The Magic Skin; or, The Franco-European Accident of Philosophy after Jacques Derrida

He strode boldly into the room, where the sound of gold exerted a blinding fascination over his senses, frozen in sheer greed. The young man was probably motivated by the most logical of all the eloquent sentences of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose dour thought, I believe, is as follows: Yes, I can understand how a man would go for broke at the gambling table, but only when, between himself and death, he sees nothing more than his last penny.

. . . A man exhausts himself in two instinctively-accomplished actions that dry up the wellsprings of his existence. Two verbs express all the forms that these two causes of death can assume: to WILL ONESELF and to EMPOWER ONESELF (VOULOIR ET POUVOIR). Between these two ends of human activity, there is another formula used by wise men, to which I owe my happiness and my long life. Willing ourselves consumes us, and empowering ourselves destroys us, but KNOWING OURSELVES leaves our weak organisation in a perpetual state of calm. Thus desire and the will are dead in me, slain by thought. . . .

Yes indeed, I wish to live in excess, said the stranger, picking up the magic skin.

Honoré de Balzac, La Peau de chagrin

"It was the counterfeit coin," he calmly replied as though to justify himself for his prodigality.

. . . "Yes, you are right; there is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for."

. . . To be mean is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that one is; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil out of stupidity.

Charles Baudelaire, "La fausse monnaie," Le Spleen de Paris

The difference is precisely that of the excessive. An essential exaggeration marks this process. Exaggeration cannot be here a feature among others, still less a secondary feature. The problem of the gift has to do with its nature which is excessive in advance, a priori exaggerated. A donating experience that would not be delivered over, a priori, to some immoderation, in other words, a moderate, measured gift would not be a gift. To give and thus do something other than calculate its return in exchange, the most modest gift must pass beyond measure.

Jacques Derrida, Donner le temps, vol. 1: La fausse monnaie

Philosophy, at the end of the twentieth century, is not French. There is, of course, something called French philosophy. There is, evidently, a French history of philosophy, and it seems clear that, at least as the second half of the twentieth century is concerned, philosophy passes into France, or in any case more or less takes passes through France—but it always maintains its relation to Germany and the Germanic countries, to Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, and in particular Wittgenstein and Heidegger, who are the main interlocutors of the French.

The combination of circumstances leading to the fact of philosophy's having traversed these roads certainly ought to be examined. In any case, this fact is an accident. Philosophy is not French: its "French" character remains, for me, an accident—a European accident.

If one must philosophize by accident rather than by essence, I wish to emphasize here that the "French" accident certainly counts, but the importance must not be overestimated; nor should it be forgotten that this French era is shot through with Germany and Austria, and that, lastly and most importantly, if philosophy can be accidentally French, this is because it is historically and intrinsically European. What makes Europe—that is philosophy. In saying this I do not mean to imply that what makes philosophy could be Europe. The question concerns the European accident and, nevertheless, its necessity . . . but in delayed action.

Philosophy is European in an intrinsic way, and it could definitely be said, precisely in the European tradition of the term, "in an essential way." But I will not say this, and this non-use of the term essential or of any reference to being also means, in this case, that philosophy is henceforth called upon to become global, alongside the technology that has...