OIKE Sotaro (University of Tokyo)
“Ethos of Community, Ethos of War: on Jean-Luc Nancy’s Thought on Community ”

From decades, “community” has been central theme in many international philosophical debates from American communitarianism to the European deconstructing works. But, compared to American arguments, it is sometimes not clear how European thoughts can be applied to the real politics. While the former considers “community” as actual societies whose habitants cultivate common sense of value and moral preferences, the later incline to rethink what “community” might mean apart from any territoriality based on cultural, national, historical or ideological identity. Their arguments thus put a fundamental question what is the experience of community, that is, what is the mode of being in common, rather than what form of community we need to make.

In my presentation, I’d like to rethink of this question through the thought of French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, whose works around “community” have been leading to many active debates of Blanchot, Derrida, Agamben, Lingis, Esposito etc. Nancy is sometimes accused of presenting no concrete solutions for actual political problems. My purpose is however to underline that Nancy’s thought is directed much more to the question of ethos. After viewing first the outline of his ontological concept of “community” in The Inoperative Community (1982), we see next his analysis over the idea of “sovereignty” to criticize the actual dominant ethos (of war) in the globalization. The central aim of this paper is to clarify at what point this ethos of war is opposed to Nancy’s ontological community. And I will also explain what vision Nancy proposes to bring his “community” into our reality.



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