I have pointed out above that the centre of Nancy’s attention lies in the event or taking place of being, termed as coming-into-presence. The question that follows from the interrogation of presence is now, who is present there?504 Whose identity are we talking about? What is it that allows something to come into presence? And how to characterize the traditional concept of subjectivity and the re-definitions Nancy gives to it?
To construe Nancy’s position, one has to first clarify what is meant by the notion that the metaphysical subject is essentially based on substantiality, as was indicated above. This notion has its modern roots in the cogito sum of Descartes, which announced the certitude of the subject insofar as it is capable of representing. As a consequence, the metaphysical idea of being is being-represented (for which Heidegger’s term is Vorgestelltheit) and the human subject is the foundation of this being.505 Regarding the philosophy of the “subject”, Nancy stresses that the metaphysical position is always that of a supposition, that is, a supposed substantial support for determinations and qualities. The subject appears as a point of presence supposed to be the source of representations and as a relation to the self, as a power of realization supposed to engender reality or as the supposed being of the existent.
502 Ibid.
503 Ibid., p. 5.
504 E.g. ibid., p. 7.
505 Cf. Fynsk, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity, p. 29.
111 This results in a synthesis in which “subjecthood” is called “God”.506 Typical to the philosophy of the subject, on the one hand, is that it posits itself as its own foundation and is, on the other hand, “the hypothesis of its own hypostasis, fiction, or illusion”. Between the subject and its foundation Nancy sees a paradox or an infinite abyss, as he terms it, which is the truth of the subject.507 He states that the prefix sub- of the sub-jecthood can be revealed to be the inverted form of the prae- of presence: “the present that precedes itself and thus also remains behind itself”. In this way, Nancy’s idea of the subject necessarily refers to that which is “before” oneself and thus always belongs to either the anterior or the posterior sphere, allowing the “pure” or “true” subject or “being-the self without qualities” appear.508 The presence, as Nancy contends,
“occupies a place in – site, situation, disposition – in the coming into space of time”, and hence as its spacing.509
In the following chapter I shall first make an attempt to account for the position that Nancy takes towards the metaphysical notion of ‘subject’ and its relation to the Heideggerian notion of Dasein. In Nancy’s philosophy the essence of being is existence, a view which can already be found in Heidegger’s philosophy. As regards his reformulation of the theme of the subject, Nancy’s guideline can be drawn from Heidegger’s statement, “The essence of Dasein lies in its existence”.510 Being-there is, for Nancy, a question concerning presence, more exactly the presence of the existent.511 However, for him the central problems may be located in the notions of singularity of the existence, as shown by Heidegger, and as its condition, plurality, “being-with” (être-avec) of singularities, community and communication being constitutive of individuality; what communal individuals “share” among themselves, is their existences outside themselves, in other words, what their relations reveal to them.512
This is to say that Nancy’s notion of existence is based on the finitude of a singular existent.513 As I understand it, Peter Fenves is right in stating that
506 Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 68-69 (Le sens du monde, p. 112).
507 Ibid, p. 69 (Le sens du monde, p. 112).
508 Ibid. As well as the present, the presence of the present has to be considered. Nancy calls this prae(s)ens: being-before-itself (être-en-avant-de-soi) or being which precedes or anticipates itself. See also Nancy, Jean-Luc (2001). Les Muses, édition revue et augmentée. Paris: Galilée, p. 182-183.
509 Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 13, 40-41, 69 (Le sens du monde, p. 32, 60, 112).
