Occasionally it is insinuated that Nancy is a “French Nietzschean”, a “post-Heideggerian” or even a “Derridean”. This might imply that his achievement is nugatory, or at least derivative. Although only the least sensitive critic would dismiss it as mere commentary, it is understandable that some might regard it as an extrapolation from its sources. On this derogatory reading, Nancy is an occasionally impenitent philosophical exegete who selects influences and frames them with his own interrogative philosophical style.

Nevertheless, Nancy cannot be regarded as a disciple of any other thinker. Many philosophers meander through Nancy's texts (and are often present even when unnamed), but none has exerted an influence that would condition Nancy's achievement. Replete with unique textual styles and conceptual problems, his work demonstrates that he is very much his own philosopher. In fact, one might even say that there is often a certain impiety towards even those sources he praises, an impiety that comes in the form of a reading out of context, or a representation that cuts against the grain of the conventional readings of such sources. For instance, in The Gravity of Thought, Nancy rejects the notion that we should “return” to Enlightenment humanism, or that we should strive to make the principles of Kant or Hegel relevant to the contemporary age. Furthermore, castigating the despairing view that we have forgotten true philosophy, he insists that today we are entitled to say only that truth is as beleaguered as it ever has been and that we must think through our own times, not glorify any achievement of the past.