presented by THE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM SERIES

2:30 p.m. (HST) October 8, 2021

Presented by
Anne O’Byrne
Stony Brook University

The early 1990s marks a watershed in the history of Europe and the world but also in the life and work of Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021). Already established as a philosopher’s philosopher writing on Descartes, Hegel and Kant, professor at the Université de Strasbourg, well known as a thinker of community and sometime director of the Center for the Philosophical Study of the Political at the École Normale Supérieure, he was told that his heart was failing and he needed a transplant. We know now that what followed the surgery was a thirty-year long torrent of thinking and writing. Being Singular Plural is a key work from that period, linking his writings on politics and ontology, and connecting theoretical concerns with reflections on contemporary events such as the siege of Sarajevo. If Being is singly and plurally, thinking is a matter of thinking with.