The Possibility of a World
Conversations with Pierre-Philippe Jandin
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In this series of interviews, Jean-Luc Nancy reviews his life’s work. But like Schlegel’s historian—“a prophet facing backwards”—Nancy takes this opportunity to rummage through the history of art, philosophy, religion, and politics in search of new possibilities that remain to be thought.
This journey through Nancy’s thought is interspersed with accounts of places and events and deeply personal details. The result is at once unpretentious and encyclopedic: Concepts are described with remarkable nuance and specificity, but in a language that comes close to that of everyday life.
As Nancy surveys his work, he thinks anew about democracy, community, jouissance, love, Christianity, and the arts. In the end, this is a book about the possibility of a world—a world that must be greeted because it is, as Nancy says, already here.
The Possibility of a World presents Jean-Luc Nancy in dialogue, allowing unique access to his thought. The book is particularly concerned with the possibility of inhabiting the world--a world that has become an object of calculation and mastery. For Nancy, such a habitus entails an ethos, or an 'ethics of the world' that involves the re-creation of the world. In the context of his thinking of such an ethical habitus, Nancy continues, throughout the book, his inventive engagement with Heidegger's thought as well as his ongoing debate with Derrida. This new book is an important contribution to Nancy's rethinking of the world and sense.---—David Pettigrew, Southern Connecticut State University