The absolute

apocalypse: epistemological exile vis-a-vis truth

pp. 171-196

in: Martin C. Srajek, In the margins of deconstruction, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

The essay "D"un tone apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie" (Of a Recently Adopted Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy) published in 1983 belongs to a set of papers first read at a conference apropos the work of Derrida.¹ The title of the conference was "Les Fins de l'homme (A Partir du Travail de Jacques Derrida)". It repeated the title of an earlier essay by Derrida in which he analyzes Heidegger's essay "On Humanism". He shows in it how the phenomenological project moves away from a description of the empirical ends of humanity to those that it calls transcendental. "Transcendental phenomenology is in this sense the ultimate achievement of the teleology of reason that traverses humanity."² The consequence is that transcendental thinking is contingent upon "mortality, of a relation to finitude as the origin of ideality … The name of man … has meaning only in this eschato-teleological situation."³ The theme of the conference that the latter essay was first presented at was "Philosophy and Anthropology."