Jean-Luc Nancy and the Thinking of Otherness explores Nancy's opening of otherness at the heart of existence through the transformative appropriation of Heidegger and Levinas.

This book, by one of the most innovative and challenging contemporary thinkers, rethinks community and the very idea of the social. Nancy's fundamental argument is that being is always "being with," that "I" is not prior to "we," that existence is essentially co-existence.

Wide-ranging essays on Jean-Luc Nancy’s thought. Jean-Luc Nancy is one of the leading voices in European philosophy of the last thirty years, and he has influenced a range of fields, including theology, aesthetics, and political theory. This volume offers the widest and most up-to-date responses to his work, oriented by the themes of world, finitude, and sense, with attention also given to his recent project on the “deconstruction of Christianity.” Focusing on Nancy’s writings on globalization, Christianity, the plurality of art forms, his materialist ontology, as well as a range of contemporary issues, an international group of scholars provides not just inventive interpretations of Nancy’s work but also essays taking on the most pressing issues of today. The collection brings to the fore the originality of his thinking and points to the future of continental philosophy. A previously unpublished interview with Nancy concludes the volume. “This invaluable collection engages with the full range of Nancy’s philosophical concerns to offer a series of enriching and highly illuminating critical perspectives. It demonstrates the importance of Nancy’s work for philosophical reflection on the contemporary world.” — Ian James, author of The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy

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. A paper edition (1924-7) is available for $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

How have we thought “the body”? How can we think it anew? The body of mortal creatures, the body politic, the body of letters and of laws, the “mystical body of Christ”—all these (and others) are incorporated in the word Corpus, the title and topic of Jean-Luc Nancy’s masterwork. Corpus is a work of literary force at once phenomenological, sociological, theological, and philosophical in its multiple orientations and approaches. In thirty-six brief sections, Nancy offers us at once an encyclopedia and a polemical program—reviewing classical takes on the “corpus” from Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Paul to Descartes, Hegel, Husserl, and Freud, while demonstrating that the mutations (technological, biological, and political) of our own culture have given rise to the need for a new understanding of the body. He not only tells the story of this cultural change but also explores the promise and responsibilities that such a new understanding entails. The long-awaited English translation is a bold, bravura rendering. To the title essay are added five closely related recent pieces—including a commentary by Antonia Birnbaum—dedicated in large part to the legacy of the “mind-body problem” formulated by Descartes and the challenge it poses to rethinking the ancient problems of the corpus. The last and most poignant of these essays is “The Intruder,” Nancy’s philosophical meditation on his heart transplant. The book also serves as the opening move in Nancy’s larger project called “The deconstruction of Christianity.”

Sex, more than just a part of our experience, troubles our conceptions of existence. Drawing on a fascinating array of sources, ancient and modern, philosophical and literary, Jean-Luc Nancy explores and upholds the form-giving thrust of the drive. Nancy reminds us that we are more comfortable with the drama of prohibitions, ideals, repression, transgression, and destruction, which often hamper thinking about sex and gender, than with the affirmation of an originary trouble at the limits of language that divides being and opens the world. Sexistence develops a new philosophical account of sexuality that resonates with contemporary research on gender and biopolitics. Without attempting to be comprehensive, the book ranges from the ancient world through psychoanalysis to discover the turbulence of the drive at the heart of existence.

Before now, Jean-Luc Nancy's contributions to legal and political theory have been largely overlooked and lacking the in-depth appraisal they deserve. In this unique collection, eighteen notable Nancy scholars contextualize Nancy's work in these areas within the broad corpus of his other concerns. By emphasizing the originality of his theories in a globalizing age, each distinctive chapter provides a new and valuable insight into Nancy's legal and political philosophy. Together with his work on sense, community and art, these cutting edge contributions examine Nancy's conceptions of justice, legality and world in conjunction with the interpretation and rationality of: · The ontology of the event. · The form of relationality. · The effects of globalization. · The importance of Christianity in contemporary legal and political theory. Including a brand new essay by Nancy himself, this collection marks an important and timely step in a rich area of study.