leading to the contrary of an inhabitable world, “the un-world” (l’im-monde)—as Nancy refers to it—an un-world that entails social disintegration, misery, and injustice. And, on the other hand, there is the possibility of an authentic world-forming, that is, of a making of the world and of a making sense that Nancy calls a “creation” of the world. Nancy understands such world-forming in terms of an inexhaustible struggle for justice. This book is an important contribution by Nancy to a philosophical reflection on the phenomenon of globalization and a further development on his earlier works on our being-in-common, justice, and a-theological existence. (shrink)

An essential exploration of sense and meaning. -/- Is there a “world” anymore, let alone any “sense” to it? Acknowledging the lack of meaning in our time, and the lack of a world at the center of meanings we try to impose, Jean-Luc Nancy presents a rigorous critique of the many discourses-from philosophy and political science to psychoanalysis and art history-that talk and write their way around these gaping absences in our lives. -/- In an original style befitting his (...) search for a new mode of thought, Nancy offers fragmentary readings of writers such as Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Lévinas, Lacan, Derrida, and Deleuze insofar as their work reflects his concern with sense and the world. Rather than celebrate or bemoan the loss of meaning or attempt to install a new one, his book seeks to reposition both sense and the world between the presence and absence of meaning, between objectivity and subjectivity. Nancy’s project entails a reconception of the field of philosophy itself, a rearticulation of philosophical practice. Neither recondite nor abstract, it is concerned with the existence and experience of freedom-the actuality of existence as experienced by contemporary communities of citizens, readers, and writers. -/- Combining aesthetic, political, and philosophical considerations to convey a sense of the world between meaning and reality, ideal content and material form, this book offers a new way of understanding-and responding to-“the end of the world.”. (shrink)

The central problem posed in these essays, collected from over a decade, is how in the wake of Western ontologies to conceive the coming, the birth that characterises being. The first part of this book, 'Existence' asks how, today, one can give sense or meaning to existence as such, arguing that existence itself, as it comes nude into the world, must now be our 'sense'. In examining what this birth to presence might be, we should not ask what presence 'is'; (...) rather, we should conceive presence as presence to someone, including to presence itself. The second section, 'Poetry', asks: What if art exposes this? In writing, in the voice, in painting? And what if art is exposed to it? How does it inscribe the coming of existence as such? The author's trajectory in this book crosses those of Hegel, Schlegel, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger, in their comments on art and politics, existence and corporeality, everyday life and its modes of existence, and ecstasy. An analysis that dares this crossing involves all the varied accounts of existence, political and philosophical, as well as all the realms of poetry. (shrink)

This book is a profound and eagerly anticipated investigation into what is left of a monotheistic religious spirit—notably, a minimalist faith that is neither confessional nor credulous. Articulating this faith as works and as an objectless hope, Nancy deconstructs Christianity in search of the historical and reflective conditions that provided its initial energy. Working through Blanchot and Nietzsche, re-reading Heidegger and Derrida, Nancy turns to the Epistle of Saint James rather than those of Saint Paul, discerning in it the primitive (...) essence of Christianity as hope. -/- The “religion that provided the exit from religion,” as he terms Christianity, consists in the announcement of an end. It is the announcement that counts, however, rather than any finality. In this announcement there is a proximity to others and to what was once called parousia. But parousia is no longer presence; it is no longer the return of the Messiah. Rather, it is what is near us and does not cease to open and to close, a presence deferred yet imminent. -/- In a demystified age where we are left with a vision of a self-enclosed world—in which humans are no longer mortals facing an immortal being, but entities whose lives are accompanied by the time of their own decline—parousia stands as a question. Can we venture the risk of a decentered perspective, such that the meaning of the world can be found both inside and outside, within and without our so-immanent world? -/- The deconstruction of Christianity that Nancy proposes is neither a game nor a strategy. It is an invitation to imagine a strange faith that enacts the inadequation of life to itself. Our lives overflow the self-contained boundaries of their biological and sociological interpretations. Out of this excess, wells up a fragile, overlooked meaning that is beyond both confessionalism and humanism. (shrink)

