ABSTRACTIn the literature on Derrida’s philosophical formation, the name of Eugen Fink is usually forgotten. When it is recalled, it is most often because of his 1930s articles on phenomenology. In this paper, I claim on the contrary that Fink’s writings exerted a lasting influence on Derrida’s thought, well beyond his early phenomenological works. More specifically, I focus on a 1957 paper presented at a conference on Husserl’s thought where Fink formulates an important distinction between operative and thematic concepts. By (...) adopting both historical and theoretical perspectives, I show how this couple of notions can help to understand Derrida’s singular way of reading philosophical texts. In particular, I present the Derridean concept of supplement as a reworking of Fink’s notion of operative concept. I conclude by suggesting that deconstruction can be understood in part as a radicalization of Fink’s theses. (shrink)

In his recently published seminar Life Death (1975–76), Derrida engages in a close reading of Heidegger's refutation of the biologistic interpretation of Nietzsche. Derrida explains that, building on his interpretation of Nietzsche as the peak of metaphysics, Heidegger wishes to rescue the latter's metaphysical discourse from its biologizing character. In this article, I argue that Derrida's reading centres on the ontological regionalism undergirding Heidegger's refutation. To develop this argument, I test the following three hypotheses. First, I show that the later (...) exploration offered in Life Death draws on the schematic reading of Heidegger's question of being provided in Of Grammatology (1967). Second, I explain that, for Derrida, through his refutation of Nietzsche's supposed biologism, Heidegger reaffirms ontological regionalism in order to secure the whole interpretative system that interweaves together his reading of Nietzsche and Western metaphysics and his thinking of being. Finally, I highlight Derrida's emphasis on the relentlessness of Heidegger's denunciation of biologism. I demonstrate that, for Derrida, this can be explained as biology, which is a discourse on life and nature that since its beginnings touches on the blind point of regionalism. (shrink)

L’article reconstitue les lectures derridiennes de Heidegger et de Nietzsche. Il veut montrer que Derrida se distancie de Heidegger et de sa « seule et unique question de l’être », justement là où il récuse ou plutôt « contourne » l’interprétation heideggérienne de Nietzsche. Alors que Heidegger interprète Nietzsche comme l’« inversion » et l’« achèvement » de la métaphysique, Nietzsche apparaît, dans la lecture de Derrida, comme un penseur de la pluralité du style. Par là, la différence d’interprétation de (...) Nietzsche, qui est aussi une différence d’interprétation de l’interprétation même, apparaît finalement comme une divergence dans l’interprétation de la différence. (shrink)

This dissertation finds its point of departure in the closing section of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, a passage in which the author turns and addresses what he has just written with the question: "Alas, what are you after all, my written and painted thoughts?" This question calls into question the status of the philosopher's text, and thus poses, it might be said, the very problem of postmodern thought--it is directed after all, to "the philosophers of the future." After a (...) consideration of this question, of this coupling of writing and painting, a consideration that leads from the texts of Nietzsche to Derrida and Plato, the dissertation takes up an attempt to think through one possible response to Nietzsche's parting question--that these written and painted thoughts are best taken as art rather than truth. After a consideration of Nietzsche's aestheticism--this turn from truth to art--its antecedents and possible legacy, I then address the controversy surrounding this aestheticist or post-aestheticist turn. Does the turn from truth to art lead out of or only further into nihilism, the crisis of modernity? The dissertation undertakes an extended reflection on Nietzsche's emphasis that art is the countermovement to nihilism. The focus of this reading then turns on Heidegger's Nietzsche, and then also on Derrida's reading of this reading. I take up the suggestion that the development of Nietzsche's thought might be considered as a "more and more radical meditation" on the startling line from Nietzsche's late notebooks: "We have art lest we perish of the truth." For Heidegger this line indicates a "raging discordance between art and truth," a discordance which must be resolved, according to Heidegger, if the countermovement to nihilism is to be successful. The main body of the dissertation then takes up a confrontation with this radically developing meditation through the periods of Nietzsche's career. I examine a number of texts, from The Birth of Tragedy to the last writings in 1888, in order to think through in just what sense Nietzsche may have been developing the thought that we have art lest we perish of the truth. (shrink)

This article examines Heidegger’s thoughts on Nietzsche’s philosophy of eternal return and the self-overcoming power of thinking. Scholarly commentators argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche reduces the open possibilities of thinking about temporality, becoming and difference into a rigid metaphysical framework of being as a whole. However, a close reading of Heidegger’s thoughts on the eternal recurrence shows that his interpretive attempt to disclose the metaphysical ground of Nietzsche’s thinking reveals a deeper, dynamic dimension of Nietzsche’s recurrent efforts of self-overcoming. (...) In this light, I argue that Heidegger’s interpretive thinking intends to uncover an empowering ground of Nietzsche’s philosophical struggle to overcome the metaphysical limit of human thoughts facing the lively unity of difference. For Heidegger, Nietzsche’s thinking of the eternal recurrence is not to suggest a metaphysical doctrine of being but to grasp a determinate basis of one’s own existence, repeatedly seeking the greater possibility of being with others. (shrink)