2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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T HE END OF PHILOSOPHY
We must keep the possibility open that the time to come, as well as our own
time, remains with no real philosophy. That would not be at all bad. 15
Heidegger does not make any reference to the ‘end of philosophy’, when he points to Ni-
etzsche and Kierkegaard, since any such use would either (1) put them immediately back
within the scope of that same philosophy they have allegedly broken free from, or (2) force
him to stake out a somehow more original, more basic, and in a certain sense archetypal
sense of end that would come before philosophy’s appropriation of the term, with the only
result that philosophy’s scope would be wider in scope but not qualitatively different.
Heidegger advances a suggestion, however, when he hints at the lack of an adequate con-
cept for the work of non-philosophers as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. How do we search for
it, so that “our own time remains with no real philosophy”, but comes instead to non-phi-
losophy? Perhaps, we might find an opening if we keep looking into the “end of philoso-
phy” as an integral part of philosophy’s endeavor. Instead of assuming that talk about the
end would bring us out of it, we should perhaps try to see better to which end philosophy
bring us. The clause “end of philosophy” should, consequently, be read in the subjective
sense of the genitive: as the particular end that philosophy owns, or claims to own, as its
most proper place. The end as a place toward which philosophy strives should perhaps be-
come the focus of our efforts. If the previous analysis of the relationship between ‘end’ and
‘philosophy’ has proved successful, then it will have demonstrated the existence of a dou-
ble, inextricable correspondence between the two terms, between the project of philosophy
and the meanings of ‘end.’ Such a conclusion allows us to reverse the previous statement:
if the end of philosophy brings the very meaning of end into question then bringing the
sense(s) of end into question is tantamount to question philosophy to the end. As it has al-
ready been noticed, the strict relationship between philosophy and end entails that the end
(as terminus and completion but no longer telos) if reached, would bring the very sense of
end into question. 16
15. Martin Heidegger, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988)
13.
16. I am borrowing a suggestion advanced by John Sallis in Delimitations (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986) 17.