What is modern philosophy? Perhaps we could respond with an echo: modern philosophy is the
philosophy that is attempting to answer the question raised so imprudently two centuries ago: Was
ist Aufklärung?

[1]

In outlining the contours of his project Michel Foucault refers us to Immanuel Kant’s answer to the question

‘What is the Enlightenment?’. This text is crucial for Foucault because it combines transcendental critique with an

ethico-political perspective of cosmopolitan man.

Drawing on Kant’s answer, Foucault tries to capture the particular attitude of the Enlightenment and posit it as the

task of philosophical exercise. This is that ‘critical’ attitude to actualité consisting in a philosophy that interrogates

history with a focus neither on its origin nor its telos, but rather on the question of its belonging to the present.

[2]

This situatedness of philosophical thinking is premised on a view of man as both element and agent of the object

of critical analysis

[3]

and shifts the task of critique from one of analytics of truth to that of an ontology of

ourselves as diagnosis.

[4]

The enquiry on the present is an enquiry of the present day and a search for the

difference introduced by the present with respect to the past.

In classical age the question of the modern was often posed on an axis with two poles: the ancient and the
modern. (…) It was formulated through the concepts of an authority that one could accept or reject (…)
the new question of modernity has no longitudinal reference to the ancient, but rather a sagittal relation to
its own actuality.

[5]

For both Kant and Foucault philosophical exercise entails preliminary thinking for oneself, sapere aude

(Wahlspruch) as an invitation and task of one’s time. Foucault stresses that any attempt at thinking limits implies

the opening to autonomy as self constitution. As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari observe:

when Foucault admires Kant for posing the problem of philosophy in relation not to the eternal but to the
Now, he means that the object of philosophy is not to contemplate the eternal or to reflect History but to
diagnose our actual becomings: a becoming-revolutionary that, according to Kant himself, is not the same
thing as the past, present, or future revolutions.

[6]

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Introduction

The condition of immaturity Kant outlines in his text on the Enlightenment, and the definition of Enlightenment as

the process of exiting such condition are directly linked to a set of power relations that denote both an excess of

authority and a lack of courage. Foucault notes: ‘From the very first paragraph, Kant notes that man himself is

responsible for his immature status. Thus, it has to be supposed that he will be able to escape from it only by a

change that he himself will bring about in himself’:

[7]

a practice of the self on the self, a matter of self conduct, a

technology of the self. Hence, an ontology of the present cannot avoid questioning how not to be governed like

this and at this price (l’art de n’être pas tellement gouverné). For Foucault, to resurrect the contents of the

Enlightenment would actually be a betrayal to this ethical project, because the latter can only be enacted in the

form of a critical attitude to the present.

[8]

‘The point is not to preserve the remains of the Aufklärung, we must

keep in mind and safeguard the very problem of this event and its meaning (the problem of the historicity of

thinking the universal) as that which is to be thought.’

[9]

In Kant’s original answer, the Revolution is primarily what produces an effect through the change of the collective

attitude, social imaginary and conceivable realm of possibility.

[10]

The Revolution has an impact as spectacle, as

the trigger of that courage to think of limitation as something to liberate oneself from, rather than as the framework

within which action and thought must be confined and deemed legitimate: this attitude requires the courage of

‘facing the task of producing oneself’. For Foucault, a critical and historical ontology of the present entails a

genealogy of what constituted us and made us recognisable as subjects of what we say, do and think.

It must be considered not as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is
accumulating; it must be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of
what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits imposed on us and an
experiment with the possibility of going beyond them. The overcoming of the foundational character of
the transcendental perspective consists in not deducing from the form of what we are what we can do and
know, but in catching from the contingency, that makes us be what we are, the possibility of not being,
not doing and not thinking what we are, do and think.

[11]

Critique must become an épreuve d’évenemèntialisation, a production of events, the questioning of the actual field

of possible experiences and practices, rather than an analytics of the formal conditions of truth and search for the

legitimacy of their discursive status.

It is in the framework of a critical ontology of the present and ourselves that we will look at Foucault’s

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oeuvre. As his work is embedded in the present and engaged with it in a constant questioning of practices of

existence, we are interested in how Foucault’s notion of biopower, technologies of the self and aesthetics of

existence contribute to our understanding and production of current practices and technologies of being. In the

Lectures delivered at the Collège de France between 1970 and 1984, Foucault presented his work-in-progress in a

mode of constant engagement with the present, relating it to issues of actualité. Most of this research did not

feature in his publications, but we believe it essential to understand how the project of a critical and historical

ontology of the present was carried out. For this reason, we will analyse much of the research presented at the

lectures, which will hopefully soon be published in its entirety in French and English.

In the first chapter of the thesis, we will focus on the notion of a critical ontology of the present in relation to

historiography, linguistic analysis and anthropology. A brief outline of the theoretical import of Formalism and the

Annales School will help us introduce Foucault’s work on epistemology in relation to language and history. When

asked about his relation to Structuralism, Foucault replied that Formalism had a greater influence on his thought.

We have chosen to explore this claim in more depth for two main reasons: one is to investigate the elements at

play in Foucault’s conceptualisation in The Archaeology of Knowledge of a historical ontology of language. The

other is that the relation between Formalism and Structuralism in linguistic analysis is a fertile ground for

developing an analysis of language in its relation to subjectivity today. In this context we will introduce the

interventions on the debate on linguistics of the Italian philosopher Paolo Virno, who recently interrogated the role

of language in relation to Kant’s philosophy with a particular emphasis on the state of subjectivity in the present.

Foucault’s critical ontology of the present is also a historical one. The importance of the theoretical and

methodological innovations of the Annales School for Foucault’s practice of writing histories is often

underestimated. We will briefly discuss these innovations in order to introduce the way in which Foucault

developed his genealogical method in terms of eventalisation, which is a central element in our analysis of his idea

of an ontology of the present.

We will then move onto Foucault’s engagement with anthropology. Firstly, through his critique of humanism

expounded in Maladie mentale et personnalité and the Introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s Traum und Existenz,

we will analyse the conceptual development of Foucault’s notion of technologies of the self as emerging out of a

reflection on the role of an anthropology of concrete existence in relation to a philosophy of being. Secondly,

through his critique of finitude, we will explore Foucault’s engagement with the epistemological and ontological

status of the object of anthropological analysis. In the framework of an anthropology that takes man as citizen of

the world as its point of departure, we will then dwell on Foucault’s Commentaire to Kant’s Anthropology from a

Pragmatic point of view.

By looking at Foucault’s relation to Kant at length we aim to establish the theoretical correspondences between the

epistemological role of self affection in Kant’s Critique and Anthropology and Foucault’s political

conceptualisation of technologies of the self. The role of an ontology of the present emerges out of a reflection on

epistemology and ontology in philosophy, and in Foucault’s reading of the attitude of the Enlightenment we will

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find the important difference between aesthetics of existence and analytics of truth. Foucault’s relation to the

notion of rationality and modernity will be analysed against the background of Kant’s writings on the question.

In the second chapter of the thesis, we will begin to look into the way in which a historical ontology of the present

was practiced in Foucault’s later work on the genealogy of technologies of the self, in the context of his

differentiation between philosophy and spirituality and processes of liberation against practices of freedom, as

expounded in the 1982 course L’Herméneutique du sujet. This course is important because it bridges the changes

in technologies of the self –from care of the self to knowing yourself- from the Hellenistic period to Early

Christianity and sheds light on the notion of aesthetics of existence and alternative ethics as a positive ontological

project. The more explicit theorisation of technologies of the self will then be related to Foucault’s work on power,

the latter seen in the framework of a study of practices and discourses of power and resistance. To this aim, we

have chosen to look into the 1976 lecture course on “Il faut défendre la société”, as it brings together a reflection

on the historical political analysis of the war of races with the outline of the emergence of biopower. This will take

us to the work of Giorgio Agamben on biopolitics and the state of exception, which will aid our assessment of the

ontological import of Foucault’s positive conceptualisation of aesthetics of existence as a technology of the self,

whilst questioning it in the context of our current political framework.

In the third and final chapter, we will turn to our present and the development of an ontology of ourselves in the

framework of biopower, with the aid of the recent debate on biopolitical production initiated by the thinkers of

Postfordism. First we will discuss the use of Foucault’s writings on disciplinary power and the welfare state in

postfordist analyses of the changing paradigms of control. The claim that there has been a shift from disciplinary

to control society and the respective changing nature of subjectivity will be analysed through the writings of

Jacques Donzelot, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. In outlining the elements at work in biopolitical production

we will look into theories of immaterial labour in the contributions of Maurizio Lazzarato and Christian Marazzi.

Foucault’s work has been received in very different ways. We have chosen what we regard as the most

constructive interpretations and adoptions of his contribution for the purpose of our thesis, which draws on many

resources in Italian and French. As we believe that our debates would greatly benefit from them, our effort has also

been one of translation.

Acknowledgements

First of all, I should thank my supervisors, William Outhwaite and Darrow Schecter, for reading and commenting on

the thesis. The thesis has greatly benefited from consulting the Archive Foucault at the Institut de mémoires de

l’édition contemporaine (IMEC) in Paris . The Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome was also an important source of

material. I could research in France and Italy thanks to an ERASMUS grant and the ESRC scholarship. I am grateful

to those who participated to the Generation-Online reading and discussion group and made it possible to experiment

in cooperative production, exchange and dissemination of theory. Special thanks to Alessandro Pandolfi for

introducing me to the literature that was to change the course of my research. I am also grateful to Paul Joey Clark

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and Thanos Kastritis for their encouragement. But I am most indebted to Erik Empson, for his invaluable support and

continuous inspiration.

Next chapter

back to Table of Contents

[1]

Michel Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in The Foucault Reader. London : Penguin, 1984, p. 32, also online at http://courses.essex.ac.uk/cs/cs101/foucault.

htm. Foucault engages with Kant’s answer to this question mainly in four texts, one dated 1978- called Qu’est-ce que la critique? (translated in Italian as
Illuminismo e Critica, Roma: Donzelli Editore, 1997) - the other two are both dated 1984 and called ‘What is Englightenment?’, one published in The Foucault
Reader, the other in Magazine Littéraire, n. 207, the latter is an extract from the course at Collège de France on 5 January 1983, translated in Italian in Archivio
Foucault 3, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1998. Other explicit references to Kant’s reply to the question appear in Foucault’s introduction to Canguilhem’s The Normal and
the Pathological [1978], published as ‘Life: Experience and Science’ in Essential Works: Aesthetics, London : Penguin, 2000, p. 465.

[2]

See Paul Veyne’s ‘Foucault revolutionises History’, in A. I. Davidson (ed.) Foucault and his Interlocutors, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1997,

for an analysis of the philosophy which operates outside the domain of both eternity and historicity. Dreyfus and Rabinow also interestingly see Foucault’s project
as avoiding the problems of both presentism and finalism in their Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Hertfordshire: Harvester Press, 1982, p. 118.

[3]

M. Foucault, Dits et écrits IV. Paris

: Gallimard, 1994, p. 564-565 (my translation)

[4]

‘History today still designates only the set of conditions, however recent they may be, from which one turns away in order to become, that is to say, in order to

create something new’. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy? London : Verso, 1984, p. 96

[5]

M. Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 1994, p. 681, (my translation)

[6]

Deleuze and Guattari. What is Philosophy? 1994, p. 112-113

[7]

M. Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in Essential Works: Ethics, 2000, p.306

[8]

To which we also add Deleuze’s and Guattari’s call for thinking for oneself in their What is Philosophy?, 1994: ‘What is the best way to follow the great

philosophers? Is it to repeat what they say or to do what they did, that is, create concepts for problems that necessarily change?’ p. 28

[9]

M. Foucault, Archivio Foucault. Vol. 3, 1998, p. 206 (my translation of: ‘Laissons a leur piété ceux qui veulent qu’on garde vivant et intact l’héritage de l’

Aufklärung. Cette piété est bien sûr la plus touchante des trahisons. Ce ne sont pas les restes de l’Aufklärung qu’il s’agit de préserver; c’est la question même de cet
événement et de son sens (la question de l’historicité de la pensée de l’universel) qu’il faut maintenir présent et garder à l’esprit comme ce qui doit être pensé’. M.
Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 1994, p. 687.)

[10]

See Kant, ‘The Contest of the Faculties’ in Political Writings, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991. Deleuze also recognises in this passage in Kant

the importance of seeing the Revolution in its force as an event. ‘As Kant showed, the concept of revolution exists not in the way in which revolution is undertaken
in a necessarily relative social field but in the “enthusiasm” with which it is thought on an absolute plane of immanence, like a presentation of the infinite in the
here and now, which includes nothing rational or even reasonable. The concept frees immanence from all the limits still imposed on it by capital (or that it imposed
on itself in the form of capital appearing as something transcendent). However, it is not so much a case of a separation of the spectator from the actor in this
enthusiasm as of a distinction within the social action itself between historical factors and “unhistorical vapour”, between a state of affairs and the event. As concept
and as event, revolution is self-referential or enjoys a self-positing that enables it to be apprehended in an immanent enthusiasm without anything in states of affairs
or lived experience being able to tone it down, not even the disappointments of reason. Revolution is absolute deterritorialization even to the point where this calls
for a new earth, a new people.’ (Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 1994, p.101)

[11]

M. Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in The Foucault Reader, 1984, p.319

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Humanism and Anthropology

Humanism and Anthropology.

It may be part of the destiny of Western philosophy that, since the 19

century, something like an

anthropology became possible; when I say ‘anthropology’ I am not referring to the particular science
called anthropology, which is the study of cultures exterior to our own; by ‘anthropology’ I mean the
strictly philosophical structure responsible for the fact that the problems of philosophy are now all lodged
within the domain that can be called that of human finitude. If one can no longer philosophise about
anything but man in so far as he is a Homo natura, or insofar as he is a finite being, to that extent isn’t
every philosophy at bottom an anthropology?

[1]

Foucault begins by questioning the role of anthropology in philosophical thinking and its status with respect to

psychology. In his Commentaire of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Foucault already sets

out a highly philosophical analysis of Kant’s own difficulties in positioning anthropological study within an

epistemologically coherent system of understanding. His preoccupation with anthropology and the possibility of

such science as well as its relations to philosophy and psychology are clear from the outset. We are more familiar

with the declaration of the death of man in The Order of Things. However, in the previous and largely unpublished

works one can see the extent to which the development of a preoccupation with the possibility of alternatives to

humanist man-centred epistemic structures already points towards an attempt at constituting a positive ontology of

concrete existence, in the form of a rendering of Kant’s anthropological question: ‘What does man make of

himself?’.

In 1954 Foucault published Maladie mentale et personnalité and L’Introduction to the French edition of Ludwig

Binswanger’s Traum und Existenz. Maladie mentale et personnalité aims to show that ‘the root of mental

pathology should not be searched in a speculation on some metapathology, but only in a reflection on man

himself’.

[2]

In this work, the reflection on man’s being is taken to be the methodological premise of the definition

of mental illness. The attempt at founding a rigorous science of mental illness is developed through references to

historical materialism. Foucault’s intervention in the debate on alienation and humanism in this work takes the

form of a critique of positivism and determinism, as well as Freudianism. In the fifth chapter, initially entitled ‘The

historical meaning of alienation’, Foucault sustains that alienation arises out of and is the product of the interaction

of man with his environment, particularly in the context of the conflictual nature of existing in social relations and

the specificity of the individual’s response to such situation of conflict.

[3]

More specifically, in the analysis of

alienation, Foucault criticises Freud’s recourse to a past that reactivates itself in the individual by positing mental

illness as a response to a conflict in the present. As he puts it: ‘Pathology is a diffused defence reaction’

[4]

, that

occurs when the ‘individual cannot master (maîtriser), at the level of his reactions, the contradictions of his

environment, when the psychological dialectic of the individual cannot recognise itself in the dialectics of the

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conditions of his existence’

[5]

. We can see a reiteration, in his critical interpretation of psychoanalysis, of the

Kantian anthropological preoccupation with what man makes of himself. Foucault interestingly adopts a sort of

‘transformative method’ familiar to Feuerbachian Marxism, and with all its rhetorical force he applies it onto

Freud and psychoanalysis.

[6]

He claims that in his reflection on the neurosis of the war, Freud developed the

notion of an opposition between a life instinct, reminiscent of the old bourgeois optimism of the 19

century, and

a death instinct. Foucault then proceeds to deconstruct this notion by regarding the opposition as evidence of the

contradictions that characterised European society at the beginning of the century, rather than as an original

psychological scenario to ascribe to man, thereby defining Freudianism as the supreme stage of subconscious

theorisation of capitalism: ‘Freud wanted to explain war, they say; but it is war that explains this turn in Freudian

thought’.

[7]

According to Foucault, materialism ought to avoid two potential errors: on the one hand, the identification of

psychological conflict with the existing contradictions of the environment, which would equate mental with social

alienation; on the other hand, the reduction of each pathology to a malfunctioning of the nervous system, whose

mechanism should in principle be analysed purely from the physiological point of view

[8]

. According to Foucault,

a materialist standpoint is capable of recognising the reality and specific dimensions of illness. Therapy ought to

aim at establishing ‘new relations with the environment’ and, like all human sciences, psychology ought to strive

towards the end of human alienation.

[9]

In the same period, Foucault also writes the introduction to the work of an Austrian existentialist psychoanalyst,

Ludwig Binswanger.

[10]

This introduction is emblematic of a deeper reflection on the status of psychoanalysis

with respect to philosophy, not so much on the status of scientificity of the former, which will be the core concern

of his later Madness and Civilisation, but more particularly on the relation of the study of man and the ontology of

existence. For this reason it is an important contribution to our understanding of Foucault’s reading of Kant in the

context of his preoccupation with anthropological thought. In his words:

These introductory pages do not intend, as it is paradoxically customary in prefaces, to follow the path
traced by Binswanger in Traum und Existenz. Perhaps the difficulty of the text might lead one to do so,
but it is so essential to the reflection developed here that it cannot be watered down by the zealous advise
ad usum delphini, even though the 'psychologist' is always a non specialist in the field of reflection. The
original forms of thought introduce themselves: their history is the only exegesis they tolerate, their
destiny their only critical form.
However, this is not a history we will attempt to decipher. A later work will seek to locate existentialist
analysis within the development of the contemporary reflection on man. Today, these introductory
remarks have one objective: to present a form of analysis that is not projected as a philosophy and does
not have the effect of being a psychology; a form of analysis that reveals itself as being fundamental in
relation to concrete, experimental and objective knowledge; finally, its principle and method are
determined from the outset only by the absolute privilege of the object of their inquiry: man, or rather,
being-man, Menschsein. In this way one can circumscribe the whole basis of anthropology.