510 Heidegger, Being and Time § 9, p. 67.
511 Nancy, “Introduction”, in Who Comes after the Subject?, p. 7.
512 Cf. Hutchens, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy, p. 117.
513 See Nancy, “Un sujet?”, p. 109f.
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in Nancy’s thought we encounter the other as existing, in other words, in its finitude: as opening to us out of its own relation to alterity.514 Or, the thinking of the other’s existence could be clarified by Maurice Blanchot’s idea that the relation to the other is indissociable from the experience of mortality, by which the other’s presence is marked, and in this encounter it is probably the condition of all knowledge of finitude, since the other must “call us to our freedom”.515 Existence, according to Nancy, necessarily always shows itself as someone’s being at a definite moment in time and place. However, as soon as being takes place, it is dislocated: since, following Heidegger, being is “always already” and “not yet”, there cannot be a return to the same being, for being takes place at its limit.516
Nancy finds the metaphysical position inadequate to render what constitutes the foundation of singularities or some ones: namely, the foundation consists of the singular, contemporaneous existence of each singular one. At this point he largely follows Heidegger, for whom being must be thought of in its difference from itself, and thus in its existence, understood as an always singular articulation of its withdrawal.517 In articulating this difference Dasein communicates itself by opening to what is other than itself; in fact, Dasein is nowhere other than its articulations.518 In its singularity Dasein’s opening to alterity is always a finite event. This is what is meant by finite transcendence in Heidegger’s philosophy.
But how should we characterize the common ground between Nancy’s and Heidegger’s explanation of the subject as singularity? In Nancy’s thinking the singularity of the self knows itself as opening to alterity, the term for opening a relation being exposition: he conceives of being as exposure to inappropriable alterity. This is one of the points to be emphasized when inquiring into his interpretations of the sense of being as declared by Heidegger. Namely, in his exploration of the subject, Nancy departs from Heidegger’s notion that being is differential and relational, not One; this is because the articulation of being opens itself in Dasein. Here resides the singular nature of Dasein wherein it opens to being.519
514 Fynsk, “Foreword”, in Nancy, The Inoperative Community, p. xvii.
515 See e.g. Blanchot, Maurice (1981). The Gaze of Orpheus, ed. P. Adams Sitney, trans. Lydia Davis.
New York: Station Hill, p. 21-62 (“Literature and the Right to Death”).
516 This is one of Nancy’s central themes. See e.g. The Experience of Freedom, A Finite Thinking, and
“Introduction”, in Who Comes after the Subject?
517 Cf. e.g. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy.
518 Cf. Fynsk, “Foreword”, in Nancy, The Inoperative Community, p. xii-xiii, xxiii. This is also what is termed as historicality by Heidegger. See ibid., p. viii.
519 Fynsk, “Foreword”, in Nancy, The Inoperative Community, p. xiii-xiv.
11 The singularity of all that is singular ones is also named sense, for sense is their finitude, which is common to all but proper to none, according to Nancy’s formulation, it is “common impropriety, communicating yet neither communicated nor communion”.520 For him, one more crucial point that metaphysics is unable to account for is the relation between the totality and the uniqueness of the singularities. This claim is based on the view that existence is always an existence and each time singular. Contrary to the metaphysical subject, existence means predicates without support and holds each other predicate together mutually and singularly.521 Existence, a certain someone (quelqu’un), is “inimitable and unique”, as soon as it is “identical to all”. As I see it, this definition can be seen in the light of Nancy’s account that someone exposes himself as the “self” each time it enters a disposition, or, being as being-there is each time exposed as such.522 This is, moreover, why there cannot but be numerous someones, or some ones. That is to say that the mode of existence is what Nancy calls the “plural singular”, which, “‘is’ the response that answers the question of the ‘sense of the world’”.523 It is possible to ask this question because there is something (il y a quelque chose); yet someone is no one, that is, no one in particular, but “being-here, exposed there”.524 Exposure, according to François Raffoul’s explanation, is finitude itself in Nancy’s thought: as “that which is exposed to such an exposure, thought or philosophy will have to give up its pretensions to a total appropriation [of sense]”.525 Instead of any appropriation of a pre-existing sense in opening to the other, Nancy speaks of further openings to its exposure and openings to further exposures, when a singular self “trembles on the edge of being” in coming to itself in the presence of the other.526
For Nancy, the idea that being is singular and plural at once, indistinctly and distinctly, means that being is singularly plural and plurally singular.527 Such a constitution of being undoes or dislocates every single, substantial essence of being itself.528 This is also to say that being does not pre-exist its multiple singularity; what exists simply exists. Furthermore, existence is co-existence;
and since, following Heidegger, if it is supposed that the essence of being is
520 Cf. Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 68 (Le sens du monde, p. 111-112).
521 Ibid., p. 70 (Le sens du monde, p. 115).
522 See Nancy, Being Singular Plural, p. 97 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 121).
523 Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 70 (Le sens du monde, p. 115).
524 See also Nancy, Le poids d’une pensée, p. 6f.
525 Raffoul, “Translator’s Preface”, in Nancy, The Gravity of Thought, p. xvii.
526 Cf. Fynsk, “Foreword”, in Nancy, The Inoperative Community, p. xviii.
527 Nancy, Being Singular Plural, p. 28 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 48).
528 Ibid., p. 29 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 48).
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grounded in its existence, one must, according to Nancy, turn to what he calls the common essence, the co-essence, to search for the essence of being.529 Hence Nancy maintains that co-essence, or being-with – that is, being-with-many – points at the essence of the co- (the cum), or that the co- appears here in the position of essence. In thinking of being-with, the “with” is what constitutes being, but not in a way that the with would be simply an addition.530
In all, being-with proves to be “Being’s own most problem”531 for Nancy.
Why and how this is, is the thing to be asked; however, it is a not question first of the being of beings, but beings determined as being-with-one-another (étant l’un-avec-l’autre). In this scheme a singular stands each time for the whole, in its place and in light of it. In its being it is indivisible in each instant, within the event of its singularization. Yet Nancy does not want to say that a singularity would stand against the background of being: a singularity “is, when it is, Being itself or its origin”.532 Correspondingly, all singularities taken together is singularity “itself”, “assembling” them as it spaces them. Such an “itself”
is not, however, the “subject” in the sense of the Cartesian ego, that is, the relation of a self to itself, but rather something which Nancy terms an “ipseity”
(ipséité).533 Rather than singularity, what delivers the “ground” for the thought of being thus appears to be “being-with”, which contributes to the thought of the groundlessness of such ground. This, for its part, leads one to think of the groundlessness which founds Nancy’s idea of art and the arts.
However, the singular is plural from its origin: it is necessary that there be more than one thing in the world. What exists co-exists, for the origin of being is itself shared out (partagée).534 What is thus formed is described by Nancy as
“community”. Community is a “we” without a community, without anything to share but the sense that there is nothing to be shared. In saying that being is
“being-with”, “with” comes to mean the sharing of space and time for Nancy.535 Being has to be thought of as departing from the spacing between beings or the way they are exposed to one another. Yet the difference or distance cannot be equated with any substance.536
529 Ibid., p. 30 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 50).
530 Ibid.
531 Ibid., p. 32 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 52).
532 Ibid., p. 32 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 52).
533 Ibid., p. 33 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 52-53).
534 Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 67 (Le sens du monde, p. 109); Being Singular Plural, p. 28-29 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 48-49).
535 Cf. Nancy, Being Singular Plural, p. 35 (Être singulier pluriel, p. 55).
536 Cf. e.g. Lindberg, Filosofien ystävyys, p. 84; Nancy, Corpus; Nancy, ”Un sujet?”. One possible
11 Hence the singular existent is the end of the coming without end of sense, being at the same time “unique”, “whatever” and “exposed”. With “unique”
Nancy means the uniqueness of the singular, which essentially consists in its multiplicity – this is what he calls the existentiell and existential determination of the singular. As he suggests, it is supposed to open any consideration of notions such as “individuality” and “autonomy”, which arepart of the philosophy of the subject.537 Uniqueness or the unconditioned existentiality of each one means that it “cannot exist through consisting by itself and itself alone” as pure autonomy.538 What is the proper way to describe the relation between “someone”
and community in Nancy’s thinking? What he says is that one cannot think of any “someone” on the basis of one’s belonging to a group of “someones”, nor a community formed by them. Instead, all that can be pointed at is the contemporaneous relation between singulars, their being-with and mutual exposition to each other’s sense.539 How is it that the singular singularizes itself, then? This happens only by or through its singularity, without, however, its singularity being its own: “what shares it out and what it shares with the totality of singular multiplicity” is singular uniqueness.540
Despite its unicity, the singular proves to be whatever (quelconque). This means for Nancy that every one is just as singular as every other one, and consequently substitutable. Communication both singularizes them and divides them out; what is commensurable is their incommensurability. This thought is, of course, comparable with Heidegger’s view on death as something that allows every Dasein its singularity: just as there is no access to the death of the other – nor is there access to one’s own.541 It is worth noting that in Heidegger the motive of death is essentially connected with his conception of time. The idea of death implies the notion of my own death: even time ends with my own death.
Instead of stressing one’s own death, Nancy moves to consider the sharing of
parallel to the thought of being-with is what Sartre calls one’s relation to the Other. For Sartre, freedom is limited to the extent that I am able to remain as consciousness acting on the Other. The Other is for me an-Other consciousness. My freedom is limited and runs the risk of disintegrating when faced with the Other’s subjective world. This falling apart of my universe occurs because in and through the Other’s gaze I am an object in the Other’s world, as much as the Other is an object in mine; in other words, the Other’s existence thus determines my existence. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1966). Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes. London: Methuen, p. 256.
537 Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 71 (Le sens du monde, p. 115).
538 Ibid., p. 71 (Le sens du monde, p. 116). Italics in original.
539 Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, § 26, § 72. I shall come to Heidegger’s notion of Mitsein in more detail in section 3.2.
540 Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 72 (Le sens du monde, p. 117).
541 Heidegger, Being and Time, e.g. § 49.
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death, which no longer singularizes man, but brings him together with other men. Thus, in Nancy’s thinking death is asscociated with space.542
This fact amounts to that, in the community, every one exemplifies singularity. For Nancy, being exposed to one another is “presence itself”: what is exposed is exposition itself.543 What is presented is the coming-into-presence of presence and the différance of its being-present. This entails that the sharing of the distance is the only thing which comes to be shared. Taken all together, the sharing of the distance – that is, sharing the fact that there is nothing substantial in common – is everything that is shared between the members of a community.544
tHe Body oF sense
If for Nancy there cannot be a thought of the subject “in general”, that is, if one cannot assume a consistent and permanent subjectivity but only singular existents, where is the place of singularity, of “someone” or the self? What does it mean that the self is the arrival, the coming and the event of being, as Nancy puts it?545
Speaking of singular beings, however, implies at the same time the consideration of being, which in Nancy’s philosophy is practically another name for the notion of sense: being necessarily makes sense. Sense, as well as being, is transitive, which means that it is necessarily towards something. According to Nancy, sense is necessarily inclined or declined in the way it is exposed or exposes itself. Singular beings are their own sense and each of them is “being-such” (être-tel), that is to say, singularity. Being-such is also what alterity means to Nancy.
One’s relation to the other is that of partes extra partes, namely, that someone or some thing exists in a singular relation to another.546
This notion opens a new sphere when it is discussed in the context of the body, which is elaborated in Nancy’s book Corpus. In it he identifies the sense of being with the inclination or declination of the self. The self, like the sense,
542 Heidegger, Being and Time, § 65, p. 378f.
543 Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 72-74 (Le sens du monde, p. 117-118). Cf. Nancy, Corpus, p. 79, 81.544 Nancy, Corpus, p. 80.
545 Nancy, La communauté désœuvrée, p. 206.
546 Nancy, Corpus, p. 29.
11 does not possess the nominative form, but it is always the object or complement of some action, of an address or attribution.547
As regards Nancy’s understanding of the body, his central thesis is that the body is “the body of sense”. The thinking of the body of sense, which implies the reflection of the sense or meaning of being, is of course to be read simultaneously as Nancy’s commentary of the metaphysical division between mind and body.548 Yet, in opposition to more traditional philosophical accounts, according to Nancy, to speak of the body of sense is not to say that there would be any discourse of the body. Why? Because, according to his central argument, there is no totality of the body, but only its locality: its separation and sharing out. This was referred to above with the notion of the body as partes extra partes.
Being is, for Nancy, being “here or there”: sharing places and making spaces, and the here is abandoned – or exposed – in its movement. Thinking cannot think “the body”, as it cannot return to the place from which it originates.549 To put it another way, the body is irreducible to a discourse, since the sense of the body is born from nowhere else but interlacings with other bodies, in which productions and reproductions of sense emerge.
As regards the production of sense, in question are singular relations between
As regards the production of sense, in question are singular relations between