Abstract

This article represents an interpretation of Jacques Derrida’s work Les fins de l’homme. The first part of the article is an analysis of the implications of Derridian criticism to a kind of human-ism present in France after the Second World War. This humanism, called by Derrida “Philosophical Anthropologism”, is mainly expressed through the figure of Jean Paul Sartre, for whom, according to Derrida, the notion of man is a descriptive and structural one, and as such different from Heidegger’s metaphysical notion that involved an examination of the being in its ontolog-ical dimension. Thus, it is important to scrutinize Derrida’s interpretations of Heidegger’s thought. The second part of the article emphasizes the analysis of the metaphysical deficiencies of “Sartrean humanism”, which implies the division between the ontic and onto-logic, favoring the historicity of the first one. That is why the concept of “neighborhood” between the man and the being has been introduced, which sees everyone as the aim of the other. One’s aims, in this way, appear as defined by the impossibility of thinking about the being beyond the man himself and vice versa. Finally, some ideas related to the Derridian project and its Heideggerian inspirations are discussed. They represent a criticism of logocentricism in its latest version. They are consid-ered, according to Derrida, as Sartrean ones.