Jean-Luc Nancy: A challenge to Christians of the third millennium

One of the most influential philosophers of our time, Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) died on August 23, 2021, at the age of 81. The legacy he leaves could be considered “immense.” Nancy is a truly important philosopher, not only because of the more than one hundred works he published, but especially because his writings cover many different fields, ranging from politics to psychoanalysis, from art to religion, passing through phenomenology and hermeneutics. Throughout his philosophical journey, he brought great originality to the problems of the contemporary world, always  aware of the preoccupations of our time.

In this sense, we can say that Nancy was always able to fine-tune his thought, taking into account the legacy of the authors who preceded him and starting from the environment in which he found himself. This is demonstrated by his last two books: Un trop humain virus^[1] and Mascarons de Macron,^[2] the result of his reflections on the pandemic and the economic, social and cultural crisis we are experiencing. Let us not forget that his previous work, La Peau fragile du monde^[3] already gave a glimpse of these reflections on the fragile immanence we find ourselves in and to which we  are condemned.

In this article we would like to show, without going into details, some aspects of Nancy’s reflection on Christianity and the contemporary West, which warn us about the ease with which we can pervert Christianity precisely when we try to live it and make it fruitful.  

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