Nancy, Descartes, and Continuous Creation

The present article investigates the role of Descartes’ doctrine of continuous creation in Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy. While it is not customary to take Descartes as a thinker of plurality, his doctrine of continuous creation affords Nancy the philosophical resources for thinking the plurality of worlds. In the first section of the article, we present Descartes’ argument for continuous creation, in accordance with which creation occurs not just once but is repeated at each instant. Yet, in Descartes, this doctrine remains wedded to a concept of an immutable creator. In the second section of the article, we present the stakes of Nancy’s deconstruction of creation ex nihilo, which results in the suspension of God as an immutable ground. For Nancy, creation of the world happens at each moment of the world but without a pre-determined end or plan.