Corpus by Jean-Luc Nancy

Corpus by Jean-Luc Nancy

How have we thought the body? How can we think it anew? The body of mortal creatures, the body politic, the body of letters and of laws, the mystical body of Christ-all these (and others) are incorporated in the word Corpus, the title and topic of Jean-Luc Nancy's masterwork.Corpus is a work of literary force at once phenomenological, sociological, theological, and philosophical in its multiple orientations and approaches. In thirty-six brief sections, Nancy offers us at once an encyclopedia and a polemical program-reviewing classical takes on the corpusfrom Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Paul to Descartes, Hegel, Husserl, and Freud, while demonstrating that the mutations (technological, biological, and political) of our own culture have given rise to the need for a new understanding of the body. He not only tells the story of this cultural change but also explores the promise and responsibilities that such a new understanding entails.The long-awaited English translation is a bold, bravura rendering. To the title essay are added five closely related recent pieces-including a commentary by Antonia Birnbaum-dedicated in large part to the legacy of the mind-body problemformulated by Descartes and the challenge it poses to rethinking the ancient problems of the corpus. The last and most poignant of these essays is The Intruder, Nancy's philosophical meditation on his heart transplant. The book also serves as the opening move in Nancy's larger project called The deconstruction of Christianity

"Jean-Luc Nancy gives us bodies in their gravitational weight, their mutual touch, their joy and their devastation, their self-evident presence and their constant elusivenessFrom the dazzlingly layered complications of the opening "Corpus" to the meditatively personal accessibility of the closing "The Intruder," these essays display the necessary connections and mutual exclusions of flesh and word. Nancy's work on bodies, already canonical, engages traditions we thought we knew-Platonism, Cartesianism, Christianity-and shows us how much newness is possible still." -- -Karmen MacKendrick Le Moyne College "Translation of 'Corpus,' an essay on the body written by the French philosopher between 1990 and 1992, as well as other writings that revisit the work." -The Chronicle of Higher Education

Jean-Luc Nancy (1940–2021) was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Strasbourg and one of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century's foremost thinkers of politics, art, and the body. His wide-ranging thought runs through many books, including Being Singular Plural, The Ground of the Image, Corpus, The Disavowed Community, and Sexistence. His book The Intruder was adapted into an acclaimed film by Claire Denis.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780823229628
ISBN 10	0823229629
Title	Corpus
Author	Jean Luc Nancy
Series	Perspectives In Continental Philosophy
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Fordham University Press
Year published	2008-10-15
Number of pages	208
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.