The previous chapter dealt with the question of alterity in Nancy's work. Now we turn to the problem of commensurability. Chapter 5 considered the possibility of contact with a meaningful world, while this chapter pursues the issue of the conflict of meaning(s) in the world: what is to be done when a number of incommensurable values must be measured against each other or, in other words, how are we to calculate the incalculable? It is the problem we have been posing to Derrida's deconstruction; it is also the question at the heart of the cosmological motif we have been tracing through Merleau-Ponty, Ricœur and Nancy. Can Nancy deal successfully with both the ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ and the ‘strangers, gods and monsters’ objections? Once again, are we dealing in Nancy with what we might venture to call a ‘deconstructive phenomenology’?

In order to address these questions we need to explore a theme touched on in Nancy's work by the motifs of community, Mitsein, globalisation, the ‘singular plural’ and corpus. What is at stake is how to translate between different scales of value or different measures, whether that be the senses, the arts or ideas of justice. Much of Nancy's work is an attempt to relate the fractured and the incommensurable.