2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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of the locus of the truth about philosophy itself. But since the difference, in philosophy at
least, between method and substance is close to nil, this would entail that such a displace-
ment would bring us very close to finding the solution of philosophy itself. Or, to say it
differently, it would bring us closer the solution, or, perhaps, the dis-solution, of the task
that philosophy set for itself, quite a long time ago. Then the hypothesis is suggestive be-
cause it suggests that an answer (either positive or negative) to philosophy may perhaps be
found, although in a different place than where we have been looking so far.
Moreover, since what would come together in a form still to be satisfactorily articulat-
ed is not just philosophy, but “non-philosophy,” and “non-metaphysics” as well, the breadth
of the terrain the hypothesis implies makes it suggestive as well. For it would allow us to
bring together a number of disparate efforts and to understand not so much their unity
(since there might be none) as their reciprocal interrelations.
To find an inroad toward the paradox of the ends of philosophy joining in play, I will
start from a distinction between two senses of the positive reading of end of philosophy, of
the end of philosophy as achievement, that Heidegger puts forth in the essay The End of
Philosophy and the Task of Thinking. According to Heidegger, one might distinguish be-
tween the two senses of completion (Vollendung) and perfection (Vollkommenheit) in the
Hegelian, positive reading of the end of philosophy. The ground for the distinction lies in
the fact that the completion of metaphysics is the completion of a possibility that was
opened at the dawn of philosophy, e.g. the opening of truth, ratio, etc. as presence, as what
shines and it is given its full presence. However, Heidegger remarks, we may ask about the
opening itself in which that shining, that lighting, takes place. That unquestioned opening
that makes philosophy as metaphysics possible without being questioned, because unques-
tionable, by philosophy itself, by the metaphysics, is what is given as a task for thinking.
The end of philosophy as stepping beyond metaphysics is therefore a questioning of the
place or of the limit in which philosophy takes place.
Thinking, then, receives its task insofar as it assumes its direction from the un/thought
that lies unthought in the completion of philosophy. It might even be that it has to wait for
the completion of philosophy in order to think what has been left unthought in that very