Prof. Dr. Eric Pommier, research fellow at the International Center of Study on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published La condition sensible. Chair, Événement, Éros (Hermann, Paris, 2022). In this book, Prof. Pommier takes as a starting point the role of the body as the center of sensitive perception, for the body is not only in the world, but also allows man to unfold in the perceived world. Consequently, the body acquires a double dimension of belonging and openness. This presupposes a first sensible gift by which the body is, on the one hand, what is-there in the world and, on the other hand, what constitutes the world.

In describing the phenomenon of perception, phenomenology is compelled to trace back from the world in which we find ourselves to the source of appearances, to the intentional consciousness that animates a pure sensible matter. This leads to a series of questions that the author addresses through a dialogue with the contemporary phenomenological tradition: how to account for the gift of this sensible matter? Should we settle for a transcendental conception of the flesh to account for this pure feeling? Or should we and can we go further back, towards an event thanks to which there is sensibility? Would the function of the flesh then be to ensure the passage between this first gift of the sensible and the world as we constitute it? Would the exploration of the erotic body be able to reconcile the flesh with itself and thus give us the secret of our sensible condition?