[11]

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In this work it is already evident that the relationship established between anthropology and psychology is of

crucial importance for Foucault. As we shall see in the analysis of his Commentaire of Kant’s Anthropology,

Foucault takes up and reiterates Kant’s questioning of the (im-)possibility of rational psychology as a science.

Implicit in this philosophical exegesis is on the one hand the attempt to question, with Kant, the status of the I as

substance, which will be later referred to as the Cartesian subject, whilst on the other hand to show the fallacies of

a treatment of man’s being as a purely physiological question. As Rudi Visker comments, ‘psychology can only

legitimate its own scientificity by reducing history to the overcoming of an inertia, which keeps an already original

present, but misrecognized object under the sway of a pre-scientific knowledge’.

[12]

Foucault sees Binswanger’s

project and its positing of Menschsein as the object of enquiry as setting itself up against psychological positivism

‘that claims to exhaust the signifying content of man in the reductive concept of homo natura.’ According to

Foucault, Binswanger’s merit is that of reintroducing man’s being in an ontological reflection on existence.

Clearly such an anthropology can only assert its rights by showing how an analysis of being-man can be
articulated on an analytics of existence: a problem of foundation that must define, in the latter, the
conditions of possibility of the former; a problem of justification that must bring to light the proper
dimensions and the autochthon meaning of anthropology. One can provisionally say, whilst open to
possible revisions, that being-man (Menschsein) is the effective and concrete content of what ontology
analyzes as the transcendental structure of Dasein, of being-there.

[13]

Foucault here needs to introduce an ontology of man that can account for concrete existence beyond the

physiological, whilst keeping with a method that is capable of inducing and deriving an ontology from the reality

of man’s being in the world. As we shall later analyse, this is also the core of Kant’s conception in the

anthropological analysis of man as citizen of the world which Foucault will extensively draw on in reconfiguring

the project of philosophical critique within the worldliness of language exchange.

Referring to anthropology, Foucault writes that ‘its original opposition to a science of human facts that proceeds

following the methods of positive knowledge, experimental analysis and naturalistic reflection, does not lead to an

a priori form of philosophical speculation. Its research theme is that of the human “fact”, if by “fact” we do not

mean a definite objective part of a natural universe, but the real content of an existence that lives, experiments

itself, recognises itself or loses itself in a world that is at once the whole of its project and the “element” in which

its reality is given.’

[14]

Foucault aims to underline the dynamic element introduced into any ontological reflection by the anthropological

analysis of concrete forms of existence. This is also what sustains his critical rendering of Kant’s anthropological

reflections in relation to the first Critique. In our view, the question posed by Foucault and Kant alike is the

following: what constitutes the object of an anthropology that avoids the positivist fallacy of a physiological study

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of man as well as the rendering of man as the centripetal force at the centre of all possible knowledge of the

world?

Anthropology can therefore be defined as a ‘science of facts’ in so far as it rigorously develops the
existential content of being there. To immediately reject it because it is neither philosophy nor
psychology, nor can it be defined as science, or speculation, because it does not proceed as a positive
knowledge, nor is it the content of a priori knowledge, means to ignore the original meaning of its
project. It seemed to us worth following, for an instant, the path of this reflection in order to ascertain
whether the reality of man can only be accessible beyond a distinction between psychology and
philosophy; whether man in its forms of existence represents the only way to get to man.

[15]

In this introduction, Foucault is very explicit on the role of anthropology for an ontology of man. He sees

anthropology, the study of man and its modes of being in the world, as propedeutic to any reflection on the nature

of being and existence as such. By criticising the a priori separation of anthropology and ontology he is asserting

the primacy of a movement of reflection on the concrete.

[16]

Within the contemporary anthropological paradigm, Binswanger’s procedure seemed to follow the most
important lead. It indirectly goes through the problem of ontology and anthropology, pointing directly
towards concrete existence, its development and historical content. Starting from there and through the
analysis of structures of existence- individuated existence, which has a proper name and lives a precise
history- there is a continuous going back and forth from anthropological forms to ontological conditions
of existence and vice versa. For Binswanger, the borderline that seems too difficult to trace between
anthropological forms and ontological conditions of existence is continuously overcome by concrete
existence, in which the real limit of Menschsein and of Dasein is evident.

[17]

Foucault’s notion of practices of the self will later delineate more clearly the concern with concrete existence and

its role in relation to philosophical reflection. It is from a historical study of concrete existence and the archival

research carried out on the epistemic configuring role of practices of power relations that characterises Foucault’s

work Les Anormaux.

[18]

Les Anormaux opens with a literary overview of ‘dangerous individuals’ in criminal

records of the 18

century. An impressive accumulation of resources and research material, this work is close for

its irony and exposition to what Foucault worked on with a team of researcher, Parallel Lives.

[19]

He often

remarks the sub-literary character of the records whilst underlying their actualité. The records are interesting in

themselves: they are reports of trial processes for charges of murder and minor illegalities committed by

‘dangerous individuals’: a glimpse at the formation of discursive practices on ‘perverse adults’, ‘hysterical

women’ and ‘masturbating children’. One of the focuses of the analysis is the way in which state power establishes

a relation of continuity in the application of the law with the medical establishment. In the reported records judges

call upon doctors to certify that the whole behaviour of a person who committed a crime is to be regarded as

dangerous, thereby justifying the process of confinement from society. The crucial ‘improvement’ in the

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coordinated operation of the legal and medical apparatus is that what comes to be under judgement is the whole

subjectivity of the person committing a crime, where by subjectivity we mean an individuated set of practices of

concrete existence.

The idea of dangerousness meant that the individual must be considered by society at the level of his
potentialities, and not at the level of his actions; not at the level of the actual violations of an actual law, but
at the level of the behavioural potentialities they represented.

[20]

Therefore, it is no longer the criminal action to be under the scrutiny of the law, but a whole set of known social

practices and behaviours ascribed to the ‘criminal’ that come to be judged as dangerous and potentially detrimental to

social peace. Under this category of course are listed numerous actions that are more indicative of the moral, medical

and legal discourse of the period than anything else; such as the role of religion and blasphemy in the social

imaginary, the sexual attitudes promoted and silenced as well as the general standards of sociability and involvement

in the community. In other words, the concrete practices of man in the world become the object of regulation and

government.

This new knowledge was no longer organised around the question: ‘Was this done? Who did it?’ It was no
longer organised in terms of presence and absence, of existence and non existence; it was organised around
the norm, in terms of what was normal or not, correct or not, in terms of what one must do or not do. This
examination was the basis of the power, the form of knowledge-power, that was to give rise not, as in the
case of the inquiry, to the great sciences of observation, but to what we call the ‘human sciences’ –
psychiatry, psychology, sociology.

[21]

As we have seen, the earlier preoccupation with the role of concrete existence here takes as its main focus the

genealogical mapping of relations of power that arise out of the intertwining of medical practices with the legal

apparatus. As Foucault often highlights, the relation of medical and legal practices is crucial to our understanding of

power relations. His studies and genealogies of criminal and medical knowledge converge on a strong critical stance

against received habits of designating and seek to unravel at the level of the ‘unconscious of knowledge’ the framing

of the self-evident, in other words, the workings of morality both at the level of interiorised practices and the habitual

re-enactment of domination intrinsic to the ontological repetition of being. With reference to the identification of

hysteria and hypochondria as mental diseases, which at a certain point sanctions the mode in which madness arises in

the moment when ‘the mind becomes blind through the very excess of sensibility’,

[22]

Foucault points out how

madness acquires ‘a new content of guilt, a moral sanction of just punishment’.

[23]

Instead of making blindness the condition of possibility for all the manifestations of madness, it describes

blindness, the blindness of madness, as the psychological effect of a moral fault. And thereby compromises
what had been essential in the experience of unreason. What had been blindness would become
unconsciousness, what had been error would become fault, and everything in madness that designated the
paradoxical manifestation of non-being would become the natural punishment of a moral evil. In short, the
whole vertical hierarchy which constituted the structure of classical madness, from the cycle of material
causes to the transcendence of delirium, would now collapse and spread over the surface of a domain which

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psychology and morality would soon occupy together and contest with each other. The ‘scientific
psychiatry’ of the 19

century became possible. It was in these ‘diseases of the nerves’ and in these

‘hysterias’, which would soon provoke its irony, that this psychiatry took its origin.

[24]

Foucault’s task goes beyond proving the unscientificity of any given science.

[25]

In Genealogy as Critique, Rudi

Visker makes a point of showing Foucault’s genealogy to be incomplete from the point of view of radical critique,

‘If we were able to explain what was the decisive motive for psychology to develop -on more than merely random

grounds- precisely this particular self-understanding as a science, then he might possess the means to shield a

potential critique of that self-understanding from the charge of arbitrariness.’

For Visker, the idea that the emergence of the historical reality of madness represents a degeneration or alienation

provides a counterpoint to a basically genealogical analysis of an éclairage en retour.

[26]

As he puts it:

‘Historically, the object which psychology claims to discover not only arose conjointly with this discovery but this

discovery also functions as a concealment of the real object, la folie; it is based on a de facto alienation which is

avoidable de jure: mental illness is alienated madness.’

We do not think this reading fully captures Foucault’s opposition to essentializing trends in anthropology. The accent

posed on the effects of truth is more geared to point towards a critique of the philosophy of origins or consciousness,

as well as the formalising tendencies of the human sciences, which, as we shall later see, is fully explicated in his

treatment of modern anthropology in the Commentaire. We read Foucault’s genealogies as the realisation of an

ambition expressed in the Introduction to Binswanger’s Traum und Existenz, namely one that aims to rethink

anthropology and ontology through a reflection on concrete forms of life, and their articulation, possibilities and

limits in different historical moments, yet with an objective that is that of striking at the heart of the present and

questioning the existing frontiers of possible knowledge and transformation. To read Foucault’s work outside of the

demands of an ontology of the present, in search for an analytics of truth, would no doubt diminish its import and

freeze it in a-temporal theoretical constraints that might leave us with a whole body of historical data and theoretical

opinions of little internal autonomous coherence.

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[1]

M. Foucault, ‘Philosophy and psychology’, interview by A. Badiou, [1965] in Essential Works: Aesthetics. 2000, p. 250

[2]

M. Foucault, Maladie mentale et personnalité, Paris: PUF, coll. «Initiation philosophique», 1954, p. 2

[3]

Ibid., p. 75, p. 82-83. Karl Jasper’s and Ludwig Binswanger’s existentialist psychoanalyses are an important influence on Foucault’s work at this stage.

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[4]

Ibid., p. 102

[5]

Ibidem

[6]

‘Psychology can never tell the truth about madness because it is madness that holds the truth of psychology’. ‘Madness, in the unfolding of its historical reality,

makes possible, at a particular moment, a knowledge of alienation in a style of positivity which defines it as mental illness’. M. Foucault, Madness and Civilisation.
[1961] London : Routledge Classics, 2001

[7]

M. Foucault, Maladie mentale et personnalité, 1954, p. 87. See also Madness and Civilisation, 2001, p.209: ‘In the second half of the 18

century, madness was

no longer recognised in what brings man closer to an immemorial fall or an indefinitely present animality; it was, on the contrary, situated in those distances man
takes in regard to himself, to his world, to all that is offered by the immediacy of nature; madness became possible in that milieu where man’s relations with his
feelings, with time, with others, are altered; madness was possible because of everything which, in man’s life and development, is a break with the immediate.
Madness was no longer of the order of Nature or of the Fall, but of a new order, in which men began to have a presentiment of history, and where there formed, in
an obscure originating relationship, the ‘alienation’ of the physicians and the ‘alienation’ of the philosophers – two configurations in which man in any case
corrupts his truth, but between which the nineteenth century, after Hegel, soon lost all trace of resemblance’.

[8]

M. Foucault, Maladie mentale et personnalité, 1954, p.106

[9]

‘S’il est vrai que, comme toute science de l’homme, elle doit avoir pour but de le désaliéner’, ibid., p. 110

[10]

Ludwig Binswanger’s Le rêve et l’existence, introduced by Foucault, was published in 1954. The French version of the Introduction is now in M. Foucault,

Dits et écrits, Volume I, Paris : Gallimard, 1994, p. 65-119. As this work has not been translated into English, the quotes are taken from the Italian edition
published as Il Sogno, Roma: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2003. All citations are taken from my translation of Part I of the Introduction.

[11]

M. Foucault, Il Sogno, 2003, p. 1

[12]

Rudi Visker, Genealogy as Critique, London: Verso, 1995, p. 120

[13]

M. Foucault, Il Sogno, 2003, p. 2

Ibidem

Ibid., p. 3

Ibid., p. 75

Ibid., p. 4

Les Anormaux is the collection of the course of lectures delivered to the Collège de France between 1974 and 1975. Published in Italian by Feltrinelli and in

French by Gallimard. I refer to the Italian edition published as Gli anormali, Milano: Feltrinelli, 2000

[19]

The Introduction to Parallel lives was recently published in Essential Works: Power, London : Penguin Books, 2002, under the title ‘Lives of infamous

men’ [1977], p.157-175

[20]

See M. Foucault, ‘Truth and juridical forms’ [1973], in Essential Works: Power, 2002, p. 57. Today we witness the introduction of a new coordinating agent of

governing predictability and pre-emptive criminalisation: the media. Recent campaigns memorial of witchcraft practices against dangerous individuals, be it
paedophiles, terrorists, hooligans or protesters, have sought to introduce a similar notion of profiling into the collective imaginary thereby often successfully
generating effective practices of social self-regulation based on the mediatic reproduction of a state of permanent fear.

[21]

Ibid. p. 59

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[22]

M. Foucault, Madness and Civilisation, 2001, p.150

[23]

Ibidem

[24]

Ibidem. Foucault often resorts to the notion of war and contested spaces when describing the emergence of or change in the epistemic configuration of a

period. To this contest between morality and psychology described in Madness and Civilisation, we might add the opposition between the historical-political
discourse and that of sovereignty (or Germanic and Roman law) outlined in ‘Il faut défendre la société’; the struggle between disciplinary and juridical power
analysed in Discipline and Punish [1975]; the opposition between phenomenology and hermeneutics we glimpse in The Order of Things. The war paradigm is a
productive force throughout his work and we will later argue a similar outlook when looking at the notion of antagonism in Antonio Negri’s analysis of capital.

[25]

M. Foucault, Foucault Live, 1996, p.198

[26]

This argument is interestingly analysed by Rudi Visker in Genealogy as Critique, 1995

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Kant and Foucault

Kant and Foucault

Part I: Kant’s critique of the dogmatic slumber.

As Foucault tried to critique the anthropological slumber of his times, which he ascribes to a certain form of

neo-Kantianism that poses man and finitude at the centre as well as the margins of all positivities of

knowledge, Kant was engaged in a monumental attempt at providing an alternative mode of thinking to that

which suffered from dogmatism in his time, i.e. the philosophy of substance. Yet, Foucault recognises in Kant

the potential for questioning the anthropological slumber he sets out to critique. In fact, Foucault’s critique of

the subject shares in the language and conceptual elements of Kant’s critique of René Descartes. It is in this

tension that we would like to insert our reflections on the meaning of anthropology today. To accomplish this

task it will be necessary to look into Kant’s Copernican revolution in some detail, for we believe that Kant’s

conceptual categories will lie in the background of a large part of Foucault’s work.

[...]

When Foucault talks of aesthetics of existence, we cannot help reading into it a recuperation of the role of

sensation and the body in the problem of knowledge.

[1]

The main issue for our purposes for now is to register

the importance of a notion of experience that in Foucault is essentially transformative rather than logical, (we

will dwell on the importance of this in Part II when exploring his genealogical reconstruction of the separation

between philosophy and spirituality).

[...]

The dialectics shows that human knowledge is limited by experience, but also that its natural tendency to move

beyond it cannot be stopped. The insistence on the necessity of being vigilant against these tendencies will be

interpreted by Foucault as an awareness of the precarious equilibrium on which the system of knowledge is built

in Kant, being as it is dependent on faculties of relating that can easily deceive.

However, for Kant, there is a logic to the error man commits when going beyond experience, and in fact, the

last section of the Critique is devoted to the examination of these errors and to ways to discipline the excesses

of reason. Hence, dialectics for Kant includes both the study and critique of transcendental illusions. For

Foucault this element of Kant’s philosophy posits finitude as the basis of epistemological activity. As he puts

it:

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Kant and Foucault

When Descartes says: philosophy is sufficient to itself only for knowledge, and
Kant completes by saying: if knowledge has limits, they are all comprised in the
structure of the knowing subject - in other words, in the very thing that permits
knowledge - the link between accessing truth and the exigency of a
transformation of the subject and its being by itself is definitely broken.

[2]

However, the view of Reason as structurally tending towards illusion often comes close in definition to

Foucault’s notion and study of the rationalité of given historical periods that structurally determines their grille

of intelligibility. Arguably, Foucault critically transposes the problems identified by Kant in the activity of the

knowing subject onto a plane of exteriority where the determining role of Time and modes of self affection

reappear in the context of a critique of the alleged autonomy of epistemology from ontology.

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[1]

Another thinker who has dwelled on the role of aesthetics in the present is Antonio Negri in Fabbriche del

Soggetto, Bimestrale di politica e cultura, 1987. For Negri, a transcendental aesthetics today is neglected in
favour of an analytics of a constitutive power and a negative dialectics of crisis and illusion. ‘For Benjamin and
Adorno, Bloch and Lukács, the feeling of crisis was an exasperated declaration of impotence. But if human
freedom is the foundation, knowledge cannot but present itself as ethics and constitution. […] How could the
ground of our philosophical culture – the dialectics of German idealism- repeat the atrocious unfolding of the
Dialektik der Aufklärung? Why was the immediacy of a new and powerful transcendental aesthetics, rather than
moved towards the sphere of the imagination, why was it subsumed instead to the mediation of a transcendental
analytics and to such artificial prison of the desire for constitution?’, p. 31 (my translation). Negri inserts his
recuperation of a transcendental aesthetics in a vehement critique of two trends which he accuses of indifference
to the real. For Negri, ‘an analytical sphere of knowledge that has turned into the abstract realm of
communication is parallel to a mode of production that is increasingly reliant on communication and information,
whilst remaining self-referential and tautological.’, ibid., p. 44

[2]

M. Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, [1982] Paris : Gallimard, 2001. p. 27.

