On Jean-Luc Nancy's Aesthetic Thinking

As one of the important thinkers of contemporary French philosophy,JEAN-LUC NANCY has experienced four contemporary French movements:the Frenchification of German philosophy;the influence on the field of epistemology by Science and Technology;the intervention of philosophy in the political movement;the modernization of French philosophy.The trace of his thinking is almost like an unfinished history of the contemporary French philosophy——he started from literature,later turned his direction to political issue,and finally went back to the thought of body,arts and the deconstruction of Christianity.His thinking blended the tradition of German philosophy,the theory of French existentialism and the trend of deconstruction.This thesis will start from the ideological origin of his thinking,with the help of the key words in his theory,to read and understand his aesthetic thought.Apart from the introduction and the conclusion,this thesis is divided into four chapters.The first chapter gives an introduction to Nancy's theory,explores the source of his thoughts and marks the keywords in his theory by reading his theory.The other three chapters criticize from three main ideas in his theory for the understanding of his aesthetic thought.In the part of introduction,we describe comprehensively the happening,development and the achievement of Nancy's theory in the field of contemporary philosophy.Also in this part we illuminate the importance of the reading of Nancy's philosophical thinking.Benefiting from the communication with contemporary philosophers and by reading and intervening in literary issue,political issue,body issue and aesthetic issue,Nancy rethought these issues by way of deconstruction.On the basis of predecessors' thoughts,Nancy put forward the dialectical viewpoints which overthrow the traditional dualism.Chapter One aims to analyze the basic characteristics of Nancy's theory from these keywords:l'etre-a(the being-toward),l'ex-istence,l'ex-tase,le retrait(retreat)and l'etre-avec(the being-with).First of all,as the favourite pupil of Derrida,he also had a preference on jeu de mots(word games)like his teacher.He de-structured the"da"(there)of Heidegger's Dasein(being-there),and he used "toward"(a)instead of the "da" which specified the location(position),in addition the "toward" has a connotation of direction.Nancy emphasized the deconstructive meaning of"toward" then remarked the "espacement" based on "toward".He looked upon"toward" as the basis of his theory,used the deconstructive way of writing to disassociate "existence",and then obtained the "ex-istence" with the connotation of"out"(extase)and "interruption".With "ex-istence",Nancy not merely thought it was the continuation of "being-toward",but also presented the issue of limit.By combination with Plotinus's "Emanationism",Nancy explored the "being-toward"with two aspects:inside and outside,finally the iconic characteristic of his theory--"extase-retreat" was taken into the vision of the thinking field.Through the deep understanding of "extase",he separated the "intrus" with the meaning of violence and strangeness from it.At last,through the reading of Husserl's"Intersubjectivity" and Heidegger's "Mitsein"(being-with),in virtue of the rich content of "with"' Nancy brought in the concept of community.He marked the "with"in Being-with(Mitsein).Chapter Two declares Nancy's main idea for singularity issue:the plural thinking,with the comparison of differences among the viewpoints of singularity by Hegel,Deleuze and German Romanticism;explains the parallel development of this issue in domains of Natural science and the human science starting from the connotation and origin of singularity issue;understands the connotation of singularity with Hegel's introductions of universality,particularity and singularity.By sharing,the singularity gets the plural presentations,and furthermore this plural tends to infinity.The plural singularity proves his thinking of infinite finitude indirectly.With distinguishing Art dans Arts,Nancy explain the difference between art and technique,by the separation of them,he verifies the rationality of plusieurs arts and the plural presentations of beauty via art works.Combine with Deleuze's event philosophy,especially with the understanding of Nancy's reading for On Kawara's works,we get the trace from "I"as the center to the subject of being abandoned,Nancy expose a turn from holding sens to catching truth.This view has been used in his thinking of plural forms of arts.By practical observation of works of art,he returned to the thinking of singularity,and we certainly can go deep to Nancy's aesthetics thinking with characteristic of"ex-tase"-"retreat".Chapter Three aims to gaze at Nancy's aesthetic thinking in infinite finite dimension by the way of observing the rebirth of art.With the explanation of limit and indefiniteness,Nancy brought the infinite of finite in his aesthetics thinking.Via the reading of German Romanticism,he noticed the self sacrifice to Beauty from artistes.Artists threw the idea of beauty presented by works of art in the real world,maee the absent beauty present,made death a sacrifice.Becoming an artist as the middleman between beauty and world signifies eradicating his own finite in the end of his artistic life,opening himself to infinity.The "ex-tase" of beauty was realized with the rebirth of artist(his artistic life).With works,the beauty comes into time;also with works,the"non-beauty" in time is able to return:the retreat from the presentation of event--the presence for the absence of beauty.Chapter Four attempts to comprehend Nancy's inheritance of Aristotle's soul theory and the deconstruction of Descartes' mind-body dualism.Nancy brought his"being-with" in the thinking of human body.With the help of "between" from "with",Nancy explored the happening,the development and the function of touch.He inherited and developed the thinking of Aristotle,Descartes,Heidegger,Levinas,and maintained that "I" was not an entity but a combination of body and soul,i.e.Body-soul.My own presence means extension outward from my interiority,and also means the extension inward from my interiority.At this time I have been suspended and become the other in myself,and my body will be considered as the other association with "I".Thinking makes the opening of my body,and at the same time body becomes the outside of myself.The touching only takes place at the limit,so we can touch.Nancy marked Merleau-Ponty's "distance",underlined the double connotation of touching by "with".Therefroe he explained touching's characteristic of"ex-tase-retreat" with the plural forms of art.Nancy classified other perceptions into touch.And he studied the art by "regard"--one kind of touch.With "regard" Nancy remark the transform and disappear of subject in art.From the carding and reading of Nancy's philosophy,we can extract the characteristics of "ex-tase"-"retreat" throughout his thinking.With his attention to art,we can recognize his unique thinking of beauty.In his theory,the beauty can be considered as the transformer of "being","nothing","singularity" in his own thinking field.It is the abstract being presented "its absent presence" by works of art outside of the space-time that has contributed to his singular "ex-tase"-"retreat"aesthetic thinking.