Search Alexandre Lefebvre, The Image of Law Clare Carlisle, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling Book Reviews Jean-Luc Nancy, God, Justice, Love, Beauty Aug 01 2011 Click to view on Amazon.ca Jean-Luc Nancy, God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Four Little Dialogues. Translated by Sarah Clift. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011; viii + 126 pages. ISBN: 978-0823234264. Review by Jason Harman, York University. Published in Symposium 15:2 (2011). French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s recent work is little more than the translation of a series of talks he gave to school children in 2002. It is a little book that contains four little chapters. According to the sales pitch below the obligatory endorsements on the back cover, the author is said to move “seamlessly…from Schwarzenegger to Plato…to Caillou, Harry Potter, and the pages of Gala magazine. Nancy’s wide-ranging references bear witness to his commitment to think of ‘culture’ in its broadest sense.” By all appearances, this is Nancy’s concession to popular philosophy. Expecting this, the reader will likely be sorely disappointed. For one, the dialogues are hardly little. Nancy himself remarks that “the idea of little dialogues seems poorly chosen; they are, rather, dialogues for little ones [pour les petits]. But what does little ones mean?” (65) Further on, while taking questions from the children, he proceeds to remind the facilitator, Gilberte Tsaï, that “a child’s question could also be posed by an adult who doesn’t know he or she is posing a child’s question.” (120) In fact, there is nothing childish or little about Nancy’s dialogues—nor do they make concessions to popular culture. Instead, the text is modern philosophy reduced to its pure essentiality. What Nancy reveals in these four interweaving chats is a sense of the mystery and profound depth that modern philosophy is capable of offering the human mind—irrespective of age. To accomplish this, Nancy avoids excessive references to either contemporary scholars or the canon, although the text bears witness to his immersion in the works of Descartes, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Levinas and, most recently, Derrida. By leaving this vast and intimidating store of philosophical treasures outside the room, Nancy is able to focus on what truly matters: thinking itself. He is successful in this highly risky enterprise by dealing practically and concretely with matters of universal concern: god, justice, love, beauty. It is because these objects are always on our mind that Nancy is able to connect them easily with the world of popular culture. Yet, Nancy never idles there, moving instead to whisk the audience to a (non)place that stands behind or beyond these common, yet truly human, experiences. All told, the text is difficult. While, on the one hand, it is remarkably free of the dense, intimidating prose that characterises the genre, the simple free-flowing sentences hit upon grand ideas that make the mind shudder with the labour of turning against its own petrified conventions. Instead of incomprehension as a result of the Languages English Become a member or renew your membership Symposium archive Conference Quick Links Jean-Luc Nancy, Ego Sum Drucilla Cornell and Stephen D. Seely, The Spirit of Revolution Angela Ales Bello, The Sense of Things LaRose T. Parris, Being Apart Dwayne A. Tunstall, Doing Philosophy Personally Recent Book Reviews 8th Annual Canadian Hermeneutic Institute Laurier Seminar on Italian Theory Upcoming Events Book Exchange (1) Book Reviews (143) Calls for Papers (40) Events (2) News (17) Uncategorized (4) Categories « Penser » au stade primitif (pré-organique), c’est réaliser des formes, comme dans les cristaux. Dans notre pensée, l’essentiel consiste à intégrer les données nouvelles dans des schèmes anciens (= lit de Procruste), à réduire la nouveauté à l’identité. — Nietzsche, Nachlaß Quotations The Society Symposium Conference Membership Categories Links Jean-Luc Nancy, God, Justice, Love, Beauty – CSCP... http://www.c-scp.org/2011/08/01/jean-luc-nancy-g... 1 of 3 2016-11-21 08:16 PM