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Part III

Part III. What is it to reason? From sapere aude to mutare aude

We have argued that after Kant modernity ceases to have a relation with the past in counter posing terms thus

ceasing the classical dispute between ancients and modern. The present as modernity begins to relate to itself.

Philosophical exercise becomes preliminarily determined by the choice to think for oneself, sapere aude, as an

invitation to belong to one’s own time and actualité. Minority is defined by Kant as a situation of authority

whereby one is guided in one’s thoughts by someone else. The exit from this kind of minority requires a moral-

political attitude precisely because it entails a questioning of authority and its rejection. Foucault’s association of

critique with ‘the art of not being governed, like this and at this price’ (l’art de n’être pas tellement gouverné) aims

to capture the Kantian motto.

Kant’s sapere aude is a call to dare not to be governed in the usage of reason, when this is public, when one speaks

as a world citizen. This public use of reason is the cosmic

[1]

use of reason, which Kant distinguished from the

scholastic,

[2]

The mightiest revolution coming from inside of man is his departure from his self-incurred
tutelage. Instead of letting others think for him, while he was merely imitating or allowing himself
to be guided by others, he now dares to proceed, though still shakily, with his own feet upon the
ground of experience.

[3]

Foucault recuperates the notion of thinking for oneself and shows how this is inextricably linked to a practical

modification in one’s relation to oneself, consisting in se déprendre de soi-même.

To detach oneself from oneself is an activity carried out through the very process of reasoning. In this it is close to

Kant’s notion of critique in so far as it aims at investigating the frontiers of the division between the knowable

from the unknowable.

Freedom is never ethics if it conceives of itself as the effect of the elimination of codes and dislocation of rules:

this is why the distinction between processes of liberation and practices of freedom acquires an important

significance. The ethical dimension is encountered only in the practice of the problematisation of freedom and in

the constant exercise of giving shape and form to one’s existence, of making it a work of art, as the invitation to an

aesthetics of existence suggests.

Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power has been compared to Weber’s description of the mechanisms of

domination at play in capitalist rationality.

[4]

The main point of difference Foucault claims with respect to Weber

is that he is not working through ideal types, nor writing a history of rationalisation per se, with any

‘anthropological’ invariable.

[5]

Foucault’s genealogies take rationalities as the operative framework of discursive

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Part III

practices.

No given form of rationality is actually reason. […] I do not speak of the point at which reason became
instrumental. At present, for example, I am studying the problem of techniques of the self in Greek and
Roman antiquity; how man, human life, and the self were all objects of a certain number of tekhnai that,
with their exacting rationality, could well be compared to any technique of production.

[6]

But let us look into Kant’s notion of Reason. Kant recognises reason in its generic connotation as the knowing

faculty; however, he also provides it with a specific meaning in the dialectic, which will become very popular

during Romanticism. For Kant, reason is both a logical and a transcendental faculty. As a logical faculty, it

produces so-called mediated conclusions through abstractions; as a transcendental faculty, it creates conceptions

and contains a priori cognitions whose object cannot be given empirically.

The transcendental concept of reason is, therefore, none other than the concept of the totality of the
conditions for any given conditioned. Now since it is the unconditioned alone which makes possible the
totality of conditions and, conversely, the totality of conditions is always itself unconditioned, a pure
concept of reason can in general be explained by the concept of the unconditioned, conceived as
containing a ground of the synthesis of the conditioned.

[7]

For Kant, reason is different from understanding in this respect: ‘In the first part of our transcendental logic, we

treated the understanding as being the faculty of rules; reason we shall here distinguish from understanding by

entitling it the faculty of principles.’

[8]

Understanding cannot supply synthetic cognitions from conceptions, in

other words it cannot produce principles. Principles for Kant are a priori cognitions, like mathematical axioms

(there can be only one straight line between two points). Kant ascribes them a purely regulative, rather than

constitutive function. ‘Knowledge from principles is, therefore, that knowledge alone in which I apprehend the

particular in the universal through concepts.’

[9]

So whilst the understanding operates by linking its structures to a given content, Reason, in its logical and pure

use, operates independently of experience.

Understanding may be regarded as a faculty which secures the unity of appearances by means of rules,
and reason as being the faculty which secures the unity of the rules of understanding under principles.

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Accordingly, reason never applies itself directly to experience or to any object, but to understanding, in
order to give to the manifold knowledge of the latter an a priori unity by means of concepts, a unity
which may be called the unity of reason, and which is quite different in kind from any unity that can be
accomplished by the understanding.

[10]

This separation of reason from the realm of experience is of interest to our exploration of Foucault’s notion of

rationalité. Understanding operates through judgement, whilst reason through syllogism. Whilst synthetic

judgements always entail an element of intuition, syllogism works on the basis of pure concepts and deduces through

mediation the particular from pure principles. The transcendental dialectic is developed according to a system of

transcendental ideas. In the Commentaire, we find a repeated reference to the role of Geist in the Anthropology, for

Foucault is there attempting to situate the function of such a principle in the context of a pragmatic investigation.

[11]

In the Anthropology Kant uses the notion of Geist as the invigorating principle of Gemüt that moves through ideas.

An idea for Kant is more than an idea. Kant’s point against dismissals, for instance, of an idea of the absolute

totality of all phenomena - which, due to its irrepresentability, remains an unsolvable problem - is that in the

practical use of reason such an idea has an enormous importance in its regulative function. ‘The practice or

execution of an idea is always limited and defective, but nevertheless within indeterminable boundaries,

consequently always under the influence of the conception of an absolute perfection’. Thus, despite having no

relation to or correspondence in the concrete [‘the idea can never be completely and adequately presented in

concreto’], an idea is anything but superfluous.

[12]

Just as categories were pure conceptions of the understanding,

transcendental ideas are pure conceptions of Reason.

[13]

Foucault will undermine this in his Commentaire, for he

ascribes to ideas a role in the concrete that goes beyond the regulative function, or rather, he will point to how this

function effectively operates in the concrete.

However, ideas for Kant are pure absolute ‘forms’ of the structural needs of Reason: as sensibility had two a priori

forms or structures (space/time), and understanding had twelve categories, so Reason is divided into a tripartite

system of transcendental ideas.

Kant seems so content with his system that he writes that the progression between one transcendental idea to the

next is ‘so natural that it seems to resemble the logical advance of reason from premises to conclusion’…

[14]

The exercise of Reason in Kant functions as a regulative activity, what makes one think what he does. However,

what characterises Foucault’s early works on madness is that this notion is also taken to signify the thought of

transgression that can inhabit the fragile space between madness and art, or practices of freedom in aesthetics of

existence. To reason is to think the realm of the possible, and thus also the impossible, Foucault clarifies that

through reasoning on the limits imposed on thinking and acting today what is at stake is not only description but

the theoretical enactment of a counter-practice of subjectivation. In an implicit critique to modern forms of

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Weberianism, he says: ‘I don’t believe one can speak of an intrinsic notion of ‘rationalisation’ without on the one

hand positing an absolute value inherent in reason, and on the other taking the risk of applying the term

empirically in a completely arbitrary way.’

[15]

Foucault claims that regimes of practices do not exist without a specific regime of rationality, with its codification

and prescriptions - establishing how it forms an ensemble of rules, procedures, and relations of means to ends -

and true and false formulations – through which a domain of objects is determined that makes it possible to

articulate true or false propositions.

The study of rationalities for Foucault consists in looking at the interconnections made between codes that rule

over ways of doing things – establishing for instance how people are to be graded, examined and classified - and

the production of true discourses that serve as a basis and justification, through reasons and principles, of these

ways of doing things.

[16]

In this, he is both taking up the regulative function of Ideas in the concrete as well as

critiquing the paralogisms that produce and reproduce them.

Such study is geared towards the creation of possibilities for effective transformative practices. Foucault’s

definition of the aesthetics of existence is in this respect important for it points to the interconnections of practices

of transformation, knowledge and production.

Aesthetics of existence and déprise de soi.

For me intellectual work is related to what you could call aestheticism, meaning transforming
yourself. […] I know very well that knowledge can do nothing for transforming the world. […]
But I know that knowledge can transform us, that truth is not only a way of deciphering the world
(and maybe what we call truth does not decipher anything), but that if I know the truth I will be
changed.

[18]

We have already mentioned that aesthetics is for Foucault the practice of transforming oneself. He refers to the

Ancients to explain the importance of aesthetics as an epistemological activity. The study of different practices and

theorisations of the idea of the self, from care to hermeneutics, are shown to highlight the role of Reason as a

universal and regulative principle in philosophy.

The kind of attention that the Stoics wanted people to have towards themselves, towards the
conformity between what they had to do and what they had done, starts a new kind of relationship
to oneself as a permanent attention but the problem was not at all to decide what people really
were. What they were was not important; the problem was whether the things they had been doing
was conforming to the law. A new relationship becomes important in Christianity: people started
to ask and question the ideas and whether in the things they have been doing they could recognize
what the reality of themselves was: the real degree of purity of their soul, since the problem of
Christianity is to attain a degree of purity to attain salvation, whilst the relation between purity and

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salvation cannot be found in the Stoics where on the contrary you have a problem of conformity
and perfection in this world.

[19]

Foucault claims that reason comes to supplant the aesthetics of existence with the Stoics and that this is relevant

for understanding ethics as a practice of subjectivation.

[20]

In fact it is the study of the role of reason in the

formation of community and practices of self government that interests us in relation to the hermeneutics of the

self. Thus when he mentions aesthetics of existence, he refers to the practices of self transformation that can be

thought of in a determinate set of power relations. The accent is on self transformation because Foucault never

claims that power relations can be eliminated: what he calls for is the reduction ad minimum of government on and

by others. It is a particular political technology that he is criticising, that which subjects and subjugates other

people excessively, outside of the dualistic schema of positive and negative freedom, for freedom is nothing but

the practice of self government. An aesthetic of existence only has value when inserted within a reflection on

biopower and biopolitics and when it explicitly avoids turning into cults of the self and modern forms of

dandyism. In the following section, we will investigate how Foucault warned us against them precisely with

recourse to the history of practices of self transformation in their relation to truth and politics. We have already

anticipated that the reflection on aesthetics in Foucault is in our view related to the Kantian system in so far as it

addresses the faculty of perception and its structures albeit from a social and historical point of view. This is why

we would like to look at Foucault’s work on the history of sexuality as an intervention in the present through the

1982 set of lectures, for they explicitly point to the role of aesthetics and transformation in modern philosophy.

Next Chapter

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[1]

Cosmic knowledge is a science of the relation of each knowledge with the essential aims of human reason. Philosophy, in the cosmic notion, is a doctrine of

wisdom. The cosmic philosopher is (primarily) the legislator of reason. For Kant, an authentic philosopher indicates the ultimate aims of human reason, self legislation
and self government. ‘By a cosmical conception I mean one in which all men necessarily take an interest; the aim of a science must accordingly be determined
according to scholastic [or partial] conceptions, if it is regarded merely as a means to certain arbitrarily proposed ends.’ I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2003, p. 657,
B866

[2]

For Kant, scholastic knowledge is science that only aims at the systematic unity of its knowledge. Philosophy, in the scholastic perspective, is a doctrine of ability.

The scholastic philosopher is a technician of reason, who aims to speculative knowledge and provides rules for its possible usage.

[3]

I. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 1996, p. 129

[4]

Arpad Szakolczai, Max Weber and Michel Foucault: Parallel Life-Works. London : Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought, 8. Routledge, 1998. This

book is a somewhat existentialist attempt at biographising theories. Half biographical, half theoretical, the comparison between Weber and Foucault remains
unconvincing. For a more Nietzschean reading of the discourse on genealogies of reason, see also David Owen, Maturity and Modernity: Nietzsche, Weber,
Foucault and the Ambivalence of Reason. London : Routledge, 1994

[5]

M. Foucault, ‘Questions of method’ in G. Burchell (ed.), The Foucault effect: Studies in Governmentality, Hertfordshire: Harvester Press, 1991, p.79

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[6]

M. Foucault, ‘Structuralism and Post-structuralism’ in Essential Works: Aesthetics, 2000, p. 442

[7]

I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2003, p. 316, B379

[8]

Ibid. p. 301, B356. The difference drawn by Kant between Reason (Vernunft) and Understanding (Verstand) will be crucial for philosophy and human sciences.

Hegel praises Kant for this distinction, whilst criticising his idea of the functions of Reason. In fact, we might say retrospectively and adopting the language of the
Romantics that understanding was to concern itself with finitude as much as reason was with the infinite.

[9]

Ibid. p. 301, B357

[10]

Ibid. p. 303, B359

[11]

M. Foucault, Commentaire, 1961, p. 10: ‘The presence of the Geist, and with it, of this dimension of the liberty and of the totality that transcends the Gemüt, is

such that there can be no truthful anthropology that is not pragmatic, each fact is then taken within the open system of Können and of Sollen. And Kant finds no
reason to write of any other [system]. Within these conditions, doesn’t the Geist deal with this enigmatic ‘nature of our reason’ and then with the question of the
Dialectics and of the Methodology of Pure Reason? This is the disconcerting notion that seems to suddenly refer the Critique, once reached its apex, towards an
empirical region, towards a domain of facts where man will be doomed to a very original passivity [longe]; will be given all of a sudden to the transcendental; and
the conditions of experience will be related finally to the primary inertia of a Nature. But does this ‘nature of reason’ here play the same role as the nature of human
understanding in Hume: of primary explication and final reduction?’

[12]

It is difficult to establish how Kant read Plato, since it wasn’t until after 1800 that Schleiermacher launched an edition of the dialogues, but he does refer to

Plato’s ideas, albeit in a confusing manner. In fact, whilst he claims to take up Plato’s theorisation of ideas in order to complement it, Kant’s ideas are very different
from Plato’s. In the latter, ideas belong to the world of the hyperphysical and are ‘beyond’ reason, whilst Kant seems to imply that ideas emanate from Reason and
are its absolute paradigms.

[13] Kant summarises it very clearly in this passage: ‘The genus is representation in general (representatio). Subordinate to it stands representation with consciousness

(perceptio). A perception which relates solely to the subject as the modification of its state is sensation (sensatio), an objective perception is knowledge (cognitio). This
is either intuition or concept (intuitus vel conceptus). The former relates immediately to the object and is single, the latter refers to it mediately by means of a feature
which several things may have in common. The concept is either an empirical or a pure concept. The pure concept, in so far as it has its origin in the understanding
alone (not in the pure image of sensibility), is called a notion. A concept formed from notions and transcending the possibility of experience is an idea or concept of
reason. Anyone who has familiarised himself with these distinctions must find it intolerable to hear the representation of the colour, red, called an idea. It ought not to
even be called a concept of understanding, a notion’. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2003, p. 314, B376-B377

[14]

Ibid. p. 325, B395

[15]

M. Foucault, ‘Questions of method’ in G. Burchell (ed.), The Foucault effect: Studies in Governmentality, 1991, p.79

[16]

Ibid. p.163

[17]

M. Foucault, 'On the genealogy of ethics: An overview of work in progress'. In Paul Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader. 1984, p. 350

[18]

M. Foucault, ‘An interview with Stephen Riggins’, in Essential Works: Ethics. 2000, p. 131

[19]

M. Foucault, ‘Technologies of the self’, AudioFiles Transcripts of Berkeley Lectures, 1983: for a transcription visit http://www.generation-online.org/p/

fpfoucault4.htm

[20]

M. Foucault, ‘On the genealogy of ethics’, in Essential Works: Aesthetics. 2000, p. 264-68

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II. From self-affection to technologies of the self

a) Practices of Freedom VS. Processes of Liberation

It is very common for the Left today to concern itself with what are seen as liberation struggles, resistance to and

refusal of domination.

[1]

Foucault lived through the heated politics of the 1960’s and witnessed the enormous

significance of discourses of liberation on the Left, both in the anti-colonialist struggles, the Western ambivalence

towards mass production/mass consumption and the general anti-authoritarian discourse prevailing at the time.

Foucault recognised the power of these movements but also addressed the problem of ‘reconstitution’, the question

of a positive ontology of ourselves.

The problem of our day is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and its institutions, but to
liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualisation which is linked to the state. We have
to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality that has been
imposed on us for several centuries.

[2]

Foucault’s enquiry into the practices of the self is one into the modes of subjectivity that differently posited the

question of self-transformation in relation to self-knowledge and truth-telling. These studies do not seem to be

‘immediately’ politicised, but we see their import as profoundly political, both in how Foucault analyses them and

in the way we can read them today. Foucault’s preoccupation with ‘ethics’ emerges in the 1980’s. After writing

the first volume of the History of Sexuality - a tremendously political intervention on the issues of the anti-

authoritarian movements - he turned to the ‘self’ as a category to be analysed and scrutinised closely. The reasons

for this are outlined in the essay ‘The Subject and Power’, but a close analysis of the texts on the care of the self

highlights a relation of internal dependency of the notion of the self on earlier notions of man (in the

Anthropology) and subject (in his writings on Power). In fact what is underlined throughout his writings on the

matter is a notion of self/man/subject as a practice in concrete existence.

What was theorised as man in the early writings on anthropology and psychology is the category of an

epistemological paralogisms that underlies practices of government. The concern with self-government and

autonomy expressed in the analysis of Kant recurs in the latest writings in the form of an attempt at delineating the

task of philosophical exercise. Today we can read his preoccupation with ethics as a monitoring against the

politicisation of identity which had occurred, retrospectively, in a form that, in his words, ‘we shouldn’t be proud

of’.

