The Ambiguity of Sense and the Return of Nature

Abstract The article discusses different ideas in the thought of John Sallis: 1) the ambiguity of “sense” as the starting point for a revised form of phenomenology; 2) the proposal to transform phenomenology into “monstrology”; 3) the idea that, although constitutively ambiguous, the experience of meaning points to an indeterminate origin, or what Sallis calls the “beyond of sense”; 4) that this beyond of sense can be characterized as nature; 5) the specific form of historical change that Sallis characterizes as a “return of nature.”