Now, let me pursue some further questions. Do you see the black and the white surfaces? Do you see the line between them? In other words, do you see the difference between the black and white portions of the paper? If not, if you can't see the difference between these two colored sections, they must be identical for you and you may see all of the surface of the paper in just one color, black or white. If yes, take a look at it. There, where the black square starts and the white one finishes (and vice versa). Tell me, what color is it. What color is the line between the black and white parts of the sheet? It surely is not white, because if it were, it would not be the line between them, but a line (perhaps the last line, perhaps the first one) inside the white quadrangle. Just the same if it were black. So, is this line neither black nor white? That would contradict our first totaling thesis. Shall it be both white and black? Well, then it would contradict the third one. What is wrong then? Anything at all?
Do you see? If it is not possible to make a totaling statement about a black and white sheet of paper, much the less for more complex realms like those of Being or Reality. Even statements as empty and general as those of primary logic fail when our end is to think the difference. Think about it. That was Heidegger's command. Think about the difference. It is hard, especially for us, modern men and women trained to focus on the surfaces, to think about the limits of those surfaces. For many years philosophers have thought that the end of thinking must be to get the big picture. Try to step outside the page, look upon it (theoria) and say "Everything is either black or white". Doing so, we have forgotten to look at the line that separates black from white, the line that permits us distinguish the black from the white. We have forgotten to take our thinking to the limit. Furthermore, we have forgotten the difference.
§2. According to Derrida, the problem with traditional readings of Heidegger and perhaps with Heidegger himself is that, once they have 'escaped' the duality being/Being, they fall into the duality Being(Sein)/Being-there(Da-Sein). They put the stress on Being and, therefore, become Theology or they put the stress on man and fall back into humanism. They forget that there is also a difference there. Where? There (Da). The difference between Being and Being-there is There. But, who is there (Da)?. Answer: Us. Now, who are we?
Just as metaphysics is the forgetfulness of the difference between being and Being, humanism is the forgetfulness of the difference between Being and being-there. Forgetting that we not just are, but are-there. We are there and there is where we are. There is what we are. When Derrida asks 'who are we?', the final answer is who we are is where we stand. Heidegger thought that for us being here (instead of anywhere else) was a contingent determination of Being. Instead of giving this presentation in Sycamore Hall, room 024, IU Bloomington, I could have given it anywhere else: in room 005, at The National University of México, or a coffeehouse in Buenos Aires. That is contingent. What is not contingent is the fact that there is a there where I stand, where I speak and from where I present this text. If thinking is thinking the difference, like Heidegger proposed, our thinking (as Da-Seins) must be the thinking of our there. Philosophy is NOT Anthropology. To be human is not to be-there. To be a man is not to be there. To be zoon politikoon, res cogitans, rational animal, neither of these definitions are to be there. All the anthropological categories which could determine us will never reach the actual difference which makes us be us. In this text, Derrida establishes a close connection between Heidegger's there and his own differánce. Just like differánce, there is not a concept. It has no identity. It is not just Sycamore Hall, room 024, etc., etc. Not much to say about it besides that we are there.
§3. The beginning (of the text) is a semantic chain which goes from Kant to Sartre and then to Foucault: (a) End vs. medium, (b) End as goal, telos, (c) End as ending, finale. These are the ways traditional philosophy has conceived the ends of man. But it has failed to tell us who we are because it has not taken them (and, therefore, us) to the limit. Because the end of man is to be taken to the limit, taken there where he no longer is man, she no longer is woman, but being-there. It is the hardest enterprise for man, but at the same time is the easiest. It's destination is, at the same time, the most proximate space and the permanently differed. Its end is there where he or she (already) is. The Da of Da-Sein, the there of being-there, is his end in all these senses. We don't think the difference in order to grasp something else (in Heidegger's case, it would be Being), but as our ultimate and last goal. Just like in the black and white surfaces, every end is a beginning. And the end of this paper is just the beginning of another which starts right there, at the end.