Every philosophical colloquium is political. International philosophical colloquium can be examined indefinitely, it has numerous pathways, multiple levels of generality, and has extensions that imply possibilities that are contrary to the essence of philosophy. This is because certain nationalities have defined their own philosophical identities, they create their own style. Jacques Derrida, says that this these national identities have never been considered in the past, it was unimaginable a century ago. Derrida quotes, “… the establishing of relations between differences is also the promised complicity of a common element: the colloquium can take place only in medium…” (Derrida 126). This representation of the colloquia must make a transparency, which becomes the universality of philosophical discourse. The linkage to international philosophy is through democracy, or the form of democracy.
“Here, democracy must be the form of political organization of society” (Derrida 128). This means that the national philosophical identity must obtain a nonidentity, it doesn’t exclude diversity and the coming into language of this diversity. Philosopher here present no more identity that what they think and is mandated by a unanimous national discourse.
The unity of man is a reaction against intellectualists or spiritualist humanism that dominated French philosophy. There is a neutralization of metaphysical and speculative thesis. The history of the concept of man is never examined. Everything occurs as if the sign, man, has no origin, no culture, no history, or no linguistic limit. The term being is considered the unity of humans of human reality. What was then dubbed was that there was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man and god; becoming god as the project constituting human reality. Atheism fundamentally changes nothing to this structure. Humanism or anthropologism became the common ground of Christian and atheist existentialisms. Today, we are going through a mutation of human sciences. Simply questioning humanism is new and contemporary with the dominating, spellbinding extension of the human sciences within the philosophical field.
Derrida quotes, “The anthropologistic reading of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger was a mistake in one entire respect, perhaps the most serious mistake” (Derrida 133). Books by these philosophers, especially the Phenomenology of Spirit, do not have to something to do with man. The science of experience and consciousness, structures phenomenality of the spirit is relating to itself, it is clearly distinguished from anthropology. Phenomenology is more within reason and true within the system of logic. The authority of Husserlian thought was asserted and established in postwar France, becoming a philosophical mode. The critique of anthropologism remained unnoticed or simply had no effect during this postwar Europe. Derrida suggests that we must merge Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger with old metaphysical humanism. He uses the term amalgam, which is an old term with alchemical references, with a strategic or tactical reference to political ideology.
The progress and requestioning must not be the center of attention. When requestioning humanist instances, we must understand that everything is on the “same shore.” Those who denounce humanism and metaphysics, stand in the center of the stage. Derrida quotes, “… Hegelian, Husserlian, and Heideggerian critiques or de-limitations of metaphysical humanism appear to belong to the very sphere of that which they criticize or de-limit” (Derrida 135). We must consider all anthropocentric metaphysics that are believed to critique or de-limit anthropologism.
A pure anthropological reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit explains that anthropology and phenomenology are not just simple, external values. They show the concepts of truth, negativity, and Aufhebung, which in Hegel can mean preservation. Anthropology treats the soul as the “truth of nature.” A soul passes through the natural soul, through the sensible soul, and then through the real or effective soul. This completes itself and then opens onto consciousness. It is considered that consciousness is the truth of man, so thus phenomenology is the truth of anthropology. Derrida quotes, “Truth is here the presence or presentation of essence as Gewesenheit, of Wesen as having-been. Consciousness is the truth of man to the extent that man appears to himself in consciousness in his being-past, in his to-have-been…” (Derrida 136). All structures described in Phenomenology of Spirit is a relief of anthropology. Man remains in relief, his essence rests in phenomenology. This sense of relief is marking the end of man, mans’ past, but it also marks the achievement of man.
“The thinking of the end of man,
therefore, is always already prescribed in metaphysics,
in the thinking of the truth of man” (Derrida 137).
As humans, we don’t know the full understanding of ‘being,’ but we do know the basic understanding of being, which is still considered a fact. When we question, ‘What is being?,’ we keep an understanding of the is, but we still don’t know what is stands for significantly. The we, being simple and discreet, inscribes the so-called structure of the word being. The question of being is within the principles of phenomenology. Governed by the principle of presence and of presence in self-presence, “such as it is the manifested to the being and in the being that we are” (Derrida 141). Being is the proximity to itself. Being is to be looked at, to attempt to understand. Looking at something, conceiving it, choosing to access it, are all behavioral actions that bring up the being of entities.
Being is understood through proximity. Derrida quotes, “Being is farther than all beings and is yet nearer to man than every being, if being is the nearest, then one must be able to say that being is what is near to man, and that man is near to being” (Derrida 148). Man is considered the proper being; mans’ authenticity is linked to their sense of being. There is no security of what is near and what is far, the co-belonging and co-propriety in the name of man and the name of being is inhibited by the language of the west. In the language of being, the end of man has been prescribed. The end of man is the thinking of being.
Baynes, K., Bohman T., McCarthy T. (1987) Philosophy: end or transformation. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of technology.