Splendid Splintered Being is a study on one of Nancy’s signature words, éclat, which evokes both brilliant splendor and splintered dispersion. This article interprets Nancy’s image of être en éclats, translated as splendid splintered being, as a deconstruction of Heidegger’s thinking of being. I show how Nancy’s new style of thinking, which is also a thinking-with-others, can be understood as another interpretation of the subject of thinking than Heidegger’s Dasein. I present splendid splintered being as a deconstruction of Heidegger’s es gibt Sein. I also show how Nancy introduces a certain technics of sense in the place of Heidegger’s Lichtung. Finally, I show how rethinking being clears the way towards Nancy’s unheard-of philosophy of nature, where éclat is given in the mineral glare of stones and in the stellar glimmer of the frontiers of space.

With this book, we would like to resume the passionate conversation that Jean-Luc Nancy was engaged in throughout his life, with philosophers and artists from all over the world. Now that he has passed away, it is not enough for us to simply reflect on his work: we would like to stay true to the stance to which his thought invites us, in a pluralistic and communal way. Jean-Luc Nancy takes up the old philosophical question of truth as a praxis of a with — understanding truth without any given measure or comparison as an articulation of a with. It is a thinking responsible for the world from within the world, a language that seeks to respond to the ongoing mutation of our civilization.

With contributions by Jean-Christophe Bailly, Rodolphe Burger, Marcia Sá Calvacante Schuback, Marcus Coelen, Alexander García Düttmann, Juan-Manuel Garrido, Martta Heikkilä, Erich Hörl, Valentin Husson, Sandrine Israel-Jost, Ian James, Apostolos Lampropoulos, Nidesh Lawtoo, Jérôme Lèbre, Susanna Lindberg, Michael Marder, Artemy Magun, Boyan Manchev, Dieter Mersch, Hélène Nancy, Jean-Luc Nancy, Aïcha Liviana Messina, Ginette Michaud, Helen Petrovsky, Jacob Rogozinski, Philipp Stoellger, Peter Szendy, Georgios Tsagdis, Marita Tatari, Gert-Jan van der Heiden, Aukje van Rooden.