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Interview With Jean-Luc Nancy: There Is No

West Anymore
07/14/2016 02:57 pm ET

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Elena Cu
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Jean-Luc Nancy (Bordeaux, 1940) is one of the foremost French thinkers of

our time. For many years, he was Professor at the Universit Marc Bloch in
Strasbourg. His Christian background, present in his beginnings, evolved
with his discovery of Heideggers philosophy. Another decisive influence was

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his discovery of Structuralism and his contact with Derrida, which among
other things served to strengthen his preference for the contemporary in his
philosophical reflections. We began by talking about the challenges that
philosophers face nowadays.
Elena Cu: What would you say are the greatest challenges that
philosophical thought faces today?
Jean Luc Nancy: In philosophy, nothing is a given. No meaning can be

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considered obvious. For example, it isnt possible to talk about man,

society or science as if these words designate well-identified realities. The
challenge is precisely not to latch on to any acquired identity. For a
philosopher, nothing should be taken for granted. Preconceived and
established meanings must be constantly reevaluated, and new possibilities
opened.

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How can a philosopher teach a society to think this way when it is as

anxious as ours is for answers and truths that it can cling to?
It is precisely this impatience that can be a trap. In one sense, impatience is

446 K

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right: there is no reason to wait, and the conditions for a decent life can be
demanded at any time. On the other hand, there are obscure and complex
questions to which emphatic or radical answers, as we like to say, can be
dangerous. The recent Brexit is a good example: the vote has just taken
place, and its supporters have already become nervous and begun to
question it. Or Podemos, which started off very strong but has quickly lost
strength instead of gaining it. Furthermore, the current complexity is the
result of opposing impatiences: the one felt by those who are excluded and
the impatience of those who fear exclusion (the middle class); the
impatience of people seeking refuge and the impatience of those who fear
being overrun by refugees; and the impatience of those who miss how things
were in the past vis--vis those who want to accelerate the arrival of the
future.
At present its much more difficult to set a course than it was at the time of
the workers struggles or the end of dictatorships. How did Francos
dictatorship last so long when many people were against it? Because it was
a time of societal transformation and transformation of the European
economies, and in turn these transformed the conditions that would prepare
the end of the dictatorship. Why are the European Socialisms and
Communisms in crisis? Because their motors are too old. We have to find
new ways for a new state of affairs in which techniques, powers and
expectations have transformed slowly. And in fact, this is what needs to be
made understood: a patience that is active rather than passive. An impatient
patience and a patient impatience.
You have written often about terrorism, especially after the grave
attacks in France. What is your opinion on this subject?
This terrorism is the combined effect of two forces: that of the change in
Western dominance and of the assertion of Islam, which has seen its
equilibrium destroyed by colonization and the end of the Ottoman Empire.
This terrorism reveals an extreme situation created by the very strong
contradiction between the Western model of development and wellbeing,
and the reality of existence in countries that feel marginalized, and where the
upper classes or casts preserve the enormous differences in terms of wealth
and status.
At the same time, the West is weak in its own strength. It doesnt believe in
its own civilization any more, it is preoccupied with its own technique and
sees how capitalism grows without lessening differences in standards of
living, while no Socialist economy has been able to last long (the Soviet
economy was a State capitalism). In fact, there is no West anymore, and
instead there are techno-economic poles of power whose visible heads are
the United States of America and the Non-United States of Asia, but whose
possessions and actions are found almost everywhere, and wherever there
are resources to be exploited. Europe no longer has a consistency of its
own, and it is subjected to this division of world powers.
And globalization...
Therefore globalization provokes explosions, tragedies and social and
cultural collapses of all kinds. For five centuries we believed that utopias

