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.

[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