Birkbeck Law School

Centre for Law and the Humanities

Jean-Luc Nancy, Emeritus Professor of the University of Strasbourg, is one of
 our most important contemporary thinkers. He is a ‘total’ philosopher: total in
 that his thinking engages with questions of totality and totalitarianism, ground
and foundation, in being, ethics, politics and art; total insofar as he touches with
infinite delicacy the thresholds of immanence and transcendence, finitude and
infinitude, singularity and plurality; and total because he is committed to thinking
the absolute ‘sense’ of the world, from nothing to something, from creation to
annihilation, and from birth to death. On 2 July 2011, Nancy will take part in a
symposium at the Centre for Law and the Humanities, Birkbeck, in which he will
Photo by Anne Immele
turn his mind to thinking the ‘The Ground of Law’.

The symposium will also feature three complementary speakers who will engage with Nancy’s work in and
around the question of law:

Sophie Schulze, Assistante de Justice, Tribunal Administratif de Versailles

Benjamin Hutchens, D.Phil. (Oxon), Rutgers, author of Jean-Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy
(McGill-Queens/Acumen 2005), Jean-Luc Nancy’s Exposition of Sense: The Critique of Kant (SUNY Press,
 
forthcoming) and editor of Jean-Luc Nancy: Justice, Legality, World (Continuum Press, forthcoming)

Gilbert Leung, Ph.D. (London/Birkbeck), author of Jean-Luc Nancy: The First Question of Law (Routledge,
Forthcoming)

This event is free of charge and open to all. Please register your attendance with Ms Valerie Kelley [
v.kelley@bbk.ac.uk ], making sure to include your full name, affiliation (if appropriate), and contact details.

Venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square,
London.

PROGRAMME (2 JULY 2011)

10.00 Welcome: Peter Fitzpatrick

10.10 Sophie Schulze: The Exception Confirms the Rule

11.00 Gilbert Leung: Fictive Law

Chair: Marie-Eve Morin
11.50 Break

Ben Hutchens: The Aporia of ‘Right’ and ‘Case’: The ‘Double

12.20
Structure’ of Jurisdiction

13.10 Lunch

14.20 Jean-Luc Nancy: The Ground of Law

15.50 Break Chair: Gilbert Leung

16.15 Additional Question Time and Discussion with Jean-Luc Nancy

17.00 Close