Philosophy holds an ambivalent relation to the pleasures of intoxication, this excess that both fascinates and questions philosophy's sober ambitions for conceptual clarity and appropriate behavior. Displacing established dualities-mind and body, reason and desire, logic and eros-Nancy's subject becomes intoxicated: Ego sum, ego existo ebrius-I am, I exist-drunk.

Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Strasbourg and one of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century's foremost thinkers of politics, art, and the body. His wide-ranging thought runs through many books, including Being Singular Plural, The Ground of the Image, Corpus, The Disavowed Community, and Sexistence. His book The Intruder was adapted into an acclaimed film by Claire Denis.