(P/B) ON TOUCHING

Παρουσίαση

Using the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy as an anchoring point, Jacques Derrida in this book conducts a profound review of the philosophy of the sense of touch, from Plato and Aristotle to Jean-Luc Nancy, whose ground-breaking book Corpus he discusses in detail. Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Didier Franck, Martin Heidegger, Francoise Dastur, and Jean-Louis Chretien are discussed, as are Rene Descartes, Diderot, Maine de Biran, Felix Ravaisson, Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, and others. The scope of Derrida's deliberations makes this book a virtual encyclopedia of the philosophy of touch (and the body).
Derrida gives special consideration to the thinking of touch in Christianity and, in discussing Jean-Luc Nancy's essay "Deconstruction of Christianity," devotes a section of the book to the sense of touch in the Gospels. Another section concentrates on "the flesh," as treated by Merleau-Ponty and others in his wake. Derrida's critique of intuitionism, notably in the phenomenological tradition, is one of the guiding threads of the book.
On Touching includes a wealth of notes that provide an extremely useful bibliographical resource. Personal and detached all at once, this book, one of the first published in English translation after Jacques Derrida's death, serves as a useful and poignant retrospective on the work of the philosopher. A tribute by Jean-Luc Nancy, written a day after Jacques Derrida's death, is an added feature. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Foreword
Translator's Preface
"When our eyes touch..."
Signing a Question - from Aristotle
PART I: THIS IS - OF THE OTHER
1. Psyche
"Around her, with such exact and cruel knowledge"
2. Spacings
The Incommensurable, Syncope, and Words Beginning with 'ex-'
3. This Is My Body
Points Already: Counterpoint, Mourning Psyche, and the Hand of..."
4. The Untouchable, or the Vow of Abstinence
The Exorbitant, I - Tact "beyond the possible" - Stroking, Striking, Thinking, Weighing: Mourning Eros and the Other Hand of..."
5. Tender
This Is My Heart, "the heart of another"
6. Nothing to Do in Sight: "There's no 'the' sense of touch"
Haptics, 'techne,' or Body Ecotechnics
PART II: EXEMPLARY STORIES OF THE "FLESH"
7. Tangent I
Hand of Man, Hand of God
8. Tangent II
"For example, my hand" - "The hand itself" - "For example, the finger" - "For example, 'I feel my heart'"
9. Tangent III
The Exorbitant, 2, "Crystallization of the impossible": "Flesh," and, again, "For example, my hand"
10. Tangent IV
Tangency and Contingency, I: The "question of technics" and the "aporias" of Flesh, "(contact, at bottom)"
11. Tangent V
Tangency and Contingency, 2: "The 'merciful hand of the Father,' with which he thus touches us, is the Son... the Word that is 'the touch that touches the Soul' (toque de la Divinidad... el toque que toca al alma)"
PART III: PUNCTUATIONS: "AND YOU."
12. "To self-touch you"
Touching - Language and the Heart
13. "And to you." The Incalculable
Exactitude, Punctuality, Punctuation
Salve
Untimely Postscript, for Want of a Final Retouch
Salut to you, salut to the blind we become
Jean-Luc Nancy
Notes
Index of Names