[3]

In fact, identity politics turns to the deciphering of the self in the form of feelings and interiority, a direct

consequence of the explosion of psychoanalytic categories onto mass culture. Foucault’s struggle against the

philosophy of interiority both in terms of the founding of epistemology and anthropology and in relation to the

exercise of power is here translated into an attack on a certain mode of conceiving of self-transformation as the by-

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product of a search for the truth about oneself. We believe Foucault’s work on the hermeneutics of the self and

practices of self-knowledge can fruitfully be inscribed in the wider context of a critique of the politics of identity

and its naivety in relation to technologies of self-management and interiorisation of power relation propelled by

the innovation of techniques of control. As he asserts:

I think something is important in the fact that in our society nowadays we know well that for centuries
our morals have been linked with religion as well as civil laws and the juridical organisation. Morals took
the form of a kind of juridical structure; think of Kant, you know that ethics has been related to science,
medicine and psychology. I think these great references: to religion, law and science, have now worn out.
We know well that we need an ethics and we cannot ask religion, science or the law to give us this ethics.
We have an example in Greco-Roman society where a great ethics existed without these three references.
The problem is not to come back to this ancient age but we know that it is possible to research into past
ethics to build a new ethics and give a place to what has been called the ethical imagination without any
reference to religion, law and science. That is why I think this analysis of Greco-Roman ethics as an
aesthetics of existence is interesting.

[4]

The emphasis on practices of freedom rather than processes of liberation is crucial in defining the positive import

of his work outside of the contours of negative criticism and defensive postures with respect to power and is an apt

continuation of Foucault’s deconstruction of the repressive hypothesis. It also represents a consistent application

of his idea that there is an element of freedom in all power relations that meets our concern for what is not

immediately political or addresses itself to Power as repression but rather lives in the interstices of the power-

resistance symmetry, a practice of existence that we will later look into by drawing on the notions of refusal and

exodus.

The categories of ethical discourse

One of Foucault’s priorities in this project is to analyse the category of pleasure. He ascribes the overemphasis on

desire to a progressive scientisation of the ethical discourse that derives directly from an idea of the subject as

practised in early Christianity and will later culminate into the psychoanalytical category of the Ego. This is the

subject that has a particular relation to truth and the practice of the self in terms of self-negation and self-deciphering.

It is crucial for Foucault to problematise the disappearance of pleasure from philosophical discourse, and we interpret

this move as a reinstatement of his criticism of the repressive hypothesis, as well as a formulation of the constitutive

aspect of freedom within power relation as opposed to the dwelling on processes of liberation from oppression and

those relations. In fact, in recognising that power can only operate on the terrain of freedom, those practices are

crucial for our understanding of the forms of subjectivation as well as the possibility of self mastery intrinsic to these

power relations themselves.

I think we have to get rid of this idea of an analytical or necessary link between ethics and other social or
economic or political structures.

[5]

Through the distinction between practices of freedom and processes of liberation Foucault explains best that the

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study of ethics is really an attempt at delineating the contours of this realm of freedom for the subject involved in

power relations, and the possibilities within it to constitute himself autonomously, in the form of a relationship to

oneself and a certain attention to oneself. The latter has four interrelated aspects, Foucault calls them respectively:

ethical substance [substance éthique], mode of subjectivation [mode d’assujettissement], self-forming activity and

telos [téléologie].

For Foucault, the idea of technologies of the self falls into the second aspect: mode d’assujettissement. Why?

Could it not relate to ethical substance, self forming activity or telos? By mode of subjectivation Foucault aims to

expose the necessarily double aspect of technologies of the self: on the one hand, there is something we might call

force which establishes a priori the position of one subject objectifying the other; on the other hand, ruling out

physical coercion from the concept of power relations, there is a space for breaking this establishment which

constitutes the subject matter of his genealogical study of conduct. We will see how in the study of Antiquity and

Hellenic philosophy in particular, Foucault seems to run through three possible questions that emerged in the

practices of the self. Know yourself, care for yourself and finally confess (tell the truth about) yourself. All these

three modes, that respectively related to Plato, the Stoics and Christianity, equally imply a relation of power where

the mode of subjectivation requires the active participation of the object of transformation: a simultaneous

subscribing to and making of a technology. Thus, whether through the appeal to a need for proximity to Truth,

being part of a higher Rational order, or as a preparatory process of self-purification before the encounter with

God, all modes entail the interiorisation of power relations. Technologies of the self develop on the realm left open

by the relation between the freedom of the object of a specific ethical discourse with the discourse itself.

Ethics and morality

As we have seen, the birth of homo criticus gave rise to a whole range of disciplines that took as their aim to

analyse the subject in given societies and historical periods. Sociological and historical traditions influenced by

psychoanalysis employed a hermeneutics of desire and focused on the restrictions placed on the subject by moral

codes and rules.

In this sense, they primarily conceived of morality as potential for conflict between the subject’s desires and the

limitations imposed upon them and, through an analysis of moral behaviours, studied the way in which the

subject’s actions are consistent with moral rules of a given period. Historical studies of ideology would investigate

different sets of moral codes and the institutional conveyers and policing of these codes, the ways in which they

are imposed on the subject, whilst regarding the subject as partially constituted by and operative in this or that

moral discourse, possibly a bearer of these rules of conduct. As we have seen, the Annales School undoubtedly

opened up the scope for historical research of this kind and influenced a whole generation of French historians and

philosophers. But a project of writing histories of mentalities can consist in drawing out a ‘history of codes’ or a

‘history of moral behaviours’.

[6]

In writing a history of ethics, Foucault aims at complementing whilst challenging the above mentioned models.

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Ethics looks at the positivity of the relation between morality and society, as expressed by the subject. We will

later see how his immediately previous work had focused on power from above and on the techniques and exercise

of Power as authority, with an emphasis on the formation of codes and discourses of practices that historically

shaped power relations. In his works on ethics, as he also affirms in the essay ‘The Subject and Power’, Foucault

aims at dwelling on the other side of this relation and his choice of historical period is indicative of a political

choice of intervention in the present.

I wonder if our problem nowadays is not, in a way, similar to this one [the Greeks’], since most of us no
longer believe that ethics is founded in religion, nor do we want a legal system to intervene in our moral,
personal, private life. Recent liberation movements suffer from the fact that they cannot find any principle
on which to base the elaboration of a new ethics. They need an ethics, but they cannot find any other
ethics than an ethics founded on so-called scientific knowledge of what the self is, what desire is, what
the unconscious is, and so on. I am struck by this similarity of problems.

[7]

Foucault defines ethics as the reflexive practice of freedom, and in distinguishing between ethics-oriented

moralities and code-oriented moralities; he wishes to present his project of the last two volumes of the History of

Sexuality as a history of the former. Ethics oriented moralities are those where the emphasis is placed upon the

relation of the subject with himself, where morality demands a certain work from the subject, which goes beyond

the latter’s obedience to a set of rules. In this sense, the course on L’ Herméneutique du sujet is ‘an analytics of

certain forms of reflexivity, as constitutive of the subject itself’.

[8]

Philosophy and spirituality

Foucault’s late move towards ethics is a form of critical intervention on actualité and part of the project of an

ontology of the present, in a relation of continuity with the exploration of Kantian criticism as exposed in the

Commentaire to the Anthropology: an investigation into the social notion of Gemüt, ethical self-affection, that

undermines the self identical epistemological subject by positing its relational aspect with the world and its self-

transformative potential at the centre of analysis. Foucault makes a distinction between philosophy and spirituality

in modernity. In this set of lectures, he tries to trace the emergence of the separation between the two.

Let’s call philosophy the form of thought that enquires into what allows the subject to have access to
truth, the form of thought that attempts to determine the conditions and the limits of the access of the
subject to truth. Well, if we define philosophy in such a way, I believe we can call ‘spirituality’ the sets of
researches, the practices and experiences through which the subject carries out on itself the necessary
transformations to have access to truth. Spirituality is the ensemble of researches that constitute for the
subject and its being, rather than for knowledge, the price to pay to have access to truth.

[9]

Therefore truth is not revealed to the subject who simply waits to find truth in knowledge, but is gained through

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the subject’s own self-transformation. This is where the critical relation between truth and subjectivation is

established. For Foucault, the working premise of such relation is that ‘what is, is not capable of truth’.

It is necessary for the subject to modify itself, to transform itself, to become to a certain extent other than
itself for it to have the right to access truth. The conversion and transformation of the subject can take
different forms. The movement of eros and ascesis are examples of ways in which the subject can modify
itself through labour on himself and raise him to the level where truth can be revealed to him.

[10]

Thus, a transfiguration of the subject is necessary for accessing truth. How this transfiguration operates in different

moments of history is the object of Foucault’s investigation into the processes of subjectivation and practice of the

self. Foucault notes that in ancient thought philosophy and spirituality are never separated and that an act of

knowledge is always accompanied by an act of self transformation that entails some kind of action on one’s very

being. These actions are technologies of the self and establish a mode of conduct that is also a self-affection tightly

linked to the emergence of a discourse of truth and objectivity that is made dependent on the workings of

interiority.

As we shall see, the questions of being and knowledge, of experience and existence are here posed in

relation to ethics as a matter of conduct. Surely the fact that experience and being is detached from knowledge

since Kant and reposed as a possible question is indicative. Foucault criticises the notion underlying modernity

whereby the legitimacy of claims to truth is a concern that remains separated from ontology.

I believe that the modern history of truth begins the moment when what allows access to truth is
knowledge itself and alone.

[11]

This investigation into the problems arising from the separation of philosophy and spirituality relates to the project

of an ontology of ourselves: modern philosophy, in so far as it limits itself to determining the conditions and

frontiers of a knowledge of objects, designs the theoretical tools for the policing of statements and the

establishment of regimes of truth. On this rests his early definition of the axis of knowledge-power in modern

thought. Through the wider notion of governmentality, Foucault is also shifting the focus from an analysis of the

status of objective knowledge in relation to power, to an analysis that questions the status of the subject in relation

to truth.

If one takes the question of power or political power and replaces it with the more general question of
governmentality –governmentality intended as a strategic field of power relations, in the broader, not
simply political, sense of the term-, if one takes governmentality as the strategic field of power relations,
in so far as they are mobile, transformable and reversible, I think that the reflection on this notion of
governmentality must go through, both theoretically and practically, the element of a subject that would
be defined by the relation of the self to the self. In so far as the theory of political power as institution
normally refers to a juridical conception of the subject of rights, it seems to me that the analysis of
governmentality –i.e. the analysis of power as an ensemble of reversible relations-must refer to an ethics
of the subject defined by the relation of itself to itself. I simply want to say that in the kind of analysis that
I have tried to propose for some time, you see that: relations of power-governmentality; government of
oneself and others and relation of oneself to oneself, all these constitute a chain, a web. It is there, around
these notions, that one must be able to, I think, articulate the question of politics and the question of

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ethics.

[12]

Foucault urges us to take up a theoretical analysis that makes political sense: ‘it makes sense for that which we

want to accept, refuse and change in ourselves in our actuality’. This is a political and theoretical analysis that

aims to determine the ‘conditions and possibilities of the transformation of the subject’.

[13]

Marxism and psychoanalysis see a resurgence of the preoccupation with spirituality. In both camps, this
resurgence occurs at the price of reducing the subject and truth to a mere question of ‘belonging’.
Spirituality in the ancient form saw its demise due to a fundamental separation between the process of
accessing truth and that of the subject’s self-transformation. On the one hand, access to truth was granted
by modern philosophy to the knowing subject, on the other hand, spirituality was translated in a necessity
of a labour on the subject itself. Theology rather than sciences started off this separation. Extrinsic
conditions for accessing truth are not identified in the structure of the subject as such, but rather in the
concrete forms of existence of the subject in question. Platonism reabsorbs the exigencies of spirituality
within epistemology, by relating the question of the care of the self to the know yourself (to know
oneself, to know the divine, to recognise the divine in oneself: this is fundamental to the platonic and neo-
platonic forms of the care of the self).

The status of the conditions of knowledge is important: Foucault establishes two sets of conditions for the

attainment of knowledge. First, there are conditions that are internal to the act of knowing and rules that one has to

follow in order to have access to truth. These are objective conditions, formal rules of method that determine the

structure of the object of knowledge. The problem for Foucault is that these are all defined from within knowledge

itself. As Foucault had attacked the circularity of the human sciences in The Order of Things and the notion of

finitude as one that posited man as the object of knowledge whilst simultaneously establishing the structural

impossibility for grasping such object, here we see the repercussions of this notion on practices of self-

transformation and the ethical dimension. Second, Foucault outlines a series of extrinsic conditions. They are

related to ‘health’, (madness makes it impossible to access truth), culture (education and the participation to a

certain scientific consensus are required), and morality (practical financial interests for instance would be an

obstacle to accessing truth). But he notes that even though the second order of conditions is extrinsic to the act of

knowledge, they are nonetheless indifferent to the subject in so far as they simply consider the individual in his

concrete existence, rather than the structure of the subject as such. The conclusion of this process is that ‘truth

cannot save the subject anymore. As a result of its neglect of the being of the subject, Modernity has achieved

nothing but an endless accumulation of knowledge.’

[14]

We can see that Foucault is tracing the genealogy of the

subject by going back to the moment where a ‘culture of the self’ first emerges, where the technology of the self

and the art of life become entangled. This moment he ascribes to Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Epicureans

and Stoics being the most cited philosophers in his lectures. But the reason for first exploring Plato’s Alcibiades is

that in this text one finds the contradiction which will be taken up and developed in neo-Platonism and in early

Christianity, and which, in a relation of rupture and continuity, will also adopt the Hellenistic technology of the

self for an entirely different purpose. As we shall see, in the paradox of Platonism Foucault finds the main

contradiction, between the

γν

•

θι

σεαυτ

•

and the

επι

••

λεια

εαυτο

•. These two elements, so intertwined in Plato

and the Hellenists, are separated by early Christianity with the birth of theology, which also sanctions the end of

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philosophy as spirituality. All this is crucial, for Foucault is not only tracing a history of the subject and his

relation to truth, but also an ontology of self-transformation that escapes the capture of either religion, science or

the law.

[15]

This is the foundation, the prequel, rather than sequel, to his previous works on modernity. Thus the

platonic rationalité, the beginning of which he recognises in early Christianity, is worth discussing in some length

alongside the subsequent clarifications made during the lectures about the role of Descartes and Kant.

[16]

Foucault notes that Neo-Platonism reabsorbs exigencies of spirituality within an epistemology – whereby the latter

outlines rules for the process of accessing truth.

[17]

The main reason for which the care of the self has been neglected is the Cartesian moment. Since then
know yourself has become decoupled from the care of the self and the latter has been disqualified as a
philosophical practice. The Cartesian path has made evidence (what appears, what is ‘given’ just as it is
to consciousness, without any doubt) the starting point, the origin of philosophy. Thus it is to self-
knowledge that the Cartesian path refers itself to, at least as form of consciousness. Moreover, given that
the evidence of the existence of the subject is turned into the principle of the access to being, it is this self-
knowledge (no longer in the form of the testing of an evidence but in the form of the indubitability of my
existence as a subject) that transforms the ‘know-yourself’ into the foundation of any access to truth.

[18]

In this set of lectures we find continuous references to the present, the problem of actualité in philosophical

criticism, and the path taken by the Cartesian tradition and the philosophy of the subject in the centuries that are

closer to us than those analysed. We should not underestimate the pregnancy of Foucault’s analysis of Hellenistic

philosophy for today, as a call to resistance to forms of morality and identity politics, which the 1980s are so

imbued with. Foucault keeps writing an ontology of his present, which transpires from these lectures and takes

issue with the problem of the ‘obsession’ with the self he witnesses. As with the interview on identity politics and

the gay movement, Foucault shows discomfort with the idea of a juridical subject, of the juridification of life, and

of the biopolitical forms of control enacted on the subject through scientific, religious and juridical discourses,

thus searching for autonomous practices of ethical self transformation in the writings of Hellenistic philosophers.

Next Chapter

back to Table of Contents

[1]

For Foucault the Left is a home rather than a concept. See his ‘For an Ethics of Discomfort’ in Essential Works: Power, 2003. p. 444

[2]

M. Foucault, ‘The subject and power’ in H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf,

1982. p. 216

[3]

M. Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001. Lecture held on 24/03/82. This section refers to the 1982 set of lectures delivered at the Collège de France. It has so far

only been published in French (Herméneutique du sujet. Paris : Gallimard, 2001) but an English translation is underway. The passages quoted are my translations.

[4]

M. Foucault, ‘ Berkeley lecture 1984’ Audiofiles. See transcription on www.generation-online.org/p/pfoucault.html (January 2004)

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[5]

M. Foucault, ‘On the Genealogy of Ethics’, published in Essential Works: Ethics. 2000, p. 261

[6]

See M. Foucault, History of Sexuality. Volume II, Penguin, London . p. 29

[7]

M. Foucault, Essential Works: Ethics. 2000, p. 262

[8]

M. Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001. Lecture held on 24/03/82

[9]

M. Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 17

Ibidem

Ibid., p. 19

Ibid. p. 243-244

M. Foucault, unpublished first version of a 1980 conference in America, cited by Frédéric Gros in his postface to L’Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 508

[14]

In Foucault’s definition of spirituality, we find the idea that the real conflict within Christianity (5th – 17th century) is between spirituality and theology rather than

spirituality and science (Herméneutique du sujet p. 28). So it is theology rather than science that operates this dissociation within the principles of access to truth on the
one hand as something capable of being carried out solely by the knowing subject and on the other hand as involving the spiritual necessity of a work of the subject on
itself as constitutive of such. This allows us to trace a continuity of intents between the project of critique of the psychoanalytical discourse that urges the subject to ‘tell
the truth about him/herself’ and the parallel Christian notion of confession.

[15]

M. Foucault, ‘ Berkeley lecture 1984’ audiofiles. See transcription on www.generation-online.org/p/pfoucault.html (January 2004)

[16]

M. Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 183

[17]

‘Se connaître - connaître le divin - reconnaître le divin en soi-même’, Ibid. p. 75

[18]

Ibid., p.16

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L’Herméneutique du sujet

When we see today the meaning, or rather the almost total absence of meaning [signification], that is
ascribed to expressions that are otherwise familiar and often recur in our discourse, such as: return to the
self, self-liberation, being oneself, being authentic. When we see the absence of meaning and of thought
of each of these expressions as they are employed today, I believe that we shouldn’t be too proud of the
efforts made at present to reconstitute an ethics of the self. And it could be that these series of efforts

[1]

[…] more or less stopped, froze on themselves. The moment we find ourselves in is one where we
continue to refer to this ethics of the self, whilst never giving it any content. I think that we are almost
faced with the impossibility of constituting an ethics of the self today, and this occurs at a time when
maybe it is an urgent, fundamental and politically indispensable task, if it is true after all that there is no
other point, first or last, of resistance to political power but in the relation of the self to the self.

