Formation and Finitude: Jean-Luc Nancy on the Arts as Ontological Doorways

In this article Chris Higgins considers two works by Jean-Luc Nancy — “On Being Singular Plural” and “Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One?” — in light of the formative task to do justice to the diverse dimensions of oneself given the offerings and demands of the world, a task made difficult by our finitude and the existence of incommensurable goods. While Nancy helps us appreciate the value pluralism animating the (liberal) arts, Higgins argues, Nancy himself shies away from the full implications of his relational ontology. Rather than follow individual arts and artworks into the local habitations they open — accepting the anguish of the arbitrary as the price of our finite but fulsome excursions into the reticulated real — Nancy retreats to the level of a global account (if a lyrical one) of the local.