Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Research in Phenomenology
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
A Hermeneutics of Discretion
University of Essex
For reasons that are difficult to recite at the outset, I want to rescue the
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Jacques Derrida
Derrida takes hermeneutics as such to be the reduction of texts to
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
own lecture series was no accident: even though "Will to Power as Art"
of his Nietzsche in Germany, France, and the United States have gener
thesis of Heidegger's grand livre is much less simple than people have
generally tended to say" (60). The point is rather that interpretation as
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
of it," eine Herausdrehung. Yet he adds: "How far the latter extends
with Nietzsche, how far it can go, to what extent it comes to an overcom
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
lecture course Heidegger warns his students that "we may not relinquish
again the various themes of his own inquiry. He then exposes Heideg
ger's neglect of the italicized phrase "/i [the idea] becomes woman." By
text. Yet the matter is even more serious than that. By ignoring Nietz
path beyond the history and truth of Being that continues to preoccupy
Derrida to the present day: one need only think of his recent study
"Geschlecht: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference."5 And although
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
that bridges Derrida's earliest and latest work, from the first stirrings of
deconstruction to the most recent preoccupations with a manifold sexu
ality and a multivalent thinking.
and Being. "If the opposition of giving and taking, of possessing and
possessed, is a sort of transcendental snare produced by the graphics of
the hymen, the process of propriation escapes all dialectics as well as all
ontological decidability" (92). The questions of the meaning or truth or
devoid of all grounds, the abyss. But that means that propriation is
(undecidably) both appropriation and a-propriation. The granting is
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Thus la femme will not have been my subject" (100). While Derrida
assures us that he is absconding with Heidegger's Nietzsche, fleeing with
it "outside the hermeneutic circle," we may be more inclined to say that a
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
That Derrida should have stumbled across the lost umbrella may
appear to be a matter of good fortune, especially if we believe Derrida's
would fail to see the careful, highly selective and discerning, utterly
discreet fabulation that is Jacques Derrida's Spurs.
Not yet. One step more. When Derrida stresses the "posthumous"
nature of his own communication (115-18), in a way that reminds us
both of Nietzsche's posthumous birth and of the funerary "I" of Husser
lian discourse,8 we are reminded also of the trajectory of all hermeneu
tics of discretion, for which mortality is an intimation that comesif it
comes at allat the writing desk. Derrida has always been embarrassed
by such overt references to finitude and mortality. One recalls the way he
tries to avoid discussion of them in De la grammatologie,9 capitulating
be: "discrete," and not "discreet." Yet one wonders whether the crack in
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
delude ourselves into thinking that Derrida dissolves the earnest herme
neutics of discretion into a carefree play of texts, these words from the
would be to invoke not the umbrella but the undecidable promise and
threat which Nietzsche somewhere calls Calina.11
prudence.
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
The way in which I shall comment on Lacoue-Labarthe's reception of
Heidegger's Nietzsche will differ from what I have written above, first of
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
than Derrida is, and secondly because his style of thinking and writing
tion. One learns from them on every page. If indeed one can learn
discretion.
Nothing lies outside the Logos, "not even the literature to which it [i.e.,
rary French writers and thinkers have hadhe refers to Bataille and
Klossowski, but one also thinks of Merleau-Ponty and Blanchotand
which might be summarized as follows: One never writes simply in order
to say what one means, what one veut-dire, writing exposes the writer to
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Zarathustra I shall leave for readers of the 1937 lecture course to decide.
Yet I cannot refrain from mentioning certain aspects of this course that
the Vision and the Riddle" and "The Convalescent" with scrupulous
attention to textual detailthe emergence on the scene of Zarathustra's
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
animals, the ascent up the mountain path by Zarathustra and his dwarfish
"spirit of gravity," the position of the gateway Augenblick and its two
affronting avenues, the red and yellow berries plucked by Zarathustra's
eagle for his recuperation, and so onwhen he takes pains to exhibit to
his hearers the poetic creation of Zarathustra as a figure of and spokes
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
it does not spring from the art of poetry; they will also brood over the
Heidegger who has done more than any other thinker in the modern
agewith the possible exception of Nietzscheto pose the question of
the essence of poetry and of all written creation; not simply in order to
exploit it for the purposes of a metaphorics of Being but to attend to the
very sake of words, names, and saying, in all language and writing.
