2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

B ORDERING PHILOSOPHY
duction that forces play into game, to say it in the terms of the previous section. In this case,
how is the sense of the coupling to be interpreted? Moreover, how can two or more, possi-
bly confliciting interpretation be reconciled, if at all?
A second strictly related point concerns the inner articulation of Spiel. I have spent
quite some time trying to disentangle the various constraints required by the notion of Spiel
that comes up at the end of philosophy. It is certainly not granted that exactly the same con-
straints must be at work in similar configurations of the concept. In this case, however, we
must first ask what consequences might such a difference have and, moreover, how it is re-
lated to the previous point, namely to the sense of the relationship between the end and
Spiel. For example, it will be seen that in some instances two different aspects of Spiel are
emphasized: sometimes is the play-like that comes to the fore and sometimes is the game-
like side. This difference is accompanied by a diverging intepretation of the sense of the
general relationship between the end and Spiel, which prompts us to ask whether there is a
different interpretation of the inner articulation of Spiel that relocates the sense or it is in-
stead the opposite to be true, namely that a different sense forces a different articulation.
And what would that mean, for the connection as such?
Third, and last, we should ask who is the subject (to use a not too improbable word in
this context) of the Spielen that takes place at and in the end. Who is playing here? A short
list of suggested candidates includes being, Geschick of being, Geist, différance, not to
mention an empirical subject endowed with bounded rationality. It is certainly not easy to
answer this question, especially because it is unavoidably connected to the sense and the
articulation.
15. See, for example, Derrida’s comment on the Rousseauian festival as a festival of full presence, a ball,
a dance, a ring where there is no distinction between players and spectators, voyers and voyants: “there
ary many games (jeux) within the public festival, but no play (jeu) at all, if one understands by that
singular number the substitution of contents, the exchange of presence and absence, chance and absolute
risk. The festival represses the relationship with death...” Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie,
(Paris: Seuil, 1967) 433. Engl tr. Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974) 307. Notice
the crucial use of words coming from the three main semantic areas of Spiel—e.g. movement, agonistic
confrontation, and free-flowing activity— organized and organizing an argument about the limit of
metaphysics. See also, in “La pharmacie de Platon,” the programmatic declaration: “Jeu est la cyphre
de l’ouverture anti-dialectique par excellence” (Paris: Seuil 1972) 150.
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