The Muses

by Jean-Luc Nancy, Peggy Kamuf (Translator)

This book, by one of the most challenging contemporary thinkers, begins with an essay that introduces the principal concern sustained in the four succeeding Why are there several arts and not just one? This question focuses on the point of maximal tension between the philosophical tradition and contemporary thinking about the the relation between the plurality of the human senses—to which the plurality of the arts has most frequently been referred—and sense or meaning in general. Throughout the five essays, Nancy’s argument hinges on the culminating formulation of this relation in Hegel’s Aesthetics and The Phenomenology of Spirit—art as the sensible presentation of the Idea. Demonstrating once again his renowned ability as a reader of Hegel, Nancy scrupulously and generously restores Hegel’s historical argument concerning art as a thing of the past, as that which is negated by the dialectic of Spirit in the passage from aesthetic religion to revealed religion to philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Art

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Jean-Luc Nancy is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. Stanford has published English translations of a number of his works, including The Muses (1996), The Experience of Freedom (1993), The Birth to Presence (1993), Being Singular Plural (2000), The Speculative Remark (2001), and A Finite Thinking (2003).

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Onder andere over hoe kunst de dood van kunst overleeft.

[John-Michael Polnik · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fates seem to have wanted Nancy's head. Nancy died at 81, this despite every attempt the prince of this world could make at him. He dealt with health problems, mental and physical, for the vast majority of his life; much like the 'evil spirit' Saul was given. However, unlike Saul, Nancy fought tooth and nail against his curse, writing dozens of books across every major field of philosophy and with a wisdom unbecoming of a person with only one lifetime. He seems to have brought in and sheltered his disease, sending it off to be burned to fuel his work like Calcifer to Howl in Howl's Moving Castle.
This book is concerned with a singular problem, at first glance only dealt with in the first essay: why are their several arts and not only one? He is dealing with a type of question, a type of thought which seems to have colored his general project (a general project I am unfortunately only aware of in its general contours) that of this impossible state which we occupy: being singular plural. The French is far stronger with more of a dialectical aftertaste, being singulier is grammatically (a power-logic of signification) incompatible with pluriel.
Just as humans are, so art is. According to Nancy's general argument, classically the five arts (painting, music, cooking, perfumery, and sculpture) correspond to the five senses (eye, ear, taste, smell, touch); this is not possible. At one level because it raises some arts (cooking and perfume) to a level which it is not typically accorded, indeed, part of their power is their general lack of reflection upon. These two seem virgin, unsullied, able to be related too; this is the dubious power of a Julia Child or Anthony Bourdain.
Cooking is a very typical act, done every day by the most bourgeois to the most desolate; and capitalism has introduced anew the problem of technology. Pans, ovens, knifes, chopsticks; and more recently complex measures to clean and make edible seemingly inaccessible objects which is phenomenologically significant. Or, further, with world trade and so-called globalization (really a process of repulsive homogenizing) world food has been made accessible. Now, Chinese food are not the novelty creations of immigrants conceived of as wholly Other; they are, rather, now an instrumental part of American cuisine. For example, it would be easy to make an argument that the symbolic influence of chopsticks is responsible for the gradual phasing out of the knife in American cuisine (see Barthes on chopsticks).
Returning to Nancy, in several facades, various masks he addresses this problem of uniquely aesthetic singular plurality. A materialist analysis, which Nancy seems to demand with the inclusion of the 'Notes' in the final part of the book and the self-acknowledgement of audience (117, 81, 46); reveals a disjoint among the five essays included. They were each published previously, or in lecture format. This does not negate but supports the profound coherence among these five essays. As with Ts Eliot's The Waste Land, the citations are part of the poetry. Running concurrent with the atemporal narrative told, is a gradual re-telling of his history of (aesthetic?) philosophy.

The 'great' philosophers are rarely cited by name in the content of the essay, however the citations provide their references. Like the priest with the Church, Nancy receives the great tradition and in wisdom speaks in its voice; however the educated are clued in to whom he is referring. It is clearly quite possible, perhaps even stimulating, to read this as a work of homiletics; in which exegesis is done by the old wise man and his audience is left in awe, and the final conclusion is to remain silent as the liturgy must resume.
Wisdom speaks, and she disciplines. Further materialist analysis would call attention to the use of medical terminology and medical mind-frame. "Autism", "synesthesia", "perception" all turn into Nancy's internal language; and this is exemplified in the early pages on the senses. One of the greatest outcomes of Heidegger's etymological dogmatisms is a certain return to the learning of foreign languages in Continental thought; and a sense for the fact that every word of a great thinker is a 'term' not just the names for the major 'ideas'. This is exemplified beautifully by Agamben's book on Paul, a commentary on the first ten words of the Epistle to the Romans. What is shown by Nancy's beautiful vocabulary, is the sense that his physical ailments were not simply rejected. Nancy shows, in this work at the sub-sensible level, a powerful philosophy of healing: embraced, brought in, with great pain, and forgiven. Should inspiration be anything less?

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Varios artículos sobre arte. Más precisamente sobre la multiplicidad de las artes. ¿El arte o las artes? ¿Hay una unidad subyacente, una esencia, debajo, o detrás, de las artes, algo que pudiera llamarse arte sin más? La respuesta tiende a la negativa; sin embargo, el arte -como don y como presente- insiste detrás de sus infinitas variaciones. El análisis de La muerte de la Virgen, de Caravaggio, es extraordinario.

[Howard]

i'm reading and rereading this, it's great

[Ippolit · Rating 5 out of 5]

First essay on "art" vs. "the arts" is really good -- the other three are not great