THE SENSE OF THE WORLD

An essential exploration of sense and meaning.
Acknowledging the lack of meaning in our time, and the lack of a world at the center of meanings we try to impose, Jean-Luc Nancy presents a rigorous critique of the many discourses-from philosophy and political science to psychoanalysis and art history-that talk and write their way around these gaping absences in our lives.
Jean-Luc Nancy is one of France's foremost philosophers....The Sense of the World is an altogether necessary and fascinating work, crucially timed for the end of the millennium, with its attendant obsessions. Nancy begins by explaining philosophically the experience of "the end of the world." -We appear to know and affirm that the world is coming to some sort of end, but we cannot say in what sense. Indeed, the question of sense informs our understanding of "world." -In the main, Nancy is exploring the contemporary crisis of meaning around which so much debate has been organized in the last two decades. Yet his discussion is not merely abstract or held tightly to some recondite philosophical program. His concern, as in all of his recent works, is with existence and the experience of freedo
—the actuality of existence as it is lived and experienced by the contemporary communities of citizens, readers, writers, idlers, etc. In this regard his aim is always political, active and stimulating.