The Experience of Freedom

The most systematic, radical, and lucid treatise on freedom that has been written in contemporary Continental philosophy, this book combats the renunciation of freedom attested in modern history by articulating the experience of freedom at work in thought itself.

The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (1940) is becoming more and more popular. Up until now, he has written more than twenty books and hundreds of texts or contributions to volumes, catalogues and journals. His philosophical scope is very broad: from On Kawara to Heidegger, from the sense of the world and the deconstruction of Christianity to the Jena-romantics of the Schlegel...

The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (1940) is becoming more and more popular. Up until now, he has written more than twenty books and hundreds of texts or contributions to volumes, catalogues and journals. His philosophical scope is very broad: from On Kawara to Heidegger, from the sense of the world and the deconstruction of Christianity to the Jena-romantics of the Schlegel-brothers.

Nancy is influenced by philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Georges Bataille and Martin Heidegger. He became famous with La communauté désoeuvrée (translated as The Inoperative Community in 1991), at the same time a work on the question of community and a comment on Bataille. He has also published books on Heidegger, Kant, Hegel and Descartes. One of the main themes in his work is the question of our being together in contemporary society. In Être singulier pluriel (translated as Being Singular Plural in 2000) Nancy deals with the question how we can still speak of a 'we' or of a plurality, without transforming this 'we' into a substantial and exclusive identity. What are the conditions to speak of a 'we' today?