In Being and Time, Heidegger affirms that being-with or Mitsein is an essential constitution of Dasein but he does not submit this existential to the same rigorous analyses as other existentials. In this essay, Jean-Luc Nancy points to the different places where Heidegger erased the possibility of thinking an essential with that he himself opened. This erasure is due, according to Nancy, to the subordination of Mitsein to a thinking of the proper and the improper. The polarization of Being-with (...) between an improper face, the Anyone, and a proper one, the people, which is also, as Nancy shows, a polarization between everydayness and historicity, between a being-together in exteriority (indifference and anonymity) and a being-together in interiority (union through destiny), between a solitary dying and the sacrificial death in combat, leaves the essential with unthought. This essay shows not only the tensions that arise out of Heidegger’s own analyses of Mitsein and affect the whole of Being and Time but also underlines in the end a “shortfall in thinking” inherent not only to Heidegger’s work but, as Nancy claims, to our Western tradition, a shortfall which Nancy has attempted to remedy in his Being Singular Plural. (shrink)

pierre bayle’s treatise on tolerance is a landmark in the birth of the modern mind. Written shortly before Locke’s Letter on Toleration, it advocates full toleration of all religious beliefs, not by reduction to the lowest common denominator, but rather because of the moral evilness of persecutions and forced conversions.However, many commentators believe that there is a flaw in Bayle’s theory: the so-called “conscientious persecutor aporia.”1 In order to show the wickedness of persecution, Bayle holds up conscience as an apparently (...) absolute, inviolable principle. As we shall see, the primary ethical imperative is to obey the “dictates” of one’s conscience, that is, to do what conscience shows us to.. (shrink)

This book is a rich collection of philosophical essays radically interrogating key notions and preoccupations of the phenomenological tradition. While using Heidegger’s Being and Time as its permanent point of reference and dispute, this collection also confronts other important philosophers, such as Kant, Nietzsche, and Derrida. The projects of these pivotal thinkers of finitude are relentlessly pushed to their extreme, with respect both to their unexpected horizons and to their as yet unexplored analytical potential. A Finite Thinking shows that, paradoxically, (...) where the thought of finitude comes into its own it frees itself, not only to reaffirm a certain transformed and transformative presence, but also for a non-religious reconsideration and reaffirmation of certain theologemes, as well as of the body, heart, and love. This book shows the literary dimension of philosophical discourse, providing important enabling ideas for scholars of literature, cultural theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

This is the most systematic, the most radical, and the most lucid treatise on freedom that has been written in contemporary Continental philosophy. Finding its guiding motives in Kant's second Critique and working its way up to and beyond Heidegger and Adorno, this book marks the most advanced position in the thinking of freedom that has been proposed after Sartre and Levinas. If we do not think being itself as a freedom, we are condemned to think of freedom as a (...) pure 'idea' or 'right', and being-in-the-world, in turn, as a blind and obtuse necessity. Since Kant, philosophy and our world have relentlessly confronted this schism. To combat this renunciation of freedom, one must think the experience of freedom in thought itself: what it is that, simply in order for there to be thinking, must partake of freedom. (shrink)

This collection of writings by Jean-Luc Nancy, the renowned French critic and poet, delves into the history of philosophy to locate a fundamentally poetic modus operandi there. The book represents a daring mixture of Nancy’s philosophical essays, writings about artworks, and artwork of his own. With theoretical rigor, Nancy elaborates on the intrinsic multiplicity of art as a concept of “making,” and outlines the tensions inherent in the faire, the “making” that characterizes the very process of production and thereby (...) the structure of poetry in all its forms. Nancy shows that this multiplication that belongs to the notion of art makes every single work communicate with every other, all material in the artwork appeal to some other material, and art the singular plural of a praxis of the finite imparting of an infinity which is actually there in every utterance. In the collection, Nancy engages with the work of, among others, François Martin, Maurice Blanchot, and On Kawara. (shrink)

At once an introduction to Hegel and a radically new vision of his thought, this work penetrates the entirety of the Hegelian field with brevity and precision, while compromising neither rigour nor depth.

The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy. Preface: The. Literary. Absolute. I. "There are classifications that are bad enough as classifications, but that have nonetheless dominated entire ...

