Derrida, Jacques Ends of Man1.pdf

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The Ends
of
Man
Jacques Derrida
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
Vol.
30, No. 1 (Sep., 1969), 31-57.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28196909%2930%3A1%3C3
1%3ATEOM%3E2.O.C0%3B2-M
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Thu Sep 16 12:32:49 2004
THE
ENDS
OF
MAN
"Now,
I
say this: Man, and in general every reasonable
being,
exists
as end in itself, and
not merely as means,
of
which such and such a will can make use as it pleases; in
all of his actions, in those which concern himself as well
as
in those which concern other reasonable beings, he should
always be considered
at the same time as end."
Kant,
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
"Ontology abandons us here: it has simply permitted us to
determine the last ends of human reality, its fundamental
possibles and
the
value which haunt it."
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Being and Nothiitgness
"Man is an invention whose recent date, and whose nearing
end perhaps, are easily shown by the archeology of our
thought."
Michel Foucault,
Les mots et les choses
Every philosophical congress has by necessity a political significance.
This is not only due to what has always bound the essence of the
philosophical to the essence of the political. Essential and general, this
political implication adds weight to it, renders it more serious, and deter-
mines its character, especially when the philosophical congress is also
an
international one.
The possibility of an international philosophical conference can be
investigated endlessly, along different lines and on multiple levels of
generality. In its most general sense, such a possibility implies that, con-
trary to the essence of philosophy, philosophical nationalities have been
formed. At a given moment in a given historical, political and economic
context, these national groups have deemed it necessary to organize in-
ternational meetings, and to be represented by their national identities,
and there to determine or relate their respective differences. Such a
meeting of differences can take place only to the extent that national
philosophical identities are presupposed that are defined by their doctri-
nal content or by a certain philosophical "style." But the relating of
differences also presupposes a common element: a meeting can take
place only through a common image which all the participants share,
which in this case would be the so-called universality of philosophical dis-
course. By these words
I
designate less
a
fact than a project which is
associated by its essence (indeed by the essence and the idea of Being and
of truth) with a certain group of languages and "cultures." For it is
evident that something has happened to the diaphanous purity of this
element.
How should we understand otherwise the fact that it seems necessary
to hold international meetings, which have as their aim to repair, over-
come, or relate national philosophical differences? Inversely, how should
we interpret the fact that an international philosophical meeting is an
extremely rare thing throughout the world? The philosopher knows that
this recent occurrence, which was beyond imagination a century ago, is
becoming a frequent and easy phenomenon
in
certain societies, though
it is rare, surprisingly and admirably, in most of the world. In regard
to philosophical thought, which is adverse to haste and volubility, it
seems that what is disquieting about many congresses is the often feverish
quality and proliferation of improvised exchanges. The fact remains that
there are numerous societies, languages, cultures, political or national
organizations in which no exchange in the form of international philo-
sophical conventions are possible. This impossibility should not be hastily
interpreted. It is not essentially the result of an intentional political-
ideological interdiction.
In
those instances where such an interdiction
exists, it is quite likely that this disagreement has already taken on
meaning in Western metaphysics or philosophy, that it has already been
formulated in political concepts drawn from metaphysics. Speaking of
thz nonconventions,
I
am not alluding to ideologico-political fences or
barriers which divide a field which is already philosophical. I am thinking
first of those cultural, linguistic, and political areas where the organizing
of a philosophical convention would simply make no sense. If I take the
liberty of reminding you of this obvious point, it is because
I
believe
that a conference which has chosen "anthropos," philosophical anthro-
pology, as its theme must be feeling at its borders the persistent weight
of differences which are of another order
than
internal or intra-philo-
sophical disputes.
I
should like to point to what seems to me to
be
one of the general
political implications of this conference. Taking care not to hastily
evaluate this point,
I
wish to indicate the connection between the possi-
bility of an international philosophical convention and the
form
o
f
democracy.
Democracy must
be
the form of the political organization of the
society in which the members of this convention live. This means, at the
least,
that:
1. The philosophical national identity come to terms with a non-identity,
that it does not exclude the existence of a relative diversity and the
expression of this diversity, possibly as a minority. It is obvious that the
philosophers here present naturally no more identify themselves with one
another in their thinking than they are representative of some unanimous
national discourse.