the 1930s. The move (earlier on) from scientific to hermeneutical phe
nomenology as fundamental ontology, and (beginning already in 1928)
from thence to meditative thought and the poetic word, remains poorly
understood down to the present day. Yet Lacoue-Labarthe's own inquiry
tives for future work. First, what is the relation between a work of
philosophywhether it be a Hauptwerk that for essential reasons can
never be completed or an artistic "antechamber" to such a workand
the setting-to-work, das Ins-Werk-setzen of an artwork? Can the same
structures of world and earth be brought to bear on the work that Also
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
and to note, inevitably, that the what? question, which is the oldest
question of philosophy, is simply unable to perform the deconstructive
work Lacoue-Labarthe demands of it. Far more fertile is his effort
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
learn from it. He predicts that the more patient and minute reading,
when it comesand come it will, by its own necessity and lawwill
prove to be a matter of "urgency." Just as Derrida takes Heidegger's
interpretation of Nietzsche to be coextensive with the problem of herme
come. The reason was stated a decade ago by David Allison, in his
Preface to The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation,
with perfect lucidity:
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
issue for whose sake the name "Nietzsche" is spoken and written today,
as though that issue were "Nietzsche himself," then the Geschick des
Seins seems not so much a fatality as a guarantor. Yet what if the
"abundance of life" is lacking? What if the depth of personality, the
tension of the bow, turns out to be a matter not underwritten by the
assiduous study of philosophy books? What if laughter and follyand,
yes, even madness, if discretion be stretched to the limitshould prove
to be as vital to thinking as the sober mien of the Sache? As both Bataille
and Foucault have taught us, and here Derrida would more than agree, it
is not sufficient to exclude madness. Lacoue-Labarthe believes that to
appropriate the unthought is to conjure madness (152 ff.). The fatality of
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
struggle with his "unique" thought, to wit, the will to power.20 Once
again, Lacoue-Labarthe's remarks ought to have been tempered by
Heidegger's earlier insistence that while will to power is an "ultimate
fact" for Nietzsche his sole perdurant thought is eternal recurrence; the
although the book did not appear until 1889), a section which
is very striking, because its basic position differs from the one
less marshals the evidence that best supports his thesis: Heidegger's
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
them. An as yet hidden history still keeps the secret why all
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Nietzsche as the last (letzte) thinker of the West? Would the as yet
unwritten history of philosophical writing, from Plato through Nietzsche,
tell us something about the wind-shelter (Windschatten) that writing may
indeed always have been for thoughtful human beings, with all their doxa,
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
"I say 'thought' because one cannot say philosophy, theory, logic,
structure, scene or anything else; when one can no longer use any word
of this sort, when one can say almost nothing else, one says 'thought,' but
one could show that this too is excessive."23 Finally, Derrida's conclud
ing words to Envoi, a lecture on "representation" and the "sending" or
etc.), as though Plato too, that master of the mixed form, had contami
nated him. To pursue these questions, any or all of them, would contrib
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
the names of the men has gained in stature; at the same time, the
bonding of the two has become stronger than ever. Deconstruction and
the entire "postmodern" preoccupation, whatever their various intents,
do not vitiate but contribute to the strength of that bonding.
struction. Taken a beating from all sides, if the truth be told. Badly
battered, it insists that it is ready to get underway again. Who can help
but jeer at its limping along? It is still trying to catch up with that fateful
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
'D.F. Krell, "Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking: Martin Heidegger's Reading of
Nietzsche" (Ann Arbor, 1971).
2 See Jacques Derrida, Eperons: Les styles de Nietzsche (Paris: Flammarion, 1978),
which I shall refer to in the body of my text by page number. "L'Obliteration" is a later title
for Lacoue-Labarthe's review article on Heidegger's Nietzsche in Critique, no, 313, "Lec
tures de Nietzsche," published in June, 1973. For both articles see Philippe Lacoue
Labarthe. Le sujet de la philosophic: Typographies I (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1979),
pp. 75-109 ("Nietzsche Apocrvphe") and 111-84 (L'Obliteration"). This text too I shall cite
in the body of my text by page number.
3See Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 vols. (Pfullingen: G. Neske, 1961), I, p. 43.1 shall
cite the German text as "NI" or "NIL" with page number. See the four English volumes of
Heidegger's Nietzsche (New York and San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979-85), which I
shall cite as "Ni," with volume and page number. Here see Ni 1, 33.
4Maurice Blanchot, Entretien infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), pp. 205-08.
Eperons in 1978 and in the opening lines of the section entitled "Le coup de don." See
Nietzsche aujourd'hui? (Paris: Union Generale d'Editions, "10/18," 1973), I, 263 (where the
footnote was later to be inserted) and pp. 270-71. See Eperons, pp. 75, 84, and 88. In
addition, see "Choreographies," a postal interview with Jacques Derrida by Christie V.
McDonald, in Diacritics, vol. 12 (1982), pp. 66-76, which is devoted to this theme.
"Jacques Derrida, "Envoi," in Actes du XVIIf Congres des Societes de Philosophie de
Langue Frangaise (Strasbourg, July 1980), published by Librairie J. Vrin, pp. 5-30; English
Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin and Munich: Walter de Gruyter and the Deutscher
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980), vol. 9, p. 587: the Mette number is NV7 [62|, from the year
1881.
8See Jacques Derrida, La voix et le phenomene (Paris: PUF, 1967), chapter 7, esp. pp.
105-08.
9Paris: Minuit, 1967, p. 99. I shall refer to this text as "G," with page number.
10See section 1 of Nietzsche's 1886 Foreword to the second edition of The Gay Science;
nascent insight into the relation of Nietzsche to SchellingHeidegger's lectures and semi
nars on Schelling always fixed one eye on Nietzsche. See Martin Heidegger, Schellings
Abhandlung ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809) (Tbingen: M. Niemeyer,
1971), for example, pp. 224-25. No doubt the connection between the split in God of
"existence" and "ground" to what Nietzsche will announce as the death of God has to be
elaborated quite carefully, as well as the connection between such matters and the question
13See my new presentation (in a critical edition) of this text in The Owl of Minerva'
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
et de morale, vol. 85, no. 1 (January-March, 1980), pp. 48-59. See also D.F. Krell,
Intimations of Mortality, to be published by the Pennsylvania State University Press in 1985,
chapter 7.
17See chapters 2, 3, and 6 of Intimations of Mortality.
21
Translated as What Is Called Thinking? by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York:
This content downloaded from 159.28.1.95 on Thu, 22 Dec 2016 01:23:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms