Fellows Seminar- What can we possibly see from the shoulders of a giant?
By Édouard Mehl, 2022 Fellow
Writing the history of philosophy in the 21st century
Before presenting an overview of the recent results of research carried out during this USIAS Fellowship (2022-2024) in the field of contemporary philosophy (publication of J. Héring1, and of J. Derrida2), it seems useful to first outline a few more general considerations on the very notion of the history of philosophy. In fact, from Hegel to Heidegger, philosophy no longer has the positive role of a foundation (logical, metaphysical or transcendental) for the sciences, but that of a reflexive meditation on this role. Like Penelope, it must unceasingly take back in hand its own work, and unravel, only to weave it anew, the cloth it has patiently woven.
This activity is neither a vain recollection nor a sterile lament about oblivion and the “loss of sense”. It is a pursuit that obeys an ideal of accuracy and apodicticity, no less than any other scientific discipline. To illustrate this, we can take a look at one of the remarkable constants of philosophy: its link with mathematics, and in particular with the ponderings, from Plato to Derrida, on the “origin of geometry”.
Admittedly, this question is not purely factual, and cannot be understood solely in terms of the historical origins of mathematics in Mesopotamia or Lower Egypt. However, insofar as this question concerns the unresolved relationship between survey techniques and the theoretical possibility of measurement, we would argue for a philosophy that is more firmly attached to this historical heritage, and in direct contact with the history of science and the arts.
1. Jean Héring : Phénoménologie et philosophie religieuse (Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg - Collection Argentina, 2024)
2. Du même à l'autre : Deux cours sur Husserl, 1963 (Seuil « Bibliothèque Derrida », 2024), edition prepared by Raphaël Authier and Édouard Mehl
- Read more about Édouard Mehl and his USIAS project: The Otherness of the Other one. The genesis and critical reception of Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (1931) in French contemporary philosophy.
