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DISCUSSION
Professor Derrida rightly stressed that philosophical inquiry is necessarily situational and historical: not only is there the context of prevailing philosophical concerns, with its connections to surrounding issues
and its own historical nexus - often influencing and being influenced by
what one's fellow philosophers are doing, and thus looking something
like "national philosophies" (p. 3 1); there is also the socioculturalhistorical context which it is always important not simply to recognize
but to respond to and account for. Thus, the current concern for "man"
is one which, he recognizes, is set in a context of disquiet and uncertainty. In many respects, the radical explicitness of doubt and suspicion
of, and disregard for, the human person makes the question of man
critically urgent. As Scheler remarked four decades ago, never in recorded human history has man been so problematic to himself as in our
age: so much so, indeed, that some would assert that "man is dead" and here, I surmise, the surprise is that man, malingering, has lingered
beyond God's demise.
And herein lies the first of his main arguments. Despite misreadings,
the fact remains that on the horizon of Hegel's, Heidegger's and Husserl's
* Jacques Dernida, 'The Ends of Man," Philosophy and Phenomenological
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The second of Derrida's arguments has two parts. Noting that neither
Hegel nor Husserl succeeds in his efforts, as he sees this, to break with
metaphysics, and that Heidegger's is really a sublated humanism, Derrida
insists that (1) if it is a question of breaking radically with a "system"
without changing its ground of foundational notions, its frame of generative ideas; (b) to alter, radically, that frame itself (p. 56). Where
Heidegger (and, I suppose, for Derrida, Husserl if not also Hegel) attempts the former, it is the latter which is for him being attempted today
in France. (2) Thus, if one is today faced with the critically urgent
question of "man," this can only be, for him, in the context of two
abrupt and utter break with all that: not the guardian of the house of
being, not the shepherd of the truth of being, the "overman" (tUbermensch) is the "active forgetfulness of being."
We stand today apparently in the midst, the division, of disquiet and
laughter, despair and festiveness, and the two "ends" of man.
For this quite penetrating effort - and for raising his final, shattering
question ("Mais qui, nous?") - we are indeed indebted to Prof. Derrida.
I have found it necessary to rehearse the main lines of argument simply
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Let us acknowledge his plan: without denying that texts other than
those to which he refers are not necessarily subject to his own "reading"
(or "-misreading"), Derrida seeks to lay out a prominent style and profound, if subterranean, direction of the works of Hegel, Husserl and
Heidegger. Such a "reading," it should be stressed, is not at all an "historical" one, despite Derrida's evident displeasure with current "humanism's" unhistorical understanding of "man"; it is rather a kind of hermeneutical critique of only certain texts, a hermeneutic whose place in
his own scheme seems somewhat problematic at best. Still, I shall not
quarrel here with this procedure, but rather shall focus on that part of
his thesis which concerns, first, Husserl (to disclose my own bias forthwith) and, second, his "two strategies" for thinking today. By doing this,
I am deliberately expressing my own agreement, in general, with one
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Husserl demands with the best possible available evidence, and thus with
"scientific" strictness. But it is by no means what transcendental phe-
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actual world. Of course, "man"l can and should also be studied phenom-
can view Husserl neither as among the last, great metaphysicians, nor as
among the humanists - whether traditional or sublative.
A final brief word about Derrida's "two strategies" is both obvious and
necessary. We ask, why only "two" strategies? Has not Husserl's phenomenology manifestly disclosed a third, far more viable one than the
two Derrida suggests? Everything rests on how one is to understand the
"ground" which is either to be renewed while one changes its edifice,
or to be abruptly and radically changed. Although we may all be too
close to a mere playing with metaphors, it seems clear to me that both
of his options are part and parcel with traditional metaphysics - not
just because, as he correctly reminds us, language itself seems to reinstate us on the old ground from whose clutch we so desperately seek to
extricate ourselves. But, "boot-strapping" it just will not work! Rather,
I suggest, both remain essentially straightforward and dogmatic (in
Husserl's precise sense): the one strategy would continue on the old
ground and reconstruct the edifice; the other would change the founda-
of Derrida's two ways implicitly presuppose without, however, accomplishing: namely, to render explicit those foundations, neither by deconstructing, destroying, nor by trying to uproot and replant from the "outside," but rather by displaying and disclosing "from within" the massive
sedimentations and foundations, and thus by "fulfilling" the inherent
design of the entire edifice: deepening the sense of history not by a
relieve, but by reinforming it with its central sense and direction.
that - and cannot be pressed without losing their sense and usefulness.
And, their limitation is plain enough: a "building" - edifice and founda-
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and just this is the phenomenological "third way." In these terms, the
latter is the necessary prerequisite for the former - on the grounds of
Derrida's own argument - and no further "strategy" is at all meaningful, or even possible, without the actual carrying out of phenomenological
labor.
It would seem, then, that his quite wonderful talk of the two "eves,"
the two "vigils," the two "ends," of man is in truth premature: there are
often false evenings before the final move of day into night, and one
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