The Truth of Democracy

"These short essays are packed tight with the sort of incisive reflection that Jean-Luc Nancy always brings to bear on his subject. The subject of democracy brings out the most generous and exhilarating dimensions of his thought. This collection is a very welcome provocation to raise the level of understanding of what it is we desire from democracy." -- -Peggy Kamuf University of Southern California "Nancy answers the reductive rewriting of history concerning May '68 with a resounding philosophical salvo, both salutary and exhortatory: think again, he urges, think through the current political impasses--of the Left in crisis, of the unimpeachable logic of economics, of globalized markets, and so on--not just to uncover the necessarily disruptive aspirations of an always perfectible democracy, but to reconceive politics as the incalculability of _being in common_." -- -David Wills University at Albany, SUNY "In a formulation that is perhaps as original as it is disconcerting, The Truth of Democracy concludes that 'democracy is first and foremost a metaphysics and only afterwards a politics'." -Times Literary Supplement

Jean-Luc Nancy (19402021) was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Universite Marc Bloch, Strasbourg and one of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centurys 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. Pascale-Anne Brault is Professor of French at DePaul University. She is the co-translator of several works of Jacques Derridas, most recently For Strasbourg: Conversations of Friendship and Philosophy (Fordham). Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. He is the author of Class Acts: Derrida on the Public Stage (2022), Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillos America (2022), Don DeLillo, American Original: Drugs, Weapons, Erotica, and Other Literary Contraband (2020), Plato and the Invention of Life (2018), The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments: Jacques Derridas Final Seminar (2015), Miracle and Machine: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media (2012), Derrida From Now On (2008), Taking on the Tradition: Jacques Derrida and the Legacies of Deconstruction (2003), and Turning: From Persuasion to Philosophy (1994). He is co-translator of a number of books by Jacques Derrida, including Life Death (2020), and is a member of the Derrida Seminars Editorial Team.