In L’Herméneutique du sujet Foucault proposes to analyse the relation between the subject and truth through the

notion of the care of the self. This, he admits, might appear to be a roundabout way to question such relation, given

that it had been traditionally seen through the lenses of the more popular motto ‘know yourself’. But for Foucault,

there are a number of important reasons for the neglect of the notion of the ‘care of the self’ in the history of

thought. Foucault writes:

A certain tradition prevents us from ascribing a positive value to all these formulations [regarding the
self], and especially from making them the foundation of an ethics. All these injunctions to exalt
oneself, to make a cult of oneself etc. sound to us as a kind of challenge and bravado, a will to ethical
rupture, a kind of moral dandyism, the affirmation of a state that is aesthetic and unsurpassably
individual. Or they sound to us as the expression, a bit melancholic and sad, of a retreat of the
individual, incapable of keeping hold of a collective ethics and who, faced with the dislocation of this
collective ethics, will no longer have anything but himself to care about.

The reason for his engagement with this particular notion is that the care of the self, in all the traditions Foucault

addresses in his lectures, has a positive value, and it is the starting point of the most austere and rigorous ethics of

the West that is not attributable to Christianity. As he notes:

These rigorous values will reappear both within the Christian and the non –Christian modern ethics in
completely different climates. But moral rigour entails an obligation to something other than oneself, be it
the other, the community, the nation, class etc. All these themes, all these codes of moral rigour have
been founded by Christianity and the modern world on a morality of non-egoism, but learn from
techniques of the care of the self.

Thus Foucault is interested in tracing a genealogy of the care of the self as a notion and practice within the ancient

tradition up to early Christianity. His 1982 lectures problematise the relationship between the subject and truth

through an analysis of the interplay in antiquity and early Christianity of the practices of care of the self and know

yourself; or rather, of the ethical on the one hand and the epistemological on the other, where ethics is defined as

an ontological mode of self-transformation. We can detect in this concern a direct problematisation of the ethical

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consequence of an analytics of truth and by tracing its genealogy; Foucault will also point us towards the

conditions of possibility for an ontology of ourselves and an anthropology without a Subject and beyond

interiority. He observes that in Antiquity ‘know yourself’ always appears associated and often subordinated to the

‘care of the self’,

[2]

and sets out to describe the development of their relation: How is the care of the self defined?

What is the object of care [the self]?

It is nothing to go back to. But we do have an example of an ethical experience which implied a very
strong connection between pleasure and desire. If we compare that to our experience now, where
everybody –the philosopher and the psychoanalyst – explains that what is important is desire, and
pleasure is nothing at all, we can wonder whether this disconnection wasn’t a historical event, one that
was not at all necessary, not linked to human nature, or to any anthropological necessity.

[3]

This series of lectures attempts to outline the relation between the subject and truth in three main traditions: Plato

( IV BC ), Hellenistic and Roman philosophy (I-II century), and early Christianity (from the III-IV century up until

the 17

century), especially ascetic and monastic practices. The title of the lecture series is misleading, in that

Foucault does not write of the hermeneutics of the subject, but rather of all the forms of care of the self that

preceded the hermeneutics, hermeneutics being here understood historically as the particular tradition which

establishes a certain relation between the subject and truth within early Christianity. The differences between the

care of the self and the hermeneutics of the subject will be outlined later, but first a few words on the content of

the lectures. There are several references to modern philosophy, the import of which is crucial to position his

project within the rest of his oeuvre, especially in the light of the 1984 essay ‘The Subject and Power’.

The hermeneutics of the subject is recognised as a specific practice and mode of knowledge that started with

Christianity around the III and IV century, especially with the monastic practices of Cassen. Foucault traces the

history of the subject’s relation to truth in these lectures to show how it was not until Christianity that a mode of

care of the self was attached to practices whereby the truth about the subject became the object of self knowledge

and transformation. The first subsumption under the rule of religion of such technologies of the self is not taken

for granted by Foucault, who thus attempts to highlight the differences as well as continuities between the ancient

forms of care of the self and the Christian modes of subjectivation, and hermeneutics of the subject.

Foucault chooses the Alcibiades as the best text to expose the relation between the subject and truth in Plato’s

philosophy. This is mainly due to the appearance in this text of the two notions that will constitute the link for the

whole series of lectures: self knowledge and the care of the self. Foucault attempts to unravel the development of

their interrelation throughout the three traditions mentioned above. He does so in order to show how spirituality

and philosophy came to become separate, or rather, how the subject comes to assume the role of object of his own

knowledge and control.

First of all, Foucault starts with the Alcibiades, the first text where the notion of

επι

••

λεια

εαυτο

• is

problematised. In this text, the appearance in a Socratic dialogue of the Delphic maxim

γν

•

θι

σεαυτ

•

is analysed

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in relation to the injunction to care for the self. Know yourself appears as one of the conditions for the care of the

self, and is explained in terms of knowing one’s limits and ignorance before proceeding to enact the ethical call

for self government and self mastery. As Francois Pradeau has noted, before Plato, the ancient Delphic precept

had moral and religious connotation and was associated with knowing man’s limited nature in order to avoid

excesses and the •

βρις

entailed in acting in place of the gods. Foucault lists the Delphic precept alongside two

others: not asking more than what is necessary and not promising the gods what you can’t keep. Knowing oneself

entailed an attention to oneself in terms of what one needed to know, i.e. one’s mortality and one’s place in the

•

ος

. Know yourself, for instance, is the precept used by Aeschylus in his tragedy Prometheus, where the latter

is incited to know his human nature and to not challenge the gods. So how did the Delphic precept become

associated with the wider call for the care of the self in Socrates?

In that context, the precept still entails an acknowledgement of one’s non-divine and mortal status, and a call

that is more ethical than epistemological. However, its status assumes a more philosophical connotation. By

pointing to the subordination of the Delphic precept to the wider technology of the care of the self in Socrates,

Foucault aims to underline the non-epistemological nature of the original version of self-knowledge. In other

words, he aimed to show how such precept did not entail a subordination of the subject to truth, or an

objectification of the subject to the knowledge of its own internal structures. In the Delphic precept, self

knowledge is functional to knowledge of one’s position with respect to the gods, so that access to truth in

general is strictly dependent on the recognition of the divine in oneself. In the Alcibiades, the first question

posed in relation to Socrates’ injunction to care of the self is: what is the self one ought to take care of, and

what does this care as activity consist of? These two questions are crucial for Foucault, in that the first poses

the question of what the subject is, and in Platonist language, the self is the soul. To know oneself entails

knowing one’s soul, which is in turn a mode of knowing the divine in oneself that in Plato also equates with

justice. This gives rise to what Foucault calls the paradox of Platonism.

This paradox is at the root of the tradition that will culminate in a hermeneutics of the subject. In Socrates we find

what is also called a form of ethical intellectualism, the assumption whereby wrong doing is based on lack of

knowledge. This stance does not account for the intention of wrong doing, which will later acquire an important

place within Christianity. So, Socrates urges Alcibiades to care for himself, and here the know yourself precept

requires an overcoming of one’s unawareness of one’s own ignorance of things. This ignorance of the Soul is one

of simultaneously the Divine and Justice. In fact, at the end of the dialogue, Alcibiades tells Socrates that he will

occupy himself with himself, or in other words, that he will care for justice. ‘In Platonic reminiscence one finds,

united and blocked in one movement of the soul, both self knowledge and knowledge of the truth, care of the self

and return to being.’

[4]

Therefore in Plato, the political and cathartic aspects of philosophy are one and the same. However, Neo-

Platonism will not only invert the relation between self care and self knowledge, but it will also detach

catharsis from politics, through turning one’s attention to oneself into an end detached from the political aim,

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whereas the relation of Alcibiades to the city was crucial in understanding not only the care of the self but also

the art of government in Plato. For Plato, self-government is functional to the government of others. Taking

care of the city necessitates taking care of the self and, in turn, to care for the self directly entails a care for the

city, since there is a direct reciprocity between the state of the self and the state of the city: one’s well-being

being dependent on the other’s. The care of the self in the Alcibiades is also linked to entering one’s adulthood,

as a passage from adolescence to maturity, the entry to civic life. The care of the self has a pedagogical role:

Socrates urges Alcibiades to care for himself as a mode of modifying his relation to government, where

governing oneself cannot be dissociated from governing others.

In the Alcibiades self care is inseparable from the art of governance, of oneself and of others. Alcibiades in fact

aspires to govern the city and Socrates shows him through maieutic his shortfall whilst pointing him towards the

labour of self-transformation required to undertake such political task. ‘Know yourself’ in Plato takes the form of

overcoming one’s ignorance and entails a seizure of the soul, which is accomplished through reminiscence. This is

the platonic model of self knowledge.

Secondly, Foucault goes on to analyse Hellenistic philosophy, where the care of the self assumes a different

function in the technologies of self-constitution and mastery. He looks at the Epicureans and the Stoics, and

outlines the differences between the Socratic version in the Alcibiades and the following versions, coinciding with

the so called revolution in ancient Greece and what many have named the birth of individualism.

[5]

Foucault is

interested in the Hellenistic model of the self because in this tradition he claims we witness a form of care of the

self that is an end in itself: it is autofinalised, as he puts it. He is asking what is the self in Hellenistic philosophy

that is neither subsumed not identified with truth and what are the techniques of the practice of care of the self in a

context where a turn to the self amounts to neither a form of reminiscent knowledge, as with Plato, nor an exegesis

and renunciation, as with monastic-ascetic practices. He can trace the influences of the Platonic and Christian

traditions to modernity, whilst the Hellenistic modality and paradigm he finds lost in history, somehow subsumed

within a rigorous ethics turned into religion.

The theme of know yourself is analysed as the theme of conversion, in its three versions.

This theme is important because Foucault’s notion of déprise de soi is theorised in direct contrast to that of

conversion.

[6]

Foucault notes that in the Platonic tradition, the theme of conversion entails a form of awakening,

in fact Socrates is defined as the awakener. It entails a turning towards one’s soul in order to find the truth beyond

the images, it is a return to being through reminiscence and it opposes this world to the hyperworld.

In the monastic and ascetic practises, conversion is defined as •

εταν

•

ια

, and consists in a passage, a self

transfiguration, a move from death to life, a sudden revelation through self renunciation. By turning towards oneself

one can access the truth of the Word and of Revelation only after a purifying work on the soul, whereby the subject

converts after renouncing itself, which entails a rupture, a sudden event of death and rebirth. Foucault calls this ‘a

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sort of interior movement of transubjectification’.

[7]

The model of reminiscence, also known as

επιστρ

•

φη

, identifies self-knowledge with the care of the self, in the

sense that one arrives at one’s being by turning upon oneself, so that knowledge of truth and self knowledge are one

and the same. However, in the model of monastic practices, of exegesis and renunciation, the care of the self is

subsumed and absorbed under the process of self knowledge and self renunciation, so that self knowledge and

knowledge of the truth are given in succession, i.e. the subject knows the truth of the Word only after being purified.

Monastic practices of the care of the self hence entail a form of vigilance against temptations, against externalities, as

well as an exploration of the secrets of conscience (arcanae coscientiae). This is what Foucault also calls auto-

exegesis, whereby the subject becomes the object of a true discourse, through a knowledge that entails a work of

interiority and the deciphering of the self.

However, the study of Stoicism and Epicureanism presents Foucault with an entirely different and separate form of

relation of the Subject to Truth, one which we could call an immanent relation. The traditions of Hellenist

philosophy offer a model for self knowledge where the latter is coextensive with knowledge of nature. Foucault

obviously recognises and grants the Hellenistic philosophers, especially the Stoics, a view that is wholly

immanent, of both the subject, truth and their relation. As Han noted:

The mode of ancient subjectivation thus forms an exact antithesis to the anthropological structure: the
latter is characterised on the one hand by the immediate definition of the transcendental subject as subject
of knowledge a priori, on the other hand by the redoubling of the transcendental in the empirical
according to the figures of the originary. As one will see, ancient subjectivation operates on exactly
opposite presuppositions: on the one hand, the subject is in its natural state incapable of knowing unless it
makes itself ‘worthy of truth’, the formation of knowledge itself is not conceived as a process of the
epistemological order nor as an end in itself, but as a spiritual transformation of the self by the self, as a
‘conversion’. On the other hand, the subject as such is not regarded as the object of a possible knowledge:
on the contrary, ‘where we intend, as modern, the question of the “possible or impossible objectivation of
the subject within a field of knowledge”, the Ancient understood: “the constitution of a knowledge of the
world as a spiritual experience of the subject”’.

[8]

This is the first distinctive feature of Hellenistic philosophy Foucault is so keen for us to pay attention to. For

Seneca, sibi servire, being slave to oneself, is the worst of slaveries; for Foucault, the stoic mode of self-mastery

can help us is the search for an antidote to the epidemics of techniques of control that, with the help of scientific,

medical and legal knowledges and expertise, function on the basis of the interiorisation of the rule. Important here

is Foucault’s analysis of the Stoics’ attitude to representations and the idea that freedom lies in not being passive to

the flux of representations whilst not ordering them. This refers to what he sees as a lack of method in the

Cartesian path as well as the earliest writings on the relation between spontaneity and receptivity in Kant’s

Anthropology as one to do with man’s being citizen of the world. In fact, there are certain features which make the

Stoic tradition sharply in contrast with that of Platonism and Christianity, which render it autonomous from what

we have previously outlined as the Platonic paradox. One of them is the relation to nature. The immanent

philosophy of the Hellenists never separates knowledge of the self from knowledge of the world, in a fashion

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which renders knowledge useful according to what can be made of it, rather than its validity as a set of logical

rules and systematic enunciations.

This [Demetrius’] critique of useless knowledge does not point us towards the valorisation of a different
savoir that has a different content, which would be the knowledge of ourselves and our interior. It rather
points us towards a different functioning of the same knowledge of external things. Self knowledge isn’t
becoming this deciphering of the arcanes conscientiae, this exegesis of the self that will be developed by
Christianity. The useful knowledge, the knowledge where human existence is in question, is a mode of
relational knowledge, at once assertive and prescriptive, and that is capable of producing a change in the
mode of being of the subject.

[9]

Knowing nature is liberatory for the subject in so far as it places it in relation with the wider rationality of the

•

ος

, as agent as well as element of it. For Foucault, it is a case of ‘disengaging [critique] from a humanism so

easy in theory and so fearsome in reality; a case of substituting to the principle of the transcendence of the ego, the

research into the forms of the immanence of the subject.’

[10]

This is a crucial aspect of Hellenistic philosophy that

we have already explored in our analysis of Foucault’s reading of Kant. In fact the birth of the homo criticus,

which sanctions the end of philosophy as spirituality, poses the same problem in Kant’s Anthropology of seeing

man both as element and agent, subject and object of knowledge. In this, the problem of immanence versus

transcendence is clear: the Stoics can conceive of the two without separation, Kant in the Critiques will not be able

to overcome this obstacle in his science, creating man through his doubles, whilst he will endanger his own

science in the Anthropology.

In so far as philosophy regards knowing nature as a recognition of the subject being part and parcel of a wider

reason, this tradition also tells us that through knowledge the subject can participate to this rationality. In an

expression of Seneca, the subject becomes ‘consortium dei’, looking to itself, ‘contemplatio sui’, entails a

reflection on ourselves within the world and of our belonging to the present. A virtuous soul is that which

communicates with the entire world. Foucault calls this form of immanence a spiritual modulation of knowledge,

where principles of truth are inseparable from rules of conduct.

Whereas we, the modern, intend the question: ‘possible or impossible objectivation of the subject within a
field of knowledge’, the Ancients of the Greek Hellenistic and Roman époque intended it as: ‘constitution
of a knowledge of the world as spiritual experience of the subject’. Where we intend: ‘subjectification of
the subject under the order of the law’, they meant: ‘constitution of the subject as ultimate end for itself,
through and by means of the exercise of truth.

[11]

This brings him directly to the question of

παρρ

•

σια

. In a lecture delivered at Berkeley University Foucault

explains the meaning of this notion, and how important it is in understanding the relation between the subject and

truth, in a moment in history that first saw the emergence of sovereignty and the ‘prince’, with correlative

alienation of rights and hierarchical structures for decision making.

[12]

Παρρ

•

σια

must be understood as the

practice of the self which entails most visibly an unbreakable relation between self-transformation and truth

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telling. Telling the truth does not entail a set of methodological precautions so that the truth is correctly exposed

and understood, but a series of technologies and operations that allow for truth to be and remain something that

exists within the bodies of those through which it runs, in a process of subjectivation.

Foucault insists on the fact that the subject and its interiority cannot be a constitutive field of autonomous knowledge

and that rather than a discourse that aims to tell the truth about the subject, one has to see the ethical project as

working through an embodiment of truth in the subject.

