Auprès du penser. Quelques notes à partir de la pensée de la parabole chez Jean-Luc Nancy

Abstract

The present essay discusses Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking as parabolic thinking. A parabolic thinking does not think through parables but is a thinking that unfolds what he called “the thought of the parable” as a thinking in-the-near-of (auprès de). Considering that “the thought of the parable” is discussed by Nancy in some references to Rembrandt’s painting and hence from out of his thinking in-the-near-of-painting, a short reflection on the “parabolic painting” of Rembrandt is also addressed. In the thought of the parable, the thinking difference (différence pensive) between the thinking and the thought appears, showing the immensity of the “in-the-near-of” as the very gerundive of being, as the is-being of being. A central aim in this article is to show how Nancy’s thought makes possible a turn in the meaning of the “beyond beings”, of the very question of transcendence and of the transcendental, when beyond is understood as the immensity of the “in-the-near-of”, as a thought in the near of the in-the-near-of.