Contrary to what many interpretations claim, according to Bayle faith does not completely eliminate reason. It intervenes to reveal factual truths that can only be known through revelation (for example, that God allowed Adam and Eve to sin). To these factual truths can be applied a rational principle (an axiomatic and evident one, according to Bayle, which he calls a "common notion"), namely, that "what God does is well done." God allowed sin, so we must think it was justified, even (...) if we don't understand why. This approach is what I call, cum grano salis, Pierre Bayle's theodicy. (shrink)

The medieval notion of instrumental cause is not limited to what we call today “instruments” or “tools.” It extends way beyond the realm of technology and includes natural entities, for instance, the accidents by which a substance acts on another substance, sensible species in the air acting on a visual faculty, sacraments, bodily organs, and sometimes creatures with respect to God’s action. In all these cases, instrumental causes, like secondary causes in general, are subordinated to a principal cause and contribute (...) to its action and effects. However, the manner in which they do so makes them different from regular secondary causes, and the specifics are not easy to pinpoint. At the occasion of discussions about creation ex nihilo and sacraments, John Duns Scotus challenges Thomas Aquinas’s theory of instrumental causality. Whereas Aquinas does not strongly distinguish between artifacts and natural agents, and postulates a complex superposition of layers of causation, Scotus offers a novel view that clearly separates artificial instrumentality and natural instrumentality, and in both cases explains causation with great economy. Scotus’s in-depth discussion has far-reaching implications. It completely transforms the understanding of instrumental causality in general. (shrink)

Un essai qui prend l'époque à revers pour répondre à la question de la faillite de la communauté.

If anything marks the image, it is a deep ambivalence. Denounced as superficial, illusory, and groundless, images are at the same time attributed with exorbitant power and assigned a privileged relation to truth. In this collection of writings on images and visual art, the author explores this through an extraordinary range of references.

The problem of the intensification and remission of qualities was a crux for philosophical, theological, and scientific thought in the Middle Ages. It was raised in Antiquity with this remark of Aristotle: some qualities, as accidental beings, admit the more and the less. Admitting more and less is not a trivial property, since it belongs neither to every category of being, nor to every quality. Rather it applies only to states and dispositions such as virtue, to affections of bodies such (...) as heat and sweetness, and to affections of soul such as anger. However, the property of admitting more and less was a matter of importance for the qualitative physics that had reigned up to about the time of Descartes, a physics which was concerned with concepts such as heat, coldness, lightness, heaviness, and so on. (shrink)

A travers une analyse des concepts d’affirmation originaire, d’attestation et de reconnaissance, cet article tente de reconstituer le sens et les motivations du cheminement réflexif qui conduit Ricœur de L’Homme faillible à Soi-même comme un autre et à Parcours de la reconnaissance . Pour ce faire, il s’efforce d’abord de montrer ce qui fait la continuité profonde, de problématique et de méthode, du projet anthropologique ricœurien; afin de dégager ensuite les difficultés centrales liées à l’idée d’une constitution poétique du soi, (...) qui conduisent Ricœur à réélaborer les concepts directeurs de son herméneutique du soi. A la lumière du dialogue constant de Ricœur avec la philosophie de Nabert, il tente enfin de montrer comment les concepts d’attestation et de reconnaissance trouvent, pour l’essentiel, leur genèse dans un approfondissement de la notion d’affirmation originaire, lui-même prolongé par une réflexion sur le témoignage.  . (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy discusses his life's work with Pierre-Philippe Jandin. As Nancy looks back on his philosophical texts, he thinks anew about democracy, community, jouissance, love, Christianity, and the arts.

I examine Bayle's infamous statement that Christian mysteries are not only "above" human reason, but are "against" it. I put it back in the context of 16th-17th century Reformed thought. I then discuss the relation between reason and faith according to Bayle.

"Les uns avec les autres" : ni les “uns”, ni les “autres” ne sont premiers, mais seulement l’“avec” par lequel il y a des “uns” et des “autres”. L’“avec” est une détermination fondamentale de l’“être”. L’existence est essentiellement co-existence. Non seulement co-existence de “nous” (les hommes), mais de tous les étants (il faut de tout faire un “monde”). Être-avec, ou s’exposer les uns aux autres, les uns par les autres : rien à voir avec une “société du spectacle”, mais rien (...) à voir non plus avec une inexposable “authenticité". Nous? mais c'est nous-mêmes que nous attendons sans savoir si nous nous reconnaîtrons. (shrink)

In this book, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy examines the nature of catastrophes in the era of globalization and technology. Can a catastrophe be an isolated occurrence? Is there such a thing as a “natural” catastrophe when all of our technologies—nuclear energy, power supply, water supply—are necessarily implicated, drawing together the biological, social, economic, and political? Nancy examines these questions and more. Exclusive to this English edition are two interviews with Nancy conducted by Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Yuji Nishiyama and Yotetsu (...) Tonaki. (shrink)

This is the first English translation published of Jean-Luc Nancy's acclaimed consideration of the law's most pervasive principles in the context of actual systems and contemporary institutions, power, norms, laws.