Παρρ

•

σια

is thus seen as the making of a conduct adequate

to the discourse, in relation to the self, whereby truth is neither the best approximation of a discourse to its object nor

the transcendental constitution of a field of possible experience, but it is immediately linked to a structure of

subjectivation and conduct. Believing that telling the truth can cure, believing in the saving power of confession and

the hermeneutics of the self can only ensure obedience. In fact, as philosophy turns into epistemology, spirituality is

also progressively incorporated into disciplinary techniques. The hermeneutics of the self is thus the production of

the subject by the truth on the subject, the opening up of consciousness as a field of exploration and deciphering,

which radically changes the relation between the subject and truth. In the ancient model of the care of the self, the

self is not the object of a specific production of truth, but a practice that seeks to transform itself into an active agent,

through the subjectification of truth, with the aim of turning oneself into an ethical subject. In the hermeneutics the

process is one of telling the truth about the self, and the objectification of the self in a discourse of truth that aims at

the production of obedience. Thus through the notion of the care of the self in Antiquity Foucault captures the role of

a relation to the self that is grounded on a

•

χνη

το

•

βιο

•, and contrasts it to the form of modern Western subjectivity

as that which was constituted the moment ‘

βι

•

ceased to be the object of a

•

χνη

, of a reasonable and rational art’,

in order to become an épreuve of the self, whereby the world, through life, becomes the experience through which we

come to know ourselves: the domain, limit and source of such experience, as we saw in Kant. For Foucault, the

challenge of Western philosophy lies in answering how it is possible that what is given as the object of a knowledge

articulated on the mastering of a

•

χνη

is at the same time also the place where the truth of the subject and of what

we are is tested and arrived at. As he puts it:

How can the world, which is given as the object of knowledge, be at the same time also the place where the
ethical subject of truth manifests and tests itself? How can we have a subject of knowledge that takes the
world as its object through a

•

χνη

, and a subject of self experience that takes the same world, in a radically

different form, as the place for its épreuve? And if the task we inherit from the Aufklärung is to interrogate
the foundations of our system of objective knowledge, then it is also that of interrogating what the
modalities of the experience of the self are grounded on.

[13]

As is the case with other issues, most notably his analysis of power, Foucault’s contribution is itself an épreuve that

produces concepts that help us navigate concrete existence. At this point, we would like to advance further and look

into those analyses that account for silent practices of constitution that go beyond the self whilst addressing

subjectivity today as an ontological question. Foucault’s contribution has been taken up and enriched by Giorgio

Agamben, Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, Christian Marazzi and Maurizio Lazzarato, who in different disciplines have

provided the grounds for thinking the social in terms of a production of subjectivity and have been led by their

analysis of the political economy of current practices of the self, to approach a notion of biopolitics which can not

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only help us break out of the power-resistance lock, but also address a realm of self constitution that requires and

takes for granted the collective intelligence which forms and informs us as subjects, elements and agents. In the

following studies on power and control we would like to move onto an exploration of the present in the critical spirit

of Foucault, taking up the challenge of interrogating the modalities of experience of the self today and begin to point

towards useful tools for answering the urgent question of an ontology of our present.

Next Chapter

back to Table of Contents

[1]

Foucault had previously mentioned in this tradition of efforts to think of an ethics and aesthetics of the self: Montaigne, Stirner, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche,

dandyism, Baudelaire, anarchist thought.

[2]

Ibid. p. 6

[3]

M. Foucault, Essential Works: Ethics. 2000, p. 263-264

[4]

M. Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 244

[5]

On the alleged birth of individualism, to which the comedies of Menandros attest explicitly, Foucault’s controversial position is expounded in History of

sexuality. Vol. III. The care of the self, London : Penguin Publishers, p. 42. He sees that individualism is invoked to explain very different phenomena: the
individualist attitude, held by military aristocracies; the positive evaluation of private life, a value of the bourgeoisie in Western countries during the 19th century;
an intensity in the relation to the self, propelled by the Christian Ascetic Movement.

[6]

‘What can the ethics of an intellectual be – I reclaim the term “intellectual” which, at the present moment, seems to nauseate some – if not that: to render oneself

permanently capable of self-detachment (which is the opposite of the attitude of conversion)?’, M. Foucault in ‘Concern for Truth’, Foucault Live, 1996, p. 461

[7]

M. Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 249

[8]

Béatrice Han, ‘Analytique de la finitude et histoire de la subjectivité’ article sent via email in June 2002, (my translation from French)

[9]

Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 228

[10]

Foucault, cited by Frédéric Gros in his postface to L’Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 507

[11]

Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 304

[12]

Foucault says: ‘In fact, the reason why anger in this period acquires such importance is that at that moment –and it has happened for centuries, from the

Hellenistic period until the end of the Roman Empire- people tried to pose the question of the economy of power relations within a society where the structure of
the city is no longer predominant and where the appearance of great Hellenistic monarchies, the a fortiori appearance of the imperial regime, pose the problem of
the adequation of the individual to the sphere of power and of his position in the sphere of power that he can exercise in new terms. How can power be anything but
a privilege of status to exercise [it] as one wants, when one wants, in accordance with this originary status itself? How can the exercise of power become a precise
and determined function, that finds its rules not in the statutory superiority of the individual but within the precise and concrete tasks that is has to carry out?’
Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 358-359

[13]

Ibid. p. 467

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b) The political economy of the production of subjectivity:

a critique of liberal rationality

Foucault introduces a definition of biopower within his wider reflections on the role of a political discourse on

subjectivity. After all, the idea that a social function of knowledge does not necessarily correspond to its truth

value is in itself of little innovative import. Pointing to the interrelation and mutual constitution of practices of

power and knowledge had already been a preoccupation of the tradition that ran through historical materialism and

sociology of knowledge. What is of importance in his definition of biopower and discipline is the analysis of the

effects of a horizontal application of knowledge across society in the formation and the shaping of subjectivities. It

is in this context that we also place his reflections on the materiality of language and the status of man in the

positivity of knowledge. The problem of man’s finitude and the circularity of the human sciences are there seen as

productive of effects at the ontological level. What is at stake is not only self cognition but also the ordering of our

universe according to criteria of Sameness and self referentiality.

Language is ‘rooted’ in the active subject, not in the things perceived. It is not a memory that duplicates
representation. We speak because we act, not because recognition is a means of cognition. […]
Representation ceased to have validity as the laws of origin of living beings, needs and words. It no
longer deploys the table into which things have been ordered. It is not their identity that beings manifest
in representation, but the external relation they establish with human beings. Representation is their
effect, their blurred counterpart in consciousness which apprehends and reconstitutes them. It is the
phenomenon – appearance – of an order that now belongs to things in themselves and to their interior
law. Man’s finitude is heralded in the positivity of knowledge. At the foundation of all empirical
positivities we discover a finitude. In the heart of empiricity there’s indicated an obligation to work
backwards – or downwards – to an analytic of finitude in which man’s being will be able to provide a
foundation in their own positivity for all those forms that indicate to him that he is not infinite.

[1]

The result of this process is the overturning of analysis and metaphysics, whereby in place of a metaphysics of

representations and the infinite we find a metaphysics of life, labour and language; whilst the analysis of living

beings, desires and words is replaced by an analytics of finitude: the endless task of Modern criticism. This is the

place of structuralism and hermeneutics, of formalism and phenomenology, and finally of psychoanalysis and

ethnology opened up by the appearance of man, their task being to ‘fill in the gap in the continuum between

representation and being’

[2]

For instance, in the classical episteme, both for Physiocrats and Utilitarians – who occupy opposite stances in

relation to the analysis of value production- value has the same function in economics as the verb has in language:

as the verb links and articulates two names and makes it possible to build a proposition, so does value link two

things (regarded as equivalent in their utility) and makes their exchange possible. This is only possible in so far as

continuity between things and their respective representation is assumed: a relation of continuity and visibility that

is broken down with the emergence of the modern episteme.

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Humanism permeates contemporary historical consciousness in a way that traps thought in a circularity of intents.

‘And it is a fact that, at least since the seventeenth century, what is called humanism has always been obliged to

lean on certain conceptions of man borrowed from religion, science or politics. Humanism serves to colour and

justify the conceptions of man to which it is, after all, obliged to take recourse’.

[3]

The questions opened up by The Order of Things is one concerning the relation of truth and being: is there a role

and possibility for a non - formal ontology, one that is not exhausted in the analytics of finitude intended as a

science of measurements, that also avoids a linear historicisation trapped in the interpretative framework of

hermeneutical exegesis? Crucially, the question posed by the works on ethics, especially in L’Herméneutique du

sujet, is: can the task of a critical ontology of ourselves remain autonomous from the human sciences and

discourses of medicine, politics and religion?

We have explored these two questions in the previous sections: it is now time to look into the political

implications of such positive ontology and ethics. Foucault keeps working on the instruments for a desertion of the

circularities that trap us in a dialectics of dependency. As he had deconstructed that of man as subject and object of

discourse in his critique of the human sciences by reflecting on the position of man in the world through Kant’s

Anthropology; as he had done through the deconstruction of the circularity of the hermeneutics of self

transformation and self knowledge by pointing to the interstices opened up by Stoic ethics. Now, through a

critique of the paradigm of sovereignty we shall see how he points us out of the vicious circle grounded on the

symmetrical opposition between power and resistance. Foucault provides us with invaluable tools for

understanding the meaning and possibility of autonomy of thought and action in our days. The interrogations on

the workings of power in discourses on sovereignty, the subject, history, war and the state of exceptions posit the

urgency for us to rethink the notion of resistance and politics in our days.

Foucault’s work on discipline and biopolitics is where the most overtly 'political' emphasis is found but the

analyses of historical discourses equally address the problem of subjectivity and the possibility of what we might

call an alternative anthropology in so far as through them, the empirical positivity of knowledge throws light on

what is productively and indicatively a determining factor in the emergence of practices of subjectivation on the

one hand, and changes in technologies of the self on the other. Foucault seeks to highlight the dependence of

present discourses and practices of resistance on notions that stem from the augmentation of the efficiency of

regulation. Foucault’s genealogies are carried out within the framework of a valorisation of the positive and

productive force of power. His genealogical work on medicine, criminology and sovereignty shows that the

productivity of power is realised through policies that allow for the formation of the individual through plans of

disciplinary normalisation and of the population through biopolitical interventions on a mass scale. We cannot be

satisfied with current forms of struggle demanding protection at the level of rights, health or communication: they

are induced struggles that reinforce rather than opposing the very mechanisms that produce risk in order to

generate security.

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The relation between risk and security is an important one in our days. As a reflection on actualité Foucault’s

writings acquire a greater force in our times of war on terror. In this spirit we will look at his reflections on the

police state, political economy, political science and liberalism in order to arrive at an idea of governmentality on

which the debate on technologies of the self and biopolitical production can be grounded.

The emergence of biopower.

For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a
political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in
question.

[4]

The mainstream literature that still constitutes a large part of the hegemonic paradigm of political theory in our

times adopts the notions of the workings of power as sovereignty, right, duty and contract as the foundation of any

possible reflection and advancement on the idea of government and its exercise. In Discipline and Punish

Foucault carries out a thorough critique of the foundations of the political theory of sovereignty by introducing his

notion of disciplines. Unlike the judicial power of sovereign right, these were concerned with the practice of power

on the individual and his body.

[5]

As a reflection on actualité, Foucault will later observe that a problem arises when in reacting to mechanisms of

disciplinary power we make recourse to a theory of sovereignty and right, thus trusting one mechanism of power

to be fairer than the other. Part of his critical genealogy of the political rationality of liberalism consists in laying

out the contours of the discourse on government and its relation to political economy as one whereby the state or

political institutions are called upon as arbiters of right. Foucault questions the supposed neutrality of the legal

apparatus and goes back to tracing the historical emergence of ‘justice as fairness’ to the moment when duels and

violence ceased to be expedient for the practice of acquisition and exchange. These considerations are to be taken

in the context of the resurgence of civil liberties struggles and the appeal to a politics of identity that needed to be

reaffirmed and sought legitimacy in the sphere of rights.

[6]

Foucault questions the idea that discipline can be

fought by means of an appeal to rights by introducing the notion of war in the analysis of the rationality of

strategies and calculations in politics and struggle. This is the one of the most interesting aspects of his 1976

lectures series called ‘Il faut défendre la société’: the setting up of the philosophical and juridical discourse on

sovereignty - the foundation of the political theory of a universal rights bearing subject – against the historical

political discourse on politics as war, with its ensuing perspectivism, a discourse where ‘truth functions as a

weapon to be used for a partisan victory’

[7]

and that looks, beneath political institutions, at the permanent war

present in society.

[8]

The analysis of biopower thus aims at highlighting the introduction of a new element both with respect to judicial

power and disciplinary techniques. The theory of sovereign right functioned on the basis of the pre-determined and

complementary notions of individual and society, which, at the outcome of the sovereign constitutive process, turn

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into the contracting individual and the social body as constituted through the contract (whether voluntary or

implicit). The notion of biopower introduces a new element to the analysis of power: biopower deals with neither

of the two symmetrical axes constituted around the political theorisation of sovereignty: society (as the judicial

body defined by law and the contract) and the individual-body. What historically emerges with the introduction of

biopower as a practice is the notion of a ‘social body’ as the object of government. In other words, it is the

emergence of a preoccupation with population: biopolitics is concerned with population as a political and scientific

problem as well as a biological issue of the exercise of power. Thus, biopower does not act on the individual a

posteriori, as a subject of discipline in the diverse forms of rehabilitation, normalisation and institutionalisation; it

acts on the population in a preventive fashion. Its legitimacy stems from its preoccupation with optimising life

chances and it operates through surveys for the prevention of epidemics and scarcity. Its government works

through management and the regulative mechanisms that are able to account for aleatory and ‘unpredictable’

phenomena on a global scale, by determining an equilibrium and keeping events within an acceptable average.

Biopower is not just discipline but regulation on a global scale, it is ‘the power to make live. Power won’t make

die, but it will regulate mortality.’

[9]

According to Foucault, with the emergence of biopower, the power mechanisms that run through body, organism,

discipline to institution are progressively substituted and in places juxtaposed by those taking population,

biological processes, regulatory mechanisms and the state as their operative field, even though some elements such

as the police are part both of the first and the second, being concerned with discipline as well as security.

What we understand by biopower is the operative practice of liberalism. As we shall later see, Foucault’s analysis

of modern political rationality demonstrates how liberalism needs the police to reduce government. What appears

to be the almost physical action-reaction chain that characterises his notion of power/resistance challenges the idea

that there is a possibility to transcend one's position by positing a challenge from the outside by asserting that in

biopolitics transcendence is impossible since there is no outside. We will later see how Hardt and Negri’s thesis in

Empire is informed by this premise.

Towards a Critique of governmental reason

Foucault's 1979 lecture course entitled ‘Du gouvernement des vivants’ continue this analysis of the discourse of

sovereignty in modernity. Foucault there specifically analyses the liberal mode of government. The

governmentality of liberalism in its ideology is presented as self-critical in so far as it problematises state

intervention and ‘minimises it’. Foucault asserts that the entry of political economy in political discourse not only

sanctioned the end of the debate on the natural right to rule, but also introduced the idea of a truth about and a

science of governing. The question of truth and self-limitation of government is introduced by political economy

and in Foucault's words, it supplants the theory of sovereignty with the art of governing, and opposes to the

maximalist idea of la raison d'état, the 'minimalist' idea of 'liberal government' which emerges parallel to the

German studies on Polizeiwissenschaft. The idea that emerges through these studies is that liberal governmentality

produces as well as organises freedoms, alongside security strategies, control and surveillance geared to prevent

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the dangers inherent to the production of freedom, together with the ideology of 'dangerous' living aimed to turn

individuals into 'abnormal', 'monsters' etc. In fact, liberalism, the individuating practices of disciplines and the life

management of biopower are co-extensive in purpose and application. They co-exist and are mutually

interdependent and pre-constitute the field of play for the intransitivity of freedom. For Foucault, the intransitivity

of freedom means that freedom is always present. One is not free to be unfree. In his late essay on ‘The Subject

and Power’

[10]

Foucault defines government more clearly as the structuring of the field of action for others. In

Foucault’s genealogy of the notion of governmentality, the latter emerges at the historical juncture where the

theory of sovereignty is substituted by the ‘art of governing’ (the how-to of states, how to manage individuals,

wealth and things). With the appearance of the problem of population and economics finally the art of governing

supplants that of sovereignty. Biopower, fully operational by the 18th century, is a government that no longer

functions through the administrative or juridical apparatus of sovereignty, but through control and norms. As

Foucault writes: ‘Maybe what is most important for our modernity, for our actuality, is not the statalisation of

society, but what I’d call the governmentalisation of the state.’

[11]

If the theory of sovereignty was concerned with

how to ensure obedience in a territory and a population through the application of the law, the art of government

aims to dispose of individuals and things in the most convenient of manners.

Sovereignty is not exercised on things, but above all on a territory and consequently on the subjects who
inhabit it. […] The definition of government in no way refers to territory. One governs things: men in
their relations, their links, their imbrication with those other things which are wealth, resources, means of
subsistence, the territory with its specific qualities […], men in relation to that other kind of things,
customs, habits, ways of acting and thinking; men in their relation to that other kind of things, accidents
and misfortunes such as famine, epidemics, death etc. Thus the art of government concerns things
understood in this way, this imbrication of men and things.

[12]

Following Foucault’s reasoning, the problematisation of governmentality at the outset was one of the government

of the self (concerning morality), the government of the family (concerning economics) and the science of ruling

the state (politics). In the art of government, contrary to the theory of sovereignty that sought to establish the limits

and field of operation and defences for the ruling political power with respect to all other kinds of powers, what

matters is how to establish a continuity between these three elements of governance, and to this end the science of

politics needs to incorporate and subsume the management of the economy. For Foucault the subsumption of

economic rationality into the art of governance is crucial for it paves the way for a discourse of political rationality

for which development, the neutralisation of social conflicts and the control and surveillance of society as a whole

becomes crucial. Civil society inserts itself in this juncture to ensure the continuity between the state and the

policing of individuals. The main question posed by the emergence of liberalist political rationality was: what is

the raison d’être of government? According to Foucault, the key to answer this question lies in an analysis of

society itself, rather than some notion of law and obedience: why and how much does society need governing?

Thus the question of government is one of control over people and in the discourse of liberalism one can see how

discipline and democracy necessarily cohabit in order to make government as economic and efficient as possible.

‘Il faut défendre la société’

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In the course delivered at the Collège de France in 1976, named ‘Il faut défendre la société’ Foucault develops

the notion of political historicism and traces its emergence at the end of the 16th century. The 1976 lectures

present a history of power, parallel to his history of sexuality. The introduction sets out two traditions running

through historiography: one can be identified with Wilhelm Reich and refers to the repressive mechanism of

power. The other is ascribed to Friedrich Nietzsche and investigates the foundation of relations of power as

one of warring forces confronting one another. Foucault asks whether these are reconcilable positions since

repression is nothing but the political consequence of war, just as oppression, within the classical theory of

political right, is the abuse of sovereignty within the juridical order.

