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Philosophy, as we all know and some of us still like to believe, is not a science. Inevitably, its questions seem to turn back on the philosopher who raises them and end up putting him into question (VI 27). Which is why he would miss the specific"practice of the self' involved in philosophy if he would try to adopt the position of the scientist for whom in principle "there is no special question about being for which there is not a corresponding yes or no in being which settles it" (PW 17). One cannot find a response in being to the kind of questions philosophy raises. They call for an indirect ontology that would explore what it means that there is no answer to the "question of knowing why there are questions and how there come to be those nonbeings who do not know but would like to know" (ibid.). Endo- ontology, then, was to look for"the origin of truth'and as it became more and more convinced that the point was "to understand that truth itself has no meaning outside of the relation of transcendence" (VI 185) the "archetype" of which it found in perception (VI158), it seems to have concluded that the origin of truth has "broken up" and that "philosophy must accompany this break-up, this non-coincidence, this differentiation" (VI124).

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-4467-4_8

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