Once existence no longer offers itself as an empiricity that must be related to its conditions of possibility or sublated in a transcendence beyond itself, but instead as sheer factuality, we must think this fact, the fact of existence as the essence of itself, as freedom. The question is no longer "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Instead, it becomes "Why these very questions by which existence affirms itself and abandons itself in a single gesture?" If we do not think being itself as a freedom, we are condemned to think of freedom as a pure "Idea" or "right," and being-in-the-world, in turn, as a blind and obtuse necessity. Since Kant, philosophy and our world have relentlessly confronted this scission.
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Once existence no longer offers itself as an empiricity that must be related to its conditions of possibility or sublated in a transcendence beyond itself, but instead as sheer factuality, we must think this fact, the fact of existence as the essence of itself, as freedom. The question is no longer "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Instead, it becomes "Why these very questions by which existence affirms itself and abandons itself in a single gesture?" If we do not think being itself as a freedom, we are condemned to think of freedom as a pure "Idea" or "right," and being-in-the-world, in turn, as a blind and obtuse necessity. Since Kant, philosophy and our world have relentlessly confronted this scission.
Imprint | Stanford University Press |
Country of origin | United States |
Series | Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics |
Release date | March 1994 |
Availability | Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days |
First published | 1993 |
Authors | Jean-Luc Nancy |
Dimensions | 216 x 140 x 16mm (L x W x T) |
Format | Paperback - Trade / Trade / Trade |
Pages | 248 |
Edition | Revised and Rev |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-8047-2190-5 |
Barcode | 9780804721905 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-8047-2190-4 |