F21

An Atheistic Phenomenology?

In a text entitled ʻPour une philosophie non theologique,ʻ' Mikel
Dufrenne noted the profound ambiguity in Heideggerian thought
with regard to the theological tradition. On the one hand, Heidegger
is the pioneer of the ʻphilosophies of absence,ʻ and he separates the
ʻappearingʻ from any transcendent or ontic principle. On the other
hand (even though he denies it), his argumentation has crypto-theo-
logical accents to it: being, which conceals itself in its own names,
like the unutterable God of negative theology, safeguarding its truth
in a meditative and almost religious experience. Now, this remanence
of onto-theology, which Derrida denounced, Dufrenne in turn per-
ceives in works from Derrida and even Blanchot: ʻWhen Derrida
informed us that there is no name for this differance, one would think
he was hearing Damascius ...ʻ2ʻ Certainly, Derrida bypasses the
mystical experience, and the case seems to be the same with Blanchot
as well. Yet, he maintains,ʻThe enigma sacralizes. The sacred always
allows itself to be suggested by its ambivalence.ʻ03 In the same way
that ʻdifferanceʻ keeps an original character despite Derrida's deni-
als, passion for the Outside (Dehors) falls back upon an initial non-
meaning (non sens) which maintains all the fertile ambiguity of the
sacred, or at least of a sacred by default, as intangible as the experi-
ence of the Neutral (Neutre). Against these thoughts still aligned
with negative theologies, at least in their means of expression, Du-
frenne opposes a non-theological philosophy, without any expecta-

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