[13]

The course outlines the notorious reversal of C. von Clausewitz’s formula

[14]

and traces the main characteristics

of the historical discourse of what he calls the war of races. The war of races is analysed as the opposite pole of the

historical discourse of sovereignty that refers to Roman law and right. Foucault regards the discourse on the war of

races as a counter-history, which through the description of rituals, ceremonies and myths, operates as an

intensifier of power. On the other hand, the history of sovereign power is the history that creates the monuments

that he referred to in the Archaeology of Knowledge, one that will crystallise into the present. Through the counter-

history of the war of races and its genealogy he aims to look at the silent struggles of what remained in the shadow

of the history of sovereignty. We can see that for Foucault this is an example of the buried historical knowledge

and erudition which he aims to bring to light, as we have seen in part I. Apart from a lecture on England and

Thomas Hobbes, the rest of the course is mostly dedicated to the histories of Henry de Boulainvilliers, of comte de

Montlosier and France and ends with an analysis of the related notions of revolution and racism through their

inscription in the biopolitical discourse of war in the modern state. In his analysis Foucault takes up anti-

historicism and tries to show how a certain historical political discourse, unlike political theory and jurisprudence,

has adopted the war model as a tool of analysis of political relations.

[15]

Foucault's genealogy of this counter-

history describes the mechanisms through which power carries on war in times of peace, namely through

disciplines and later biopower.

As we have seen with Agamben, an analysis of peace is complementary to one of the state of exception: Foucault

claims that nowhere is the notion of peace more crucial than in Hobbes. His interest in Hobbes dwells on his

outline the three principles of a theory of sovereignty: the Subject, the Unity of Power and the Law. According to

Foucault, Hobbes is the thinker of peace par excellence, because his idea that politics can pose an end to war was

functional to hide the war of his period.

[16]

For Hobbes it is the state of war that is a permanent threat to

sovereignty, rather than war itself. Foucault looks into Hobbes in order to introduce the birth of biopower and the

war of races, whereby once the One is constituted under the Unity of Power, the Subject becomes a biological

entity that needs an Other for its own reproduction. Here we can see the similarities with Agamben’s critical

genealogy of the term people. In Foucault’s lectures, the state of Britain in Hobbes’ times is analysed at length and

described as the field of emergence of the idea of the 'war of races', which is parallel and co-functional to the

notion of civil society, whereby a state of war internal to a supposedly unitary sovereign body functions on the

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basis of an operation of internal colonialism. Foucault points out that before Hobbes, in political theory, there

existed a whole discourse based on notions of conquest, war and usurpation that looked at the ‘relation of

domination of a race on another and at the permanent threat of a revolt of the defeated against the winners’.

[17]

Hobbes’ aim was to silence the historico-political discourse that was operative in the struggles of his time and that

looked at domination rather than sovereignty and law. His natural jurisprudence aimed at neutralising this radical

discourse, which Foucault on the contrary wants to bring back into play.

This falls into his project of critique as one that as we have seen requires a resurrection of subjugated knowledge

and its coupling with historical erudition. Foucault explores the idea that the juridical concept of power entails

thinking power in function of war, whereby power relations are relations of force and peace is nothing but silent

war. A study of political struggles in times of civil peace helps one decipher the form of war and that the history of

peace is a history of the continuation of war. This reversal of Clausewitz’s formula is crucial for Foucault since it

directly points to the juridical organisation of public law as an effect of surface or appearance and voices the

existence of all the disciplinary operations that render the real function of power that of conducting war in other

forms. In these terms, the juridical-political reading of power in terms of sovereignty is defined by Foucault as a

trap, created by power itself. It is the way power uses to speak of itself.

[18]

Foucault regards this move to coincide

with the birth of dialectics and philosophy of history. In fact, he regards the disqualification of historicism in

knowledge to be concomitant with the attempt to exorcise this war paradigm. As he puts it: ‘War is conducted

through the history that is made and through that which is told’.

[19]

He had already analysed the profound anti-

historicism of the human sciences in The Order of Things. For Foucault, this is due to the fact that from the 18

century onwards Western knowledge has been organised around the ideas of peace and order and has had to

disqualify struggle and war as possible registers of truth. ‘This is what makes historicism unbearable to us and

with it the sort of indissociable circularity between historical knowledge and the wars that it talks about whilst

being traversed by them’.

[20]

For Foucault, the analysis of the discourse of war and that of the emergence of biopolitics and the notion of

people are inextricably linked. In this respect, he analyses Boulainvilliers’ method of writing histories during the

period that precedes the French revolution and observes that the emergence of the discourse on barbarism -as

opposed to that of the noble savage- characterises the epistemic field of this historical moment that will sanction

the anti-historicism of the bourgeoisie, which then would be later recuperated during the French revolution. In a

concerted effort of jurisprudence and anthropology, these two figures are pitted against one another: whilst the

noble savage in the discourse on civil society and political theory was presented as a bearer of rights, a juridical

subject and a homo economicus, the figure of the barbarian was one outside recuperation and inclusion in so far as

it directly symbolised a relation of domination. At this time, according to Foucault, what had once been the

historical discourse of the aristocracy undergoes a tactical generalisation. The term tactical is crucial here, for

Foucault specifies that it entails a function that deeply differs from that normally ascribed to what is called ‘ruling

class ideology’. This function is rather that of a dispositif of knowledge/power, which in so far as it can be

described as a tactic, is also transferable. According to Foucault, the tactics of this dispositif are displayed on three

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directions: that of nationality (language), that of class (economy), and that of race (biology). Here we can see the

same tripartite structure found in The Order of Things (language, labour, life). The question of tactics clarifies

much of what was left ambiguous in The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge:

The tactical reversibility of discourse is a direct function of the homogenisation of its rules of formation.
It is the regularity of the epistemic field and the homogeneity within the mode of discourse formation that
permits its use in struggles, which on the other hand are extra-discursive. It is for this methodological
reason that I have insisted on the repartition of different discursive tactics within a coherent, regular and
strictly formed historical-political field.

[21]

Hence this tactical generalisation entails a re-assessment of the strategy by means of the genealogy of struggle and

is reconstituted through them. By reversibility and transferability of tactical dispositif of knowledge/power,

Foucault means that:

One can easily go from one of these histories to another only individuating few simple transformations in
the fundamental propositions. We are here faced with an epistemic grille that is extremely tight and made
up by all historical discourses independently from what they claim as their theses and political aims. But
the fact that this epistemic grille is so tight does not mean that all think the same way. On the contrary, it
even constitutes the condition of possibility for thinking otherwise, and makes it possible for this
difference to be politically pertinent.

[22]

The emergence of a discourse on barbarism is thus in direct opposition to the constitutionalist ambitions of the

bourgeoisie. The latter, by calling for an a-historical recourse to natural right, had attempted to exorcise the

historicism of the old aristocracy, which had posited war rather than the political theory of jurisprudence as the

foundation of political relations. The eventual victory of the third estate also sanctions the emergence of a

dialectics of history and a philosophy of history, whereby the nation is to be referred to an idea of universalism and

its relation to the particular and (in E. J. Sieyès

[23]

) this comes to coincide with the third estate, the only social

force that can have a universalising power beyond the particularism of group belonging. This will also allow for a

history of civil relations to substitute that of war relations.

In relation to the role of the present in historical analysis Foucault observes that from the 18th century authors

from different political backgrounds and perspectives start adopting two main grilles of intelligibility as their

reference point: domination and totalisation.

One is constituted by the attempt to write history according to the present and with the view of universalising

discourse, starting off from the idea of the state and taking it to be the object of seizure of power by different social

formations. Here the present enters historical discourse as the moment of the expression of universalism, the

immanence force of truth that reveals itself and the past in the real. The other works along the lines of a history

written according to the paradigm of war and struggle between different ‘nations’ or races with different internal

discourses attempting to seize power by dominating other social forces. This sees the present as a moment of

‘forgetfulness’ and its task as that of wakening consciousness through recourse to ‘a reactivation of the primitive

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moment in the order of knowledge’. As we can see, the latter notion of power is symmetrical rather than

incorporative.

He provides as examples the histories of comte de Montlosier and Augustin Thierry. Montlosier represents the

‘right’ of the aristocracy and provides an elaboration of the historical driving forces leading up to the French

Revolution in terms of the monarch using the people to take power away from the aristocracy. Absolute monarchy

invests the people with the task of revolting against the power of the aristocracy in a way that ultimately sanctions

its own legitimacy. In this sense, struggle and revolts are political tools in the hands of the monarch.

[24]

Thierry, on the other hand, justifies the same event on the lines of a dichotomisation between rural and urban sites

of power that increased in the 19

century, whereby the urban centre achieves predominance with the expansion

of commerce and other forms of the economy and finally takes power over rural sites, imposing its own discourse

upon the opposing one. These struggles are not identified according to a military order but rather seen in their civil

status. The present is seen as the ‘moment of fullness’ where all is reconciled and war becomes one instrument of

this reconciliation rather than the central force behind its unfolding.

The latter form of historical writing sanctions the birth of philosophy of history in its dialectical guise: ‘History

and philosophy will come to the same question: what is, in the present, the agent of the universal? What is, in the

present, that which constitutes the truth of the universal? This is the question asked by history, but also, now, the

question asked by philosophy. The dialectic is born.’

[25]

It was only with the emergence of revolutionary discourse that the history of the war of races is reactivated. This

posits, beyond the political formalism of the third estate,

[26]

the question of what Agamben calls the fundamental

biopolitical fracture.

The history of races is a counter-history. It aims at showing the sealed truth of power, how kings,
sovereigns and law rest their power on abuse and murder; unlike Roman history, where the task of
memory was to reassure the non-obliteration and the permanence of law and continuous growth of the
splendour of power. Power is unjust not because it has decayed since its golden times, but simply because
it does not belong to us. The discourse of biblical character that develops from the end of the 16th century
aims at declaring a war on law. For instance, Petrarch asked in the middle Ages: is there anything, in
history, that is not an elegy of Rome ? The birth of Europe is sanctioned by blood and war and by this
historical discourse that finally detached Indo-European civilisations from the Roman inheritance. […]
Nowadays, what we ask, following Petrarch, is: is there anything more to history than the appeal to or
fear of revolution? And we add: what if Rome conquered the revolutions again?

[27]

As we have seen, this discourse is a tactical, polymorphous and mobile dispositif, which has been used by the

English radical thought of the 17

century (the Levellers and Diggers), subsequently by the French aristocracy

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against the power of Louis XIV, which re-emerges in the 19

century, when it was adopted by post revolutionary

attempts at making a people the subject of history, whilst some years later it was used to disqualify colonised

under-races.

In the discourse where the question is the war of races, the word race does not have immediately a stable
biological signification, yet it is a determinate word. There are two races when two groups have different
local origins, language, religion, and have formed a political unity through war and violence. There are
two major functions of historical discourse: on the one hand, the Roman history of sovereignty, on the
other, the biblical discourse of exile and servitude. Revolutionary discourse is situated on the side of the
discourse of war of races, as Marx said to Engels in 1882: ‘You know where we found the idea of class
struggle, in the French historians who talked about race struggles’. This form of counter history, of
history as vindication, cannot be detached by the emergence and the existence of a practice of counter
history, insurrection.

[28]

The moment historic consciousness of modern times replaces the problem of sovereignty and its foundation with

the question of the revolution, there emerges a counter discourse of races that founds itself on biologism and

racism. When Foucault talks of racism he is not referring to the notion of ethnicity, but to that of evolutionism. For

Foucault, racism is the biopolitical update of this war paradigm, because the moment life becomes the object of

power racism operates in societies of normalisation as what makes it possible to decide and regulate what can live

and what cannot.

The discourse of the war of races, with its battles, its victories etc, will be replaced by a post-evolutionist
biological theme of the war for life: differentiation of species, selection of the strongest, conservation of
races etc. Equally, the theme of the binary society divided in two races and two groups foreign to one
another will be replaced by that of a society biologically monist. Its character will be that of a society
which is undermined by heterogeneous elements that are not essential because they do not divide the
living social body into two hostile sides, but are almost accidental. There you have the idea of infiltrated
foreigners or deviants as sub-products of society. Finally, the theme of a necessarily unjust state,
according to the counter history of races, will be transformed into a state that is not the instrument of a
race against another, but the protector of integrity and superiority and purity of one race. So, the idea of
race comes to take the place of the idea of a war of races.

From the end of the 19

century this racism has undergone two transformations: Foucault asserts that state racism

is biological and centralised; hence, whilst in Nazism state racism is inscribed back into the legend of warring

races, in Stalinism the adaptation of revolutionary discourse of the war of races is inserted into scientism and

police management. Foucault’s introduction of the notion of biopower is crucial for a project of an ontology of our

present. As we shall see in the following section it has provided the grounds for an insightful analysis of the

workings of what Deleuze later named the society of control at a number of levels, from the linguistic, to the

historical, to the anthropological and political economic one. Foucault’s differentiation between disciplinary power

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and biopower as outlined in this lecture course draws our attention to a number of important elements for today:

whilst one is certainly the centrality of the notion of struggle in understanding social relations, the other is the

notion of biopower, which urges us to reflect upon a technology that operates on populations more than

individuals, that is geared towards regulation more than surveillance and that in so doing reopens the debate on the

political role of production and reproduction today at a time when the crisis of disciplinary mechanisms of social

regulation has been sutured.

Next Chapter

back to Table of Contents

[1]

M. Foucault, ‘Man and his doubles. III. The analytic of finitude’ in The Order of Things, 1986, p. 207

[2]

Ibidem

[3]

M. Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in The Foucault Reader, 1984, p. 44

[4]

M. Foucault, History of Sexuality Volume 1: The Will to Knowledge, 1978, p. 143

[5]

The interrelation between disciplines and sovereignty has been interestingly analysed by Robert Fine in ‘Struggles against Discipline: The Theory and Politics

of Michel Foucault’, Capital and Class, Issue no. 9, Autumn 1979

[6]

Still today, for instance, the European Court deliberates on matters of rights in a manner that is exemplary of the decisions to include or exclude certain

practices, in the field of sexuality, reproduction technologies, children’s welfare etc. in an attempt to shape the pioneering force of its political ethics, many turn to
this symbolic whilst executive power to defend and circumscribe the legality of their practices.

[7]

M. Foucault, ‘Course summary’, ‘Society Must Be Defended’ [1976], London : Penguin, 2003, p. 270

[8]

The notion of perspectivism was one of the main methodological innovations the Marxian current of Operaismo systematically introduced and carried out

during the 1970’s. On this it is interesting to note how for those who defended the autonomy of the political and interpreted perspectivism in strictly political terms,
the project remained trapped in a sociology of class seen as ‘the’ differential subjectivity and became primarily concerned with correlative strategies of belonging
(see Mario Tronti). For others, amongst whom is Negri, this perspectivism was epistemological and ontological and the question one of constituting an ethics of
antagonism (‘The old specialist language of philosophy here is deficient, and Foucault was right when, by renewing the Nietzschean method of ‘genealogy of
morals’, he also renewed the syntactic rules of the language of moral philosophy. I would like to attempt a similar course of action with respect to the language of
metaphysics’. Antonio Negri, Fabbriche del soggetto. Profili, protesi, transiti, macchine, paradossi, passaggi, sovversioni, sistemi, potenze: appunti per un
dispositivo ontologico. XXI Secolo bimestrale di politica e cultura n. 1. 1987. Chapter 2: ‘No future’ or on the ethical essence of epistemology’: p. 56) – my
translation

[9]

Foucault analyses in detail the emergence of biopower in ‘Il faut défendre la société’, see in particular the Lecture held on 17/03/1976

[10]

M. Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’ in H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 1982

[11]

M. Foucault, Dits et Ecrits Vol III, 1994, p. 656

[12]

M. Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, published in G. Burchell (ed.) The Foucault Effect, 1991, Chapter 4.

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[13]

M. Foucault, ‘Bisogna difendere la societá’, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1998, p. 23

[14]

According to Clausewitz, ‘War is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means’; therefore ‘it is not only a political act, but also an instrument of politics, a

continuation of the political process by other means.’ C. van Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, book 1, chapter 1, § xxiv, Berlin , 1832

[15]

In this and else he seems to be taking up the 1936 thesis formulated by Meinecke in Die Entstehung des Historismus by defining historicism as the political-

historical discourse of conquest, struggle and races. This hypothesis is developed by Michel Senéllart in his ‘Oltre la ragion di stato’, published in Situations de la
démocratie, 1993 Volume of the journal ‘La pensée Politique’. I have used the online version (in Italian) stored at http://www.sherwood.it. In this article, Senéllart
looks at the question of historicism and Meinecke in the last three pages

[16]

These are the years 1640-1660

[17]

M. Foucault, ‘Bisogna difendere la societá’, 1998, p. 90

[18]

To this Foucault opposes the practice of

παρρ

•

σια

as the practice of truth telling

[19]

Ibid., p. 152. We certainly do not lack the evidence to support and empathise with this statement today

Ibidem

Ibid., p. 180

Ibid., p. 179

E. J. Sieyès, Che cos’é il Terzo Stato? (1789), Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1989

[24]

M. Foucault, ‘Bisogna difendere la societá’, 1998, p. 200

[25]

Ibid., p. 205.

[26]

I here adopt Marx’s definition of political formalism

[27]

Ibid., p. 69-70

[28]

Ibid., p. 73

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III. Technologies of the common.

Reflections on Postfordism

In Empire,

[1]

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have carried out a critique of the present state form that

stems from a productive encounter between French post-structuralism and the analysis of political economy

accomplished by the Marxian current of Operaismo since the 1970’s.

[2]

We would like to explore the

encounter between the latter and Foucault’s notions of biopower in order to introduce the current debates on

what has come to be defined as biopolitical production in postfordism.