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were achievable, and we have believed in their vanity. Now we have to think
differently, and reflect on our place in the world. This will take a very long
time... centuries, forcibly... But societies have always shown that they are
able to overcome considerable challenges.
What are you referring to when you talk about the surprise of liberty
Do you believe that we are free, or not?
Liberty is not a faculty we possess, or a right that we have at our disposal.
Liberty resides in the fact that our existence is not programmed, and must
find its own path. However, it has to do so as existence in a world that has
conditions and limits. We are not free if that means to be able to do what
one wants and be independent of everything because we depend on a lot
of things, and most times our will consists only of propensities, hopes and
yearnings that come from somewhere else. Understanding this and what that
means is the beginning of liberation. And that is why liberty surprises us,
because we discover that there is something other than what we thought
was obvious.
For example: I become ill and cannot do my job, but I can see my state as
an experience; the experience of not being in charge of all of my decisions,
or of my preferences. Sometimes the ailing give lessons to those who are
in good health.
Could you explain how suffering is an opportunity to broaden liberty?
Thats not what I am saying... and above all Im not saying that it is an
opportunity. Suffering is not a favorable occasion, its a reason to rebel, and
especially to look for how to rebel, in the best of cases. In other words, to
what end? Surely the aim is to not suffer more, but even that must be
defined. For a long time, that goal was grounded in the word Communism
or Socialism. But these concepts were never truly developed, except for in
the Soviet form, and that form failed.
Why did it fail?
That analysis has not been done yet, or not sufficiently. Instead of looking
deeper into that question, communists are happy to just deplore the dirty
capitalism that has supplanted any idea of a fair society with that of
consumer freedom. They complain about injustice, but they dont know
where justice is found. For example, we often hear talk today about a
universal minimum wage. It seems like a fair and good idea, but it is also a
very dangerous idea that would contribute to keeping many people at that
minimum. The truth is that nowadays, in order to invent, first we must think.
And we must scream as well. Brexit was an outcry by those who have been
treated with contempt by the ruling class in Europe. We have to listen to that
outcry. But what should we understand from it? That is what remains to be
seen.
In your book The Deconstruction of Christianity, you talk about religion
in todays world. Could you tell me a bit more about that?
It isnt about breaking, or annihilating, but about taking apart or
de-structuring an edifice to show what it is made of. Now, Christianity is not
made of religion. It was made from a profound mutation of Mediterranean
humanity when it needed to emerge from the Ancient World, a world of
limits, a finite world, and what we could even call de-finition. Everywhere
there were gods with precise functions, rules to comply with, models to

imitate and fixed horizons. At some point, that all crumbled. Undoubtedly,
with the Roman Empire we saw the first globalization - when there was a
departure from closed territories and fixed conditions (such as free man vs.
slave). So then a desire for the infinite, and the promise of infinity began.
This attainment produced a change in civilization, culture and society gave
rise to the great adventures of the modern world, with all of their risks.
And with this deconstruction of Christianity, what specific conclusions
have you come to?
The first conclusion is the most important: the profound transformation of the
culture that occurred with the arrival of Christianity was the departure from
religion as idolatry, as superstition, towards a cosmo-vision with an infinite
horizon. The universal, the whole of Christian catholicity means, above all,
the unlimited: no more idols, and instead an open infinity. So there is also
energy for enterprise: we can and we must transform ourselves, and
transform the world, infinitely. Christianity has materialized itself as
humanism, as capitalism and as technical progress. This all becomes
problematic and obscure, but we are always looking towards infinity. And
religion as a collective point of reference has disappeared from the West.
The second conclusion is just the opposite: if Christianity took on the
imposing religious form that it has had for centuries, it is because the
certainties and references on which it is based are always desirable and
highly desired. Then there are those who appropriate these references to
construct meaning, as an instrument of power, an ideal of beauty or of the
gratification of thought, and those who (and strangely, they are sometimes
the same) seek representations, images and legends they can deliver
themselves to. Atheism is unable to resolve many doubts. And thats a
shame, because religion as assurance is a lack of liberty, except for mystics
and great spiritual men who have, on the other hand, helped many religions
evolve as well.
To end, lets talk about art. In what ways do you think that the meaning
of contemporary art is different from traditional art?
Traditional art was linked to the possibility of the representation of truth - a
religious, political or heroic truth, or a truth of perception, sensation or
feeling. The modern world sees truth as an infinite process of searching.
There arent stable and accessible figures or forms anymore, not even in
what art has been able to produces in terms of forms we call abstract or
colors without precise forms (Rothko, Newman, Pollock). A whole culture is
being invented where the very meaning of art is becoming more obscure,
precisely because it is no longer about representing given truths.
What would it mean?
The meaning of art is, in a way, necessarily enigmatic and elusive, because
it does not allow itself to be formulated by language. Think about music: with
twelve-tone music, serial music, electronica, jazz, rock and mixes of tonal
and atonal music, our panorama of sound has changed considerably (as has
our visual landscape, but sound has a stronger sensual penetration; think of
electrification, techno, rap, slam, etc.). We look for new sensibilities, and that
has its risks, of course. We search for what sensibilities and what enigmas of
the senses are becoming ours.
Spanish version: Entrevista a Jean-Luc Nancy