© Philosophy Today ISSN 0031-8256 Philosophy Today Volume 66, Issue 1 (Winter 2022): 167–181 DOI: 10.5840/philtoday20211025435 Revisiting an Old Quarrel: Anti-humanism 1 JÉRÔME DE GRAMONT Translated by Taylor Knight Abstract: In this article, the French philosopher Jérôme de Gramont evaluates the modes in which twentieth century philosophy and literature—from Heidegger and Derrida to Blanchot and Beckett—aim to think our being-in-the-world beyond the concept of “man” and without the genus of the human. Key words: humanism, the name, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, Samuel Beckett T he psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger opens his article “Dream and Existence,” with a quotation from Kierkegaard delineating a theme that ought still to be central and to remain so: “Above all, we must keep frmly in mind what it means to be a man.” Nothing is more familiar than the word “man,” and everything draws us back to it. Even in addressing simple things we are still dealing with the human. Te poems of Francis Ponge show us this: where “man” is no doubt absent but nevertheless things continue to point towards us: the fg beckons to the mouth, the soap to the whole body, and the meadow is calling for someone to walk through it. Yet here we are in the same predicament. We must still explain what it means to be a human. To this question, we have no less than the entire course of a life to attempt to provide a response. Te most evident reality—that which we are—gives way and becomes a ques- tion. Concerning this deep obscurity when the human being tries to consider its own being, Augustine has given the formula—“I have become for myself a great question” 2 —and the poet Edmond Jabès (for whom God also is a question) has provided the measure: “Tere is the Book of God by which God ponders, and there is the Book of Man which is the same size as that of God.” 3