Philosophical Themes in Jean Luc Nancy

Abstract

Nancy argues in A Finite Thinking that art no longer represents the idea or Truth because there is nothing that resides outside the finite as the ultimate reality is finitude rather than an infinite that informs the finite. (FT 23) Without representation, there is no double concept that refers to something external as a mere simulacrum, rather the simulacrum is all there is as a birthing to presence. There is no simulacrum as a copy of an ideal infinite form such as beauty. Rather the painting or poetry is radically finite, its own limit, deriving its beauty and existence from its own particularity and specificity rather than owing this beauty to a transcendental absolute of Beauty.

(Keywords: Transcendental; Empirical; Metaphysics; Nancy; Phenomenology)