Despite the seeming inescapability of philosophical antihumanism, inferred from Ferry and Renaut's acknowledgment, there is an equally unavoidable precariousness accompanying that disposition. For adherents of antihumanism are committed to avoiding both outright misanthropy (the human as an excrescence of the inhuman) and a simple reversal of priority that might favour the nonhuman over the human. The human, that is to say, must be disciplined (for its self-aggrandisement) but not disparaged. What is left, by way of counterhumanist strategy? Steering clear of misanthropy and logocentrism means, effectively, translating the human from value into fact, but without devaluing it; and this means, in turn, neutralising the human propensity to claim an a priori value for itself.

Philosophical antihumanism assays man as the ‘owner and controller’ of his actions by challenging the notion of the human as an absolute ground and standard of measure, as the uncaused causer of its own foundations.