2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

B ORDERING PHILOSOPHY
informal exploration to be further refined when a proper methodology is conquered. We are
then back to the first branch of the previous alternative, with philosophy being completely
absorbed within a specific scientific discipline like, to mention a well-known example, psy-
chology. Then, a new dichotomy immediately arises: either the telos of philosophy, the
quest for the truth of being as a whole, is picked up by the “substituting” science, or is not.
In the former case, philosophy is replaced by a sort of non-philosophical attempt that
strives, nonetheless, to find out ultimate truths. Let us call these attempts toward the elab-
oration of a scientific metaphysics “non-philosophy,” since they reject parts of philoso-
phy’s while keeping its goal. I will devote quite some space to two of these attempts in the
second part of this work. What I can anticipate right now, is that in these cases as well the
connection with Spiel comes to the fore again.
If, however, after the “absorbtion” of philosophy by a specific science the former’s
goals are not picked up, the questions to be asked are: what takes the place of the void left
by old-fashioned metaphysics? Is there any necessity to fill that void? Or was the very
search for a “truth of being,”metaphysically interpreted, a radically misguided attempt?
Whatever the answers to these questions, they can only come out from a reflection upon the
possibility of philosophy, or rather from a reflection upon philosophy’s radical im-possibil-
ity (or un-necessity, in certain cases). This brings us directly to a different meaning of “non-
philosophy,” one in which we read the effort trying to submit to a radical scrutiny the very
sense of the expression “truth of being,” either by changing the direction of the genitive or,
what often amounts to the same, by trying to provide a radically different interpretation of
“truth.” 12 What is interesting is that in several of the efforts falling under such a label, like,
for example, Derrida’s, Heidegger’s, or Nietzsche’s, a connection with Spiel, and a very im-
portant one, comes up again. In fact, I will provide some evidence in support of this latter
claim in the next two sections. At this stage of the analysis we can just remark, very pre-
12. Here, the implicit reference is obviously to Heidegger’s turning-point lecture “On the essence of truth”
(1929) where the relative equivalence of the expressions “being of truth” and “truth of being” is first
scrutinized and then brought to bear on the history of metaphysics and Heidegger’s own previous attempts
toward a fundamental ontology. However, the exploration of this essay in connection with the
end of philosophy and Spiel exceeds the limit of the present investigation.
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