On the one hand, freedom is said to be the property of a subject. On the other, freedom only happens in the space of being-in-common. Freedom, then, is the place of a conflict between the “self” and the “with,” between independence or autonomy and dependence or sharing. Resolving this apparent antinomy requires showing how the with ontologically constitutes the self. This, in turn, allows for a rethinking of freedom beyond what liberal democracy and political economy have to offer, as the (...) renewed opening of existence onto nothing, or onto an “outside” that the opening itself constitutes. (shrink)

Written in a direct and accessible, almost manifesto-like style, The Truth of Democracy presents a forceful plea that we rethink democracy not as one political regime or form among others but as that which opens up the very experience of ...

Christian parables have retained their force well beyond the sphere of religion; indeed, they share with much of modern literature their status as a form of address: "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." There is no message without there first being--or, more subtly, without there also being in the message itself--an address to a capacity or an aptitude for listening. This is not an exhortation of the kind "Pay attention!" Rather, it is a warning: if you do not (...) understand, the message will go away.The scene in the Gospel of John in which the newly risen Christ enjoins the Magdalene, "Noli me tangere," a key moment in the general parable made up of his life, is a particularly good example of this sudden appearance in which a vanishing plays itself out. Resurrected, he speaks, makes an appeal, and leaves."Do not touch me." Beyond the Christ story, this everyday phrase says something important about touching in general. It points to the place where touching must not touch in order to carry out its touch (its art, its tact, its grace). The title essay of this volume is both a contribution to Nancy's project of a "deconstruction of Christianity" and an exemplum of his remarkable writings on art, in analyses of "Noli me tangere" paintings by such painters as Rembrandt, Dürer, Titian, Pontormo, Bronzino, and Correggio. It is also in tacit dialogue with Jacques Derrida's monumental tribute to Nancy's work in Le toucher--Jean-Luc Nancy.For the English-language edition, Nancy has added an unpublished essay on the Magdalene and the English translation of "In Heaven and on the Earth," a remarkable lecture he gave in a series designed to address children between six and twelve years of age. Closely aligned with his entire project of "the deconstruction of Christianity,'" this lecture may give the most accesible account of his ideas about God. (shrink)

In this lyrical meditation on listening, Jean-Luc Nancy examines sound in relation to the human body. How is listening different from hearing? What does listening entail? How does what is heard differ from what is seen? Can philosophy even address listening, écouter, as opposed to entendre, which means both hearing and understanding? Unlike the visual arts, sound produces effects that persist long after it has stopped. The body, Nancy says, is itself like an echo chamber, responding to music by (...) inner vibrations as well as outer attentiveness. Since “the ear has no eyelid” (Quignard), sound cannot be blocked out or ignored: our whole being is involved in listening, just as it is involved in interpreting what it hears. The mystery of music and of its effects on the listener is subtly examined. Nancy’s skill as a philosopher is to bring the reader companionably along with him as he examines these fresh and vital questions; by the end of the book the reader feels as if listening very carefully to a person talking quietly, close to the ear. (shrink)

The possible and revelation -- The saturated phenomenon -- Metaphysics and phenomenology: a relief for theology -- "Christian philosophy": hermeneutic or heuristic? -- Sketch of a phenomenological concept of the gift -- What cannot be said: Apophasis and the discourse of love -- The banality of saturation -- Faith and reason.

Jean-Luc Marion advances a controversial argument for a God free of all categories of Being. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of both metaphysics and neo-Thomist theology: that God, before all else, must be. Rather, he locates a "God without Being" in the realm of agape, of Christian charity or love. This volume, the first translation into English of the work of this leading Catholic philosopher, offers a contemporary perspective on the nature of God. "An (...) immensely thoughtful book. . . . It promises a rich harvest. Marion's highly original treatment of the idol and the icon, the Eucharist, boredom and vanity, conversion and prayer takes theological and philosophical discussions to a new level."--Norman Wirzba, Christian Century. (shrink)