At the conclusion of this lecture [The Ends of Man, 1968], Derrida brings this logic of undecidability to bear on the two strategies that have appeared in connection with the deconstruction of metaphysical humanism. The first strategy, which Derrida associates with Heidegger, proceeds by means of a return to the origins of the metaphysical tradition and uses the resources of this tradition against itself. In adopting this strategy, "one risks ceaselessly confirming, consolidating, relieving [reléve] at an always more certain depth that which one allegedly deconstructs". The second deconstructive strategy, which Derrida identifies with French philosophy in the 1960s, affirms an absolute break with tradition, seeking to change ground in a discontinuous and irruptive fashion. However, such a strategy fails to recognize that one cannot break with the tradition while retaining its language. The inevitable consequence of this blindness to the powers of language is a naive reinstatement of a "new" ground on the very site one sought to displace.
When applying these deconstructive strategies to Nietzsche and the "end of man", two very different interpretations result. For Heidegger, Nietzsche emerges as the last and consummate metaphysician, in whose writings the end of man appears as the culmination of metaphysical voluntarism. The Übermensch, as pure will, thus assumes for Heidegger the form of a metaphysical repetition of humanism. For the French, as perhaps is most clear in the case of Foucault's The Order of Things, Nietzsche emerges not as a repetition but as the first break from modernity.
