Standing Problems 243remains caught in a humanism that centres on man or humanity as the core of what is
real. Heidegger’s alternative is the inhuman in the shape ofBeing, thus displacing the
centrality of the human. However, what happens if one takes Heidegger’sBeingout
of the philosophical equation? The upshot is no logos, no presence, no foundation
nor ground and God is—of course—dead. Thus all we have are a number of fictional
systems addressing Being or ‘presence’ (which are alsoin absentia). In some ways we
are back with one important perception of Nietzsche.
It is interesting here that the thinker Jacques Derrida who is seen as a key impetus
to postmodern theory, is and has been an obsessive critical interpreter of Heidegger.
Derrida’s reading of Heidegger can be utilized as another dimension of an introduc-
tion to the themes that have obsessed postmodernism. These themes can be drawn
out from Derrida’s relatively early, but incisive, essay, ‘The Ends of Man’ (1968).
Derrida essentially traces the manner in which the terms ‘man’ and ‘humanism’ have
been used. He approves of Heidegger’s account of the early origins of humanism
and its links with metaphysics. He comments that ‘any questioning of humanism that
does not first catch up with the archaeological radicalness of the questions sketched by
Heidegger, and does not make use of the information he provides concerning the gen-
esis of the concept and the value of man (the rendition of the Greekpaideiain Roman
culture, the Christianizing of the Latinhumanitas, the rebirth of Hellenism in the
fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, etc), any metahumanist position that does not
place itself within the opening of these questions remains historically regional...and
peripheral’ (Derrida 1993: 144–5). With the decline of what Derrida refers to as a spir-
itual humanism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in thinkers such
as Bergson and Alain, an irreducible anthropologism begins to dominate in terms of
Christian and atheistic existentialism, personalism, and Marxism—some also associ-
ate this anthropologism with Hegel and Husserl.^12 The irreducible horizon is a human
reality and, like Heidegger Derrida regards it as still unremittingly metaphysical and
ontotheological—in some cases a form of transcendental humanism.
The case of Heidegger is most interesting here. Although the overt aim of Heide-
gger’s work is an attack on Sartre and metaphysics and an attempt to displace
humanism, Derrida maintains that the upshot of Heidegger’sEssay on Humanism
is yetanotherhumanism and metaphysics. In Derrida’s estimation, in Heidegger
‘we already conduct our affairs in some understanding of Being’ and there is a clear
‘self-presence’ of being in the human interrogator (Derrida 1993: 140). The point is
a difficult one, but essentially what Derrida is saying is that Being is present in all
humans in their understanding; it constitutes their essence for Heidegger. Derrida
thus comments ‘Just as Dasein—the being thatwe ourselves are—serves as an exem-
plary text, a good “lesson” for making explicit the meaning of Being, so the name
of man remains the link or...guiding thread that ties the analytic of Dasein to the
totality of the metaphysics of traditional discourse’. Dasein, although not man, is
‘nothing other than man’ (Derrida 1993: 143). Thus, in this essence of man we find,
says Derrida, a return to both metaphysics and humanism. Essentially, what is at issue
here in Heidegger, says Derrida, is a ‘revalorization of the essence and dignity of man.
What is threatened in the extension of metaphysics and technology...is the essence