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International Phenomenological Society

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research


Discussion of Jacques Derrida, "The Ends of Man"
Author(s): Richard M. Zaner
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Mar., 1972), pp. 384-389
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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DISCUSSION

DISCUSSION OF JACQUES DERRIDA,


"THE ENDS OF MAN"*

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.

It is perhaps not surprising that so much attention has been given to


"man" during the past decades - and from so many different quarters
and persuasions, not to mention the developments and shiftings in the
Geisteswissenschaf ten. Derrida reminds us, in this connection, of the
essentially humanistic character of postwar French philosophy - principally that of Sartre -and of its source in a fundamental misreading of
Hegel, Heidegger and Husserl. At least, restricting himself to the discernible broad tendencies and central directions of that milieu, one can
ascertain the prominence of the theme of man and trace out something
of its history.

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

Research, Vol. XXX. No. 1 (September, 1969), pp. 31-57.


384

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DISCUSSION OF JACQUES DERRIDA, "THE ENDS OF MAN" 385


fundamental criticisms or delimitations of humanism, one can detect the
resurgence of a humanism or an anthropocentrism which necessarily
places them, too, among the last, great metaphysicians (pp. 39-40, 55).

To be sure, Derrida is concerned to point out that with each of these

men what one finds is a surmounting and keeping, a "sublatioA" relievee)


of "man." Hence, his first concern is to delineate these: in Hegel, from
"man" (anthropology) to "consciousness" (phenomenology); in Husserl,
from "rational animal" (in its historicoteleological inauguration) to
"transcendental man" (i.e., the transcendental humanism he thinks is
implicit in Husserl's very idea of transcendental phenomenology, especially in the criticism of empirical anthropology); in Heidegger, from the
"metaphysical 'we-men'," to the ontological "propre" or "proximate" of
man's essential being (being is the closeness of, or what is proper to,
being).

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"

of ideas (i.e., traditional metaphysics), then this can be accomplished


only "from without" - just because it is the force of every system to
interpret or transform all such efforts to break with it into false exits.
Accordingly, only two strategies remain: (a) to alter the edifice of ideas

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

fundamentally divergent sublations reevese) of man. The first, "superior


man," is in truth but the lastt" man in the vision of metaphysics - i.e.,
in fact nothing but a series of different articulations of the same thing:
"man," still conceived in the setting of the foundational ideas of humanistic metaphysics, but now at its "end." The second "end" of man, in
no sense a return to metaphysical humanism, is a sublation which is an

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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386 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

because his essay is, if I have understood him properly, an exceedingly


subtle and searching one - well deserving, in my judgment, of a hopefully nonmetaphysical repetition. What else is there to say of it?
Certainly, if only as bystanders, we need to raise some obvious questions for clarification: what, after all, is meant by "humanism" here? Is
any philosophical position which produces a "theory of man" also thereby a humanism? What is the connection between Derrida's opening
remarks and the rest of the article? Does the disquiet mentioned at the
beginning signify that man today is as portrayed at the end of his essay?
If so, does this mean that Derrida is also a humanist? Beyond such
questions, however, I would prefer to engage him dialogically (if not
"democratically"), seeking neither to deconstruct nor to destruct, but
rather to philosophize together.

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

major thrust of his essay - the interpretation of Heidegger. With him,


I think that for both Heidegger and Hegel "man" (at least in terms of a
sublative conception of man) is clearly central and conspicuous - but
only so far as the works to which he refers are concerned. As regards
his reading of Husserl, and the two strategies, I am not at all convinced
that matters are as he portrays them.
To the thesis that Husserlian phenomenology can properly be viewed
as metaphysical and thus humanistic (pp. 43-44) - however "great" I have several serious reservations. (1) While it is doubtless true that

Husserl speaks of previous philosophy (at least of certain of its major


figures - Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant) as having a "secret longing"
for, or "tending" toward, phenomenology - or, of phenomenology, conceived as the rigorous discipline of criticism, as the "fulfillment" of
previous philosophy - one must not understress, as I think Derrida
manifestly does, the radical difference and foundational break, quite
explicit in the very notion of transcendental phenomenology, from all

