Nancy and the Idea of “Being-in-common”: An Alternative Existentiality for the Subjectivity

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this article is to look at the discussion of the singularity in Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy as a quest to imagine a new concept of a common existence that negates the differentiation between “I” and the “other.” In the age of subjectivity, the main indicator of existence is the “subjectivity” that differs from the contingency and perceives itself as a whole in its autonomous singularity. This singularity-centralized perception of existence causes the negation of the being of the otherness and its ethical being that is the core element of establishing the subjectivity. Nancy, one of the leading philosophers offering new approaches on ethical subjectivity, tries to reflect upon a new idea about community (which is called in Nancy’s philosophy “being-in-common”), where the subjects can open themselves to the otherness. This article aims to claim that the idea of “being-in-common” is the only ethical opportunity to overcome the crisis that results from the sense of existence reduced to subjectivity. In Nancy’s thought, the ethical possibility of being-in-common should be interiorized within the concept of a communist democracy. A communist democracy is an opening of the being to its perfectibility in which the otherness is ontologically placed within the idea of the community.