This is a text that from the beginning is assumed as a kind of treatise on Antiphilosophy. And this is not saying little, since it is a matter of taking a step further along the path marked out by the anti-metaphysical tradition so dear to French thought, especially since the second half of the 20th century. Without naming them, Quignard distances himself from thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze; not so much to detract from his positions, but rather to avoid getting bogged down in that philosophical language, which, while expressing rejection of metaphysics, he is forced to speak from his own concepts. For Quignard, speculative rhetoric is "the anti-philosophical literate tradition that runs through all of Western history since the invention of philosophy." Literature is the language prior to metaphysics, it is the language of images. It is not necessary, according to Quignard, to resort to foreign traditions to the West to escape the ordered language of Greek metaphysics, Christian theology and modern nihilism. These languages "do nothing more than order for fear of the effects of language." Literature, on the other hand, far from constituting the language that differentiates us from nature (physis), binds us more strongly to it, it is our fundamental link.