Heidegger on Destruction

Abstract

In this paper I will examine Heidegger’s move to set out the task of philosophy as the destruction of metaphysics to move into the realm of ontology, or an inquiry into the being of Being. I will read destruction in various Heidegger texts and point out its problematic as suggested by Derrida, that every instance of the destruction of metaphysics is in fact a repetition of it as it borrows entirely from the structure of metaphysics it sets out to destroy. The impossibility of the distinction between the transcendental and empirical is its own possibility as differance between the transcendental and empirical distinguishes and separates nothing, hence Heidegger’s anti-metaphysics and post-representation is no different from the transcendental idealism he destroys. Derrida thus rescues the phenomenological project by discovering the quasi-transcendental, that which is neither transcendental nor empirical, as the condition that allows the thinking of both through iterability and differance.