Weight of Thought (Nancy)

Nancy's name (in The Gravity of Thought and "The Heart of Things") for the structural fact that thought is itself a material event: thought weighs (active sense — ascertains weight, ponders) because it has weight (passive sense — exerts pressure by its heaviness). The doubling of peser / pesée (to weigh / weighing) is the operative pun on penser / pensée (to think / thinking), but the philosophical claim is not the pun — it is the equivalence: "the weighty/weighing property of thought is identical to a thoughtful property of the weighty thing" (GT 76). At the heart of thought is some thing — the il y a — that defies all appropriation by thought (BP 169).

Key Points

  • Double sense of peser: in French, peser means both (a) to ascertain the weight of something (active: holding it in one's hand, putting it on a scale, or figuratively assessing); (b) to have weight, to exert pressure by virtue of one's heaviness. English "to weigh" preserves both senses. Nancy's claim: thought weighs in both senses.
  • Thought as material event (GT 76; preface to new French edition of Le poids d'une pensée): "Sometimes the heaviness, sometimes the gravity of a 'thought' . . . affects us with a perceptible pressure or inclination, a palpable curve — and even, with the impact of a fall (if only the falling of one's head into one's hands)." Not cognitive-naturalism (brain events) but ontology: thought is this or that thought, a singular thought rather than thinking-in-general, a thing among other things.
  • The encounter (GT 76): "the thing can weigh upon thought because thought is itself a material event, and hence weighty in the second sense. Furthermore, it is because of this encounter, this pressure between the two weighty things, that there is weighing in the first sense, that thought weighs, ponders or thinks." The activity of thinking (active peser) follows from the encounter of two passive weights.
  • The il y a / "there is" at the heart of thought (BP 169): "At the heart of thought there is some thing that defies all appropriation by thought." What thought thinks is the inappropriate property of the thing — the some of some thing, the quelque of quelque chose, the y of il y a.
  • The "hard thought" / "la pierre même" (BP 182–3): "Simple hardness of stone that thought endures in order to simply be thought, that is, to be 'the stone itself'." Thinking is hard (in both senses): thought bangs itself on the thing, thought endures the stone-itself.

Details

What this is not

Nancy explicitly distances his claim from cognitive-science / neuroscientific naturalisation of phenomenology (per Morin Ch 6 §4). Thinking-as-material-event does not mean "thinking is brain events" (though Nancy does mention the brain and nerves in his preface to Le poids d'une pensée). It means: thought is this or that thought, a singular event, a quelconque (see whateverness-quelconque) — a thing among things.

The materialism is not reductive. It is the inclusion of thinking within the corpus-corporum, not the elimination of thinking-as-such.

The deappropriation move

Per Morin Ch 6 §4 + BP 178–9: a thinking of things that does justice to the some of the thing cannot be content with "open" and "welcoming" appropriation. Open-and-welcoming still reduces the thing to "the thing of thought." What is needed is deappropriation of all appropriation: thought must "submit to this: that thought itself is nothing but some thought, any thought. Some thing or other among so many other things [Une chose quelconque parmi tant des choses quelconques]" (BP 178–9).

Thought's claim on its objects is withdrawn in the moment thought recognises itself as one of the things. The il y a is both what cannot be dissolved in thought and what thought is in its inappropriability.

"Immanence without immediacy" (BP 182)

The mode of being of thought, on Nancy's reading, is neither immediacy (where thought would have direct access to its objects) nor mediation (where thought would access objects via concepts or signs). It is immanence without immediacy: the thing remains in itself (in-manere) and lies there suspended in its position, ex-posed. Thought is of this immanence without claiming to dissolve it.

"Hard thought" — cogne / se cogne

Nancy's French pun at BP 182–3: "Hard thought: that does not mean 'difficult.' On the contrary, it is always too simple. Simple hardness of stone that thought endures in order to simply be thought, that is, to be 'the stone itself' [la pierre même]." The verb cogner (to bang, to knock) plays on cogito etymologically (cogitare = "to think") — thought bangs itself on the thing's inappropriability, and in this banging thinks.

Connections

  • follows from Nancy's materialism — creation-ex-nihilo-materialist, whateverness-quelconque, corpus-corporum.
  • includes thought in corpus-corporum — thought is a zone of the corpus, a quelconque among others.
  • anchored in the il y a / "there is" — the some of some thing that defies appropriation.
  • connected to freedom-of-the-stone — the stone "endures" thought as thought endures the stone-itself; the freedom of the stone as such requires thinking-as-material-event.
  • contrasts with Cartesian clear-and-distinct thought (which would dissolve obscurity); contrasts with Husserlian intentional access; contrasts with cognitive-science naturalisation.
  • connected to concret-de-pierre (Nancy's micro-formula for what Heidegger loses) — the stone's concreteness is what thought endures.
  • connected to Nancy's late "deconstruction of Christianity" project — a finite thinking that recognises its mortality / mooring in the world.

Open Questions

  • Is "thought endures the stone-itself" compatible with the discursive / propositional / inferential dimensions of thought, or does it apply only to phenomenologically rich pre-discursive cases? Nancy's examples (the head-falling-into-hands) suggest the former; how the claim extends to formal logical inference is open.
  • Does the weight-of-thought reading have political implications? If thought is deappropriated and recognises itself as quelconque, then political thinking cannot claim a privileged position; the politics of les gens / singular plurality follows.
  • Is Nancy's weight-of-thought compatible with Derrida's différance-of-the-sign? Both refuse direct access; both maintain irreducibility; the structural overlap is significant.

Sources