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DISCUSSION OF JACQUES DERRIDA, "THE ENDS OF MAN," 387


previous philosophy, but especially from traditional metaphysics. Re-

duced to its simplest terms, whereas such metaphysics is essentially a


straightforward thinking about what-is, phenomenology is essentially a
reflective-descriptive explication of "what-is" strictly as intended, as
meant and experienced in specific acts and concatenations of acts of
consciousness, and of the latter as intentive to "what-is" in respect of

all its many "regions." This is in no way, I submit, a "reduction to


meaning," as Derrida insists is the literal claim of Husserl (p. 56). To
assert this is to miss precisely the whole significance of phenomenological
explication and the battery of methods which help to make that enormous task possible; it is to judge phenomenology ab extra, and to miss
its fundamental sense as an autonomous discipline of criticism.

The genuine radicality of Husserl's move is, I believe, of utmost


importance, for what it expresses is an authentically foundational reflection - the effort, not to renew, to recover, nor to sublate, either "reason"
or "man," but to uncover, to "lay out" or explicate, by penetrating
through the highly complex layers or strata of sedimented "sense," the
foundational presuppositions or roots of mundane consciousness - both
in its sense as mundane and its eidetic features as consciousness liberhaupt - and only in this sense to unravel its historicality. To equate the

Hegelian and Husserlian notions of "history," as Derrida does, and thus


to argue that the latter's notion of phenomenology involves a "sublation"
of man - this, I submit, obscures (and possibly begs) the important
question, whether Husserl's notion of "sedimentation'" (or of "genesis")
can at all be interpreted as "sublative" or "dialectical." Transcendental
phenomenology, the effort which discloses the "worldliness" of consciousness and hence its eidetic features in any possible "world,'' is
neither grounded on nor primarily about "man," the "human condition,"
or "human reality." Indeed, it would seem that the more metaphysically
inclined philosophers would be more inclined to lament this fact than

to claim to find it.


(2) To be sure, human consciousness - and the philosopher's own
first of all - is the starting point, as it must be if one seeks to do what

Husserl demands with the best possible available evidence, and thus with
"scientific" strictness. But it is by no means what transcendental phe-

nomenology "ends" with. Surely, Husserl claims that "reason" is found


functioning in every man, and that one consequence of transcendental
phenomenological reflection is that it has opened up, literally uncovered,
the fundamental sense of "reason." However, to view it, as does Derrida,
as "transcendental humanism" is to miss Husserl's very point: namely,
his claim that what he has disclosed pertains to any possible consciousness in any possible world, and not simply human consciousness in this

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388 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

actual world. Of course, "man"l can and should also be studied phenom-

enologically - but such a study in no sense necessitates a humanism.


What Husserl criticizes is by no means simply "empirical anthropology"

but more importantly philosophical anthropology. And, his criticism


shows, among other things, that such a study is an extremely high order
one, presupposing precisely the detailed transcendental inquiry into con-

sciousness - which is neither grounded on, primarily directed to, nor in


any case exhausted by the analysis of "man." Hence, I would urge, one

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-

tion, by straightforwardly affirming another.


But the third, phenomenological "way" would explicitly do what both

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.

Such metaphors ("foundations," "edifice," etc.) are, of course, only

that - and cannot be pressed without losing their sense and usefulness.
And, their limitation is plain enough: a "building" - edifice and founda-

tion - cannot be gotten rid of without literally taking it apart, or by


taking up residence elsewhere and thus rejecting it "from outside." But
possibly just these metaphors lead Derrida to see only these two options
and to fail to see that both necessarily presuppose phenomenological
discovery through explication: one cannot change the edifice or change
the foundation without already having grasped both as such in depth -

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DISCUSSION OF JACQUES DERRIDA, "THE ENDS OF MM' 389

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

must always be on the alert lest one's forgetfulness become a kind of


blindness to labors left undone.
RICHARD M. ZANER.
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT STORY BROOK.

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