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Jean-Luc Nancy se boek Listening (2007, Fordham University Press) bied ‘n soort korrektief op die visueel-gesentreerdheid van die Westerse filosofie; op die privilegering van sig en sien; op ‘n langdurige romanse met die visuele. Selfs in Merleau-Ponty se groot, steeds belangrike Fenomenologie van die Persepsie is dit sig, en tot ‘n mindere mate dalk aanraking, wat instaan vir die sintuie (sin-tuie: mooi woord!) as sodanig. 

Nancy se werk behoort tot die fenomenologiese tradisie — soos ook die van Derrida en Deleuze. Sy Listening is ‘n fenomelogiese ondersoek wat vrae vra soos, wat is dit om te hoor? Wat is die verskil tussen hoor en luister? Wat gebeur as ons die oor, en nie die oog nie, as filosofiese uitgangspunt neem? Kan die filosofie dit hoegenaamd regkry? ‘Is listening something of which philosophy is capable?’ (Hier moet die verhouding tussen die filosofie en die psigoanalise ook weer ter sprake gebring word: is dit nie die psigoanalise wat luister by uitstek gerevolusioneer het nie?) 

Jean-Luc Nancy

Vanselfsprekend skryf Nancy ook oor musiek: ‘Prophecy in the instant and of the instant: announcement in that instant of its destination outside of time, in an eternity. At every instance music promises its development only in order the better to hold and open the instant — the note, the sustaining, the beat — outside of development, in a singular coincidence of movement and suspense. It is the question of a hope: not a hope that promises itself possible futures, but rather an expectation that, without expecting anything, lets a touch of eternity come and come again. […] 

‘Music is the art of the hope for resonance: a sense that does not make sense except because of its resounding in itself. It calls to itself and recalls itself, reminding itself and by itself, each time, of the birth of music, that is to say, the opening of a world in resonance, a world taken away from the arrangements of objects and subjects, brought back to its own amplitute and making sense or else having its truth only in the affirmation that modulates this amplitude.’