2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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T HE END OF PHILOSOPHY
John Searle, and Fred Dretske, among others 4 .
In contrast, more or less mournful (but always angered) memories that prelude at a re-
construction of philosophy’s ever-lasting goals on a different “non-metaphysical” basis
seem to be one of the hallmarks of the Franco-Germanic scene. The publication of Philos-
ophie ‘68. Essai sur l’antihumanisme contemporaine 5 (Paris: Gallimard, 1985) by Luc Fer-
ry and Alain Renaut has been the first act of the passionate and at times heated debate
currently underway in France between the “old” anti-humanist school and what Renaut
himself calls—in a recent book devoted to “the last philosopher”, e.g. Sartre—”un human-
isme non-métaphysique.” His previous work, he claims, opened the way by striving to de-
termine “dans quelle mesure et sur la base de quels réamégenaments le projet de
l’humanisme moderne (savoir: désigner dans une certaine idée de l’homme et de sa dignité
un terme de réferénce irréductible aux conditions historique de son émergence et, comme
tel, ouvrant une dimension d’universalité) [peut] encore constituer un programme
philosophique susceptible de se laisser assumer.” 6 The obvious antagonist of so much re-
cent French philosophy is Jacques Derrida’s work and more particularly his distinction be-
tween the “end” and the “closure” of metaphysics. 7
In order to assess the alleged “actuality” of the question about the end of philosophy I
will start by reading a few texts from the Western philosophical tradition that deal with the
relationship between philosophy and its end. I will argue, that the analysis of an argument
Hegel presents in the opening pages of the Lectures on the History of Philosophy shows
that philosophy has always dealt with its end, in all the various meanings of the term (telos,
terminus, Vollendung, etc.). In fact, the meanings of “end” and “philosophy” are so inextri-
4. See Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); John Searle, The Rediscovery
of the Mind (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992); Fred Dretske Naturalizing the mind (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1995).
5. Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, Philosophie ‘68. Essai sur l’antihumanisme contemporaine (Paris: Gallimard,
1985).
6. Alain Renaut, Sartre, le dernier philosophe (Paris: Grasset, 1993) 15. Renaut explicitly mentions the
work of Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Lévinas and Jürgen Habermas as going in such a direction. He might
have also mentioned Dieter Henrich’s project as substantially coherent with his overall plan.
7. See, among many occurrences, Jacques Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie,
(Paris: Galilée, 1983) 80 ff.