ABSTRACT
I must begin with a precaution and a confession. When, in order to approach a philosophy, one is armed not only with a pair of concepts-here, “structure and genesis”—that has been determined or overburdened with reminiscences by a long problematical tradition, but also with a speculative grid in which the classical figure of an antagonism is apparent from the start, then the operative debate which one prepares to undertake from within this philosophy, or on the basis of it, is in danger of appearing to be not so much an attentive scrutiny as a putting into question, that is, an abusive investigation which introduces beforehand what it seeks to find, and does violence to the physiology proper to a body of thought. No doubt, to treat a philosophy by introducing the foreign substance of a debate may be efficacious, may surrender or set free the meaning of a latent process, but it begins with an aggression and an infidelity. We must not forget this.
