jeanluc nancy of the one of hierarchy 1

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Jean-Luc Nancy, Cory Stockwell

Cultural Critique, 57, Spring 2004, pp. 108-110 (Article)

Published by University of Minnesota PressDOI: 10.1353/cul.2004.0013

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Cultural Critique 57Spring 2004Copyright 2004 Regents of the University of Minnesota

OF THE ONE, OF HIERARCHYTRANSLATED BY CORY STOCKWELL

Jean -Luc Nancy

I f September 11 has made one thing clear, it is this: theworld is tearing itself apart along an intolerable division of wealthand power. This division is intolerable because it does not rest onany acceptable hierarchy of wealth or power. A hierarchy signi Wes,according to etymology, a sacred character of principle or command-

ment. Now the world of techno-science, or the world of what I callecotechnicsthat is, a natural milieu made up entirely of the humansupplementation of a nature that has now withdrawnwhich isalso the world of democracy, of the universal rights of a manassumed universal, the world of secularity or of religious, aesthetic,and moral tolerance, not only prevents the establishment of differ-ences of authority and legitimacy within a sacred system, but alsocauses disparities or inequalities that openly violate its principles of equality and justice to seem intolerable.

This is why our world is a world in which there can only be thosewho dominate and those who are dominated, those who exploit andthose who are exploitedthere can only be this, and there cannot beanything but this, from the moment that a general equivalency (theMarxian name for money) begins to eat away at the truth of equality,which is not equivalency but the parity of singular and singularly

incommensurable measures. In a way, equalityconceived of as theparity of dignities that are singular and irreducible to an equivalentcontains a profoundly hierarchical principle: the fundamental (archic)character [ le caractre principiel (archique)] of a sacredness or sanctity


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less unilateral model. We take the latter into consideration only be-cause it has become the ideological instrument of the terrorismwith which we are familiar. But terrorism is the conjunction of despair and a Uni-fying will that confronts the other face of the One.

This confrontation between the One and its substanti Wed Unityis none other than the internal confrontation of nihilism. Indeed, theOne has no more proven property than that of negating itself: eitherit negates itself by limitlessly multiplying itself, or it negates itself byturning itself into nothing.

Now what is thereby lost of the very essence of monotheism (in

all its forms) is precisely this: the one of god is in no way a One-ness that is substantial, present, and uni Wed in itself. On the contrary,the oneness and the unity of this god (or the divinity of this one)consist precisely in the fact that the One cannot be posed, presented,or Wgured as united in itself. Whether he is in exile and diaspora, ina becoming-man and in a being-triple-in-himself, or in the in Wniteretreat of the one who has neither equal nor likeness (nor even, there-fore, any form of unity), this god (and in what way is he divine?

how is he so? this is what needs to be thought) excludes absolutelyhis own presentationone would even have to say that he excludesthe very possibility of becoming a value or a presence.

The great mystics, the great believers, the great spiritualists of the three monotheisms have always known this, in their exchangesand their multiple confrontations with the philosophers with whomthey engaged, and for whom they remained, at the same time, out-siders. Their thoughtthat is, their acts, their ethos, or their praxisstill awaits us. This does not mean that it awaits us in the future, butthat it is there, here, close at hand, if one can put it this way.

JEAN-LUC NANCY110

jeanluc nancy of the one of hierarchy 1

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