2. The philosophers here do not identify with the official political
policy of their country. Permit me to speak here in my name. When
I
had the honor of being invited to this meeting, my hesitation could be
overcome only when
I
was assured that
I
would
be
able to bear wit-
ness here to my agreement with those
in
the United States who were
struggling against what was then the official policy of their country in
certain areas of the world, notably
in
Vietnam. It is clear that such an
action, and the fact that
I
have been allowed to perform it, signifies that
those who hear my speech no more identify with the policy of their
country than
I
do and feel no obligation to uphold it, at least insofar
as they participate in this conference.
And yet, there would be a sort of naivetC in letting oneself be reas-
sured by the appearance of such freedom. It would be an illusion to
believe that political innocence is restored and collusion stopped as soon
as oppositions can be expressed in the country itself, not only through
ths voices of the citizens but also through those of foreigners, and that
from then on diversity or even oppositions can come together freely in
discursive relations. That a statement opposing some official policy is
authorized by the authorities, indicates that it does not upset the social
order; it
does not disturb.
This last expression, "it does not disturb,"
can be understood in all of its meanings. This is what
I
wanted to
remind you of at the beginning when speaking of the
form of democracy
as being the political milieu of any international philosophical conference.
And it is also the reason for which
I
proposed to emphasize
form
no
less than
democracy.
Such is the question which posed itself to me
during the preparations for this meeting, from the time of receiving the
invitation and deliberating upon it to the writing of this paper, which
I
date very precisely the month of April
1968
-
these were also the weeks
when the Vietnam peace talks began and when Martin Luther King was
assassinated. A little later, while
I
was typing this text, for the first time
in history, the universities of Paris were invaded at the request of a
rector by the forces of social order, then reoccupied by the students
in
the upheaval. Because of its indetermination or its complexity, this
political and historical horizon would call for interminable analysis. It
is not to be undertaken here.
I
simply felt obliged to note and date the
34
PHILOSOPHY PHENOMENOLOGICAL
AND
RESEARCH
incertitude and anxiety in which
I
prepared this paper. These feelings
seem to me to belong by right to the essential domain and the general
problematics facing this conference.
Where does France stand with regard to man?
This question seemed to me to command our attention for two reasons.
For one, a Frenchman participating in an international scholarly con-
ference on philosophical anthropology should, according to a tradition of
the three preceeding centuries of philosophical interchange, give the latest
views prevalent in his country. Secondly, the question of "man" is cur-
rently being raised in France along highly significant lines and in
an
original historico-philosophical structure. Thus, on the basis of a few
indications, what
I
will call "France" in the course of this paper will be
only the non-empirical locus
d
a movement, a structure, and an articu-
lation of the question of "man." Later it will be possible and probably
necessary
-
but only then
-
rigorously to relate this position to any other
instance defining something such as France. Naturally this cannot
be
discussed here.
Where, then, does France stand with regard to man?
After the war, under the name of existentialism, either Christian or
atheistic, and conjointly with a fundamentally Christian personalism, the
dominant school of thought in France professed to be essentially human-
istic. Even if one does not wish to summarize Sartre's thought in the
slogan "existentialism is a humanism," one has to acknowledge that in
Being and Nothingness, L'esquisse d'une the'orie des e'motions (Outline of
a Theory of Emotions),
etc., the major concept, the theme in the last
analysis, the irreducible horizon and origin, is what is then called "human-
reality." This is, as we know, a translation of Heidegger's "Dasein."
A
terrible translation in many ways, but all the more significant. That
this translation which was proposed by Corbin was adopted, that it was
dominant through the authority of Sartre, leads one to give much thought
to the reading or non-reading of Heidegger at that time and to the in-
terest that existed in reading him or in not reading him in this way.
Certainly, the notion of "human-reality" expressed the project of
f
rethinking at new costs, if
I
may say so, the humanity of man.
I
one
substituted for the idea of man, with all its metaphysical heritage, with
the substantialist motif or temptation. that is included with it, the neutral
and indeterminate idea of human-reality, it was also in order to suspend

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