Jean-Luc Nancy or Justice as Ontology of the ‘With’

This essay considers Jean-Luc Nancy's work Dies Irae dedicated to the theme of justice. It argues Nancy focuses on two main questions: what is the scope of the interrogation ‘how to judge’? and secondly in what sense can one say, that who judges is at the same time judged by his own judgment, incessantly measured with the duty of judging? The author claims that who guarantee, judge, arbitrate are not only the minds, but also the bodies of the actors as personae (masks). They create storylines in which they try to compose a logic, tie and untie the contradictory knots correlating the assertion of the presence/absence of something with the descrip­tion of a meaningful context. Hence, as Nancy says, the day of judgement (dies irae) is in reality the 'dies illa': the 'sublime day' when 'freedom, law, and the other command me and give me the gift of judging’.