The Labour paradigm: Fordism and discipline

In Foucault, the notion of power and the reproduction of its technologies is crucially linked to the workings of

economic rationality. As we have seen, in his critique of liberal rationality he outlined the way in which

political economy invested the discourse of sovereignty and governmentality became the principle of

biopolitical rule. The question of production and reproduction cannot avoid taking into account the way in

which power normalises, disciplines and regulates. Foucault’s notion of power is primarily one of a productive

force. The question of how this operates inside (or outside) what is traditionally understood as the realm of

production has guided our research into Postfordism. Negri analyses the relation between capital and labour

from the perspective of power and struggle. It is clear that in the 1970s his work and that of others in the

current of Operaismo started looking to Foucault’s theory as an important contribution to the critique of

capitalism in its changing form. Being concerned with class composition and the realm of the social they

shared Foucault’s attention to the capillary operations of power in society. In analysing the shift from factory

society to the social factory, we would like to point to the crisis of the disciplinary regime and the emergence

of biopolitical rule and control society by focusing on the realm of production, a production that is intended as

a force operating at the levels of power as well as subjectivity. In Negri’s analysis, with the emergence of

‘factory society’ the artificial separation between the political and the economic lost effectiveness. No

mediation was necessary and accumulation became its own discipline. The state as the executive organ of

capital represented the direct negation of single capitalists in favour of the class interests of capital. It

embodied the ‘political law of collective capital’ and capital became synonymous with the general interest.

The ‘democracy of labour’ and ‘social democracy’ both reside here: they consist of the hypothesis of
a form of labour that negates itself as the working class and autonomously manages itself within the
structures of capitalist production as labour-power. At this point capitalist social interest, which has
already eliminated the privatistic (sic) and egoistic expressions of single capitalists, attempts to
configure itself as a comprehensive, objective social interest.

[3]

Thus the post-war revolutionary import of socialist principles in the constitution is annulled. In fact, organised

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labour comes to facilitate the restructuring of the capitalist class.

As an organised movement the working class is completely within the organisation of capital, which
is the organisation of society. Its watchwords and its ideological and bureaucratic apparatuses are all
elements that are situated within the dialectic of bourgeois development.

[4]

At the point where capital is identified with the common interest of society, an inversion occurs in the realm of

social phenomenology wherein the labour nexus appears as the strength of capital’s valorisation and the basis

of society itself.

[5]

This is reflected in the incorporation of the socialist principles according to which labour is

the source of all wealth – which Marx had already taken up in the Critique of the Gotha programme – being

instantiated as a principle within the Bourgeois constitution (Negri calls the integration of this reformism the

constitutionalisation of labour). Foucault analyses what Negri calls the factory society as the disciplinary

regime typical of 19th century capitalism:

Capitalism penetrates much deeper into our existences. In the form in which it has functioned in the
19

century, this regime has been forced to develop a series of political techniques, or power

techniques through which man comes to be linked to something like labour; a series of techniques by
means of which the body and time of men become labour force and labour time, and can be
effectively used to become surplus-value. But in order to have surplus value there must be sub-power.
At the level of man’s existence, a capillary grille of micropower must be established, which fixes men
in apparatuses of production, which makes them agents of production, workers. The link between man
and labour is synthetic and political; it is a link that power operates. By sub-power I don’t mean what
is traditionally called political power, it is neither the apparatus of the state, nor that of the ruling
class, but rather the ensemble of micropowers, small institutions situated at the lowest level.

[6]

This regime was the target of the struggles they witnessed and was attacked and progressively deconstructed in

the 1960’s and the following years across the West. Against the tyranny of both Trade Unions and the Party,

with the birth of autonomism and the creation of resistance cultures this regime of power is faced with the total

refusal of the very ideology of social democracy, organised labour and their motto: Arbeit macht frei.

[7]

The pleasure in work

The question of the emergence of civil society, as we have seen in Hobbes, and the silencing of the discourse of

the war of races is concomitant with the liberal preoccupation with government that Foucault analyses. Through

his contributions on the emergence of the social and the policing of families, Jacques Donzelot has carried out a

series of researches at a number of levels following Foucault’s reflections on the issue, in relation to the economy,

the police and the welfare state. Our interest lies in the outlined subsumption of political rationality into economic

rationality and, combined with Foucault’s work on governmentality and biopower, Donzelot’s analysis of the

development and demise of the welfare state can help us introduce the analysis of biopolitical production proper.

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Donzelot analyses the welfare state as an attempt to extend workers’ rights to the whole national population.

[8]

looking at the transition from Taylorism to what he terms perpetual training, he demonstrates that alongside the

process of the deskilling of the worker (demise of artisan/ professional worker) the political- juridical nature of his

social status was transformed (into being an abstract bearer of rights).

Equally, at the same time as the worker becomes a subject of rights, he becomes an object of science. The political

and economic struggle engenders new institutions; medical psychological and industrial doctors study the

maximisation of worker productivity. These two separate discourses around the worker as subject of rights and

object of science, is studied by Donzelot as a changing relation that is intrinsic to the political developments of the

twentieth century. On one side there is the wage-labour relation. On another side, there is the scientific discourse.

In the interwar period these two separate elements come together. The scientific and ideological discourses re-

introduce the idea of the joy of work which is attached to social insurance schemes. The merging of the economic

and social discourse into one operative field based on work created the conditions of possibility for its extreme

form wherein the healthy working subject could clash violently with the non-working, sick outsider.

Donzelot argues that after 1945 the idea of the nation becomes supplanted by that of society in the political

imaginary: if National Socialism aimed to eradicate the vulnerable, society needed to look after them and heal its

own wounds. The issue of jurisdiction over what Agamben identifies as the biopolitical fracture is the central

function of the welfare state. In fact, Donzelot observes that the post-war period saw the removal of the notion of

mal-adjusted and invalidity from the vocabulary of industrial relations, and the introduction of terms like handicap

and deficit which aimed to sustain a general notion - and legally sanctioned practice - that working life, with

enough training, could and should include everyone. Industrial competitiveness and demands for profitability led

corporations to include those portions of society whom they previously would have judged too volatile. Hence the

industrial machinery brought together doctors and psychologists who could confront problems of absenteeism,

alcoholism, work place accidents and their prevention and could deal with the intrinsic dangers of refusal. In

France in 1975 a law was passed in favour of the handicapped and declared the category of mal-adjusted obsolete.

The significance of this law for Donzelot is that it effectively generalises the idea of the handicapped whereby a

category of the excluded could be turned into a general figure for inclusion to support particular and local practices

of re-adjustment through the various institutional mechanisms of the social state.

The redefinition of work and the relations of work become the main factor relating to productivity. Whilst under

Taylorism the occurrence of accidents for instance was measured and analysed by looking at the technical relation

of man and machine and studied as a predictable and potentially preventable factor, in the society of the 1950s

accidents became increasingly understood as due to failure of communication in the chain of command and the

instance of accidents as being proportional to the degree of work place satisfaction. Similar conclusions arose out

the studies on absenteeism. This reasoning was also sanctioned by 1975 legislation concerning sick pay. Whilst in

the past sick leave was generally paid at 50% of the wage by social security, it now had to be paid in full, half of

which was to be subsidised by the corporation. Hence the responsibility for the working environment was shifted

onto the enterprise.

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The neo-liberal offensive of the 1980s and 1990s signified that this arrangement could no longer be sustained. The

responsibility for health and training had to be transferred from society back onto the individual. Thus the current

return to civil society in the political vocabulary is also a by product of the gradual breakdown of the welfare state.

What new forms of social regulation, inclusion and responsibility accompany the governmentality of social

relations within the context of the changing relations of work in contemporary Western ‘control’ societies? Civil

society initially will take up the task of ‘taking care of’ the destitute class, the ‘people’ that, as Agamben reminds

us, resist juridification into citizens. Recent developments in the theory of civil society could be seen as an effect

of the legitimation crisis of the sovereign discourse and as an attempt to reconstitute a unitary political

subjectivity. They need to be read in the light of a wider debate on the autonomy of the political, a debate that is

always accompanied by the theoretical need to reconstitute a theory of sovereignty in the modern day.

[9]

Hardt’s and Negri’s analysis

[10]

total subsumption is also the process of a subsumption of civil society.

[11]

However, at the level of political discourse, this process appears as its reverse. Seen from another perspective, if

civil society is understood also – as in Hegel: as system of needs, administration of justice and the police and

corporation- as the set of mediating infrastructures that are in part the locus operandi or at least the laboratory for

practices of disciplinary power, the end of mediation must also be recognised within the progressive collapse of

these institutions.

[12]

Postfordism and Control

According to the theorists under analysis, with the paradigm of discipline and the traditional centres where

disciplinary techniques are deployed (class, party, school, nuclear family, wage labour and what constitutes the

realm of civil society)

[13]

come to face a deep crisis. Thus disciplinary rationality needs to be increasingly

substituted by more efficient, economical, discrete and implicit procedures aimed at governing people. In

Foucault’s analysis this begins in the 19

century with the emergence of the social insurance systems in France

[14]

that prefigures a science of control based on the prevention of risk and enacted under the auspices of the

security of the life of the population. This is also the time when biopower becomes fully operative within the

workings of the modern state, whereby biopower takes life as its object. Foucault analysed the way in which

disciplinary power has been integrated and increasingly substituted by a paradigm of control in contemporary

society in interventions such as ‘Un système fini face à une demande infinie’

[15]

, where he analyses the welfare

state and its decline. There he sees the perverse effects of the coupling of assistance and dependency operated by a

system which in the interwar years was designed with the aim of attenuating social conflicts. For Foucault

mechanisms of dependency are enacted through the normalising functions of integration and marginalisation

against which we ought to react. ‘I think there is a need to resist the phenomenon of integration. In fact, the

individual fully enjoys the whole dispositif of social welfare only if he/she is integrated in a family group, a

workplace or a geographical territory.’

[16]

Foucault’s reflections on the role of war in power relations also highlight the urgency to rethink the notion of

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refusal: a refusal to play and to speak the language of power that characterised the struggles of the 1970s. He

recognises that the response to such refusals was new and required a change in our analysis of power. It is refusal

that introduces the control paradigm. In fact, discipline is only one mode of 'expression' for power. Once the

system has changed to incorporate the new needs of a post-welfare state and post-pastoral form of power, from

surveillance on criminality we have moved towards the control of the population. This is due to the endorsement

by the system of those resistances through its adoption of their very techniques and creates a new function for

power.

In our view, what is analysed as control society is the state of 'executive power' or policing, monitoring and

recording that constitutes the excess which is the actuality of the norm. This political state of permanent exception

is tightly linked to the ideology of governmentability and of security. The way a society of control functions is no

more based on the individuation and subjectifying of individuals as 'types', it doesn't work on individuation of the

marginalized finalised to their subsequent 'inclusive rehabilitation'. Statistics have come to dissect the individual

and fragment it to its smallest components. This is most evident in the division of labour into skills and of the body

into genes. Hence, control can be exercised in virtue of its own creation and 'positive' determination of multiple

subjectifications within the same individual. The role of law itself changes with it in so far as instead of

functioning as the arbiter or regulator of incompatible interests, it abdicates its ambition to social integration and

with the crisis of welfare it is forced to reduce its scope to that of only representing negotiable interests whilst

neutralising and silencing the rest.

[17]

One of the focal concerns of Hardt and Negri’s use of the formula society of control

[18]

lies in the notion of

‘democratisation’ and 'immanentisation' of mechanisms of command. We have seen that 'exceptionality' refers to

the self-legitimising ideology of continuous policing when looking into Agamben’s State of Exception and

Foucault's reversal of Clausewitz's idea that war is the continuation of politics by other means. If politics is the

continuation of war by other means, the 'conflicts' arising in times of peace and the internal dissent arising

domestically amount to a re-sanctioning of the same dynamics applied in times of war. This poses the problem of

defining 'the Enemy' as barbarous when it resides within the social that is the field of modern civil wars. The

disciplinary society is in crisis and traditional modes of normalisation via institutions are replaced by a more

capillary and less dichotomising strategy; thus, attempts at normalising or justifying forms of institutional

marginalisation in the language of social integration and contractual agreement become superfluous: the question

becomes one of negotiation of hybrid identities. Once the function of the liberal state abdicates its pretence of

neutral regulatory dispositif of conflicting interests in defence of a contract that aims at social integration and

assumes an active role in neutralising –through 'criminalisation' or silencing- conflicting interests and identities

(when they present themselves as disintegrating forces), then the function of right and law coincides with the

exercise of continuous policing. This is what Negri and Hardt mean when they assert that there is a 'conceptual

inseparability of the title and the exercise of power'.

Control and Biopower

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We would argue that today the science of control functions through a predictive medicine (with no doctors nor

patients) whereby it treats society as a reserve of diseases and individuals as carriers of pathologies; through an

education that is transformed into life long learning where each individual is compelled to remain productive

throughout his/her life; through a surveillance that is used not as evidence of crime but as a preventive tool for

recognising, inserting into databases and scanning human bodies and behaviour. Every individual who acts

suspiciously becomes a carrier of criminality. What Hardt and Negri see as the end of the outside coincides

with the crisis of traditional disciplinary institutions and the diffusion of mechanisms of interiorisation: self-

exploitation, self-rationalisation and internalisation of responsibility prove to be more effective tools of

government. As Deleuze rightly observes:

Factories formed individuals into a body of men for the convenience of a management that could
monitor each component into this mass, and trade unions that could mobilise this mass resistance; but
businesses are constantly introducing an inexorable rivalry presented as healthy competition, a
wonderful motivation that sets individuals against one another and sets itself up in each of them,
dividing each within himself. Even the state education system has been looking at the principle of
‘getting paid for results’: in fact, just as business are replacing factories, school is being replaced by
continuing education and exams by continuous assessment (control). It’s the surest way of turning
education into a business. In disciplinary societies you were always starting all over again (as you
went from school to barracks, from barracks to factory), while in control societies you never finish
anything -business, training, and military service being coexisting metastable states of a single
modulation, a sort of universal transmutation.

[19]

This move towards control societies also causes a re-territorialisation of the place for struggle. The retreat of

disciplinary institutions opens spaces of ‘abandonment’, ghettos, refugee camps, where bare life is at the mercy

of the lawless management of the Polizeistaat, which acts on the basis of a permanent state of exception. Hardt

and Negri see the notion of exceptionality as crucial to the way power speaks of itself:

Empire is not formed on the basis of force itself but on the basis of the capacity to present force as being
in the service of right and peace. Empire operates on the terrain of crisis, in the name of the exceptionality
of the intervention there is the creation of a new right of the police.

[20]

In the biopolitical paradigm, where regulation and security are the main operative function of politics, the function

of war becomes one of securing the lives of people, where power speaks of itself in terms of the ‘evolutionist’

racist motto (mors tua vita mea). As Foucault notes:

Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of
the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the
name of life necessity: massacres have become vital.

[21]

We have seen that Foucault’s studies on liberalism and the police state point to the transition from territorial to

population state by looking at the introduction of political economy in the paradigm of sovereignty, which in turn

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changes the role of the state from sovereign into government. In the face of the emergence of the modern state as

government, the question of associating the law with legitimacy by assigning it the role of being ‘the barometer of

truth’ collapses onto itself. Law is to be the last resort of sovereignty, rather than its constitutive foundation, in its

functioning as the legitimate defence of the ‘universality of the few’ or the ‘singularity of the many’. In this

respect, it is merely procedural. One of the features of modern political rationality is that very presupposition that

you can separate and pose against one another right and administration, law and order. One might argue that the

legitimation of the state (the executive) comes today from this attempt at reconciliation of these two elements,

which can only take the form of an integration of the law in the order of the state. As we have seen, Foucault’s

work on the political historical discourse of the 17

century, in ‘Il faut défendre la société’ as well as his 1978-79

course at the Collège de France on ‘Security, territory and population’ show how liberalism needs the police to

reduce government. The main point of Smith’s invisible hand thus lies in its invisibility. Hardt and Negri see this

particular process as culminating in a politics of avoidance:

In the development of the postmodern liberal argument State power is not exerted according to what
Foucault calls a disciplinary paradigm […]. State power here does not involve the exposure and
subjugation of social subjects as part of an effort to engage, mediate, and organise conflictual forces
within the limits of order. The thin state avoids such engagement: this is what characterises its liberal
politics. […] The liberal notion of tolerance coincides here perfectly with the decidedly illiberal
mechanism of exclusion. The thin state of postmodern liberalism appears, in effect, as a refinement and
extension of the German tradition of the science of the police. The police are necessary to afford the
system abstraction and isolation: the “thin blue line” delimits the boundaries of what will be accepted as
inputs in the system of rule. […]The crucial development presented by the postmodern
Polizeiwissenschaft, is that now society is not infiltrated and engaged, but separated and controlled: not a
disciplinary society but a pacified society of control. The police function creates and maintains a pacified
society, or the image of a pacified society, by preventing the incidence of conflicts on the machine of
equilibrium. […] The method of avoidance then carries implicitly a postmodern Polizeiwissenschaft that
effectively, and in practical terms, abstracts the system from the field of potential conflicts, thus allowing
the system to order an efficient, administered society.

[22]

Whereas the factory society corresponded to the Fordist mechanisms of labour exploitation, which attempted

to homogenise labour and break down the power of the professional worker,

[23]

the society of control

corresponds and is a response to the movement away from the ‘productive labourer’ as the essential substance

of the alienated labour that produces value and surplus value. Biopower entered history by turning the ancient

right to ‘take life or let live’ into a power to ‘foster life or disallow it into the point of death’.

[24]

Foucault

writes: ‘this power was without question an indispensable element in the development of capitalism; the latter

would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production’.

[25]

Biopolitical production

In his writings Foucault attacked forms of economic determinism that tended to reinforce the labour paradigm.

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It is wrong to say that the concrete existence of man is labour. For the life and times of man are not by
nature labour, they are: pleasure, discontinuity, celebration, rest, needs, appetite, violence, deprecation,
etc. Capital is supposed to transform all this explosive energy into a continuous labour force continually
available on the market. Capital is supposed to synthesize life into a labour force, in a way which implies
coercion: that of a system of appropriation. […] If it is true that the economic structure characterized by
the accumulation of capital has the property of being able to transform the labour force into a productive
force, then the power structures which have the form of appropriation have the ultimate aim of
transforming living time into a labour force. Appropriation is the correlative in terms of the power of that
which, in economic terms, is the accumulation of capital.

[26]

In its current guise, we would say that biopolitics is the form of this appropriation, one that invests life, and it

is precisely the subsumption of living time under labour time in control society that is analysed by the studies

of Postfordism in the guise of immaterial labour. For Hardt and Negri total subsumption and the society of

control operate at the level of biopolitical production precisely because production has subsumed life itself,

and as the whole of society becomes a factory (diffuse factory) it also becomes a school, a hospital, a prison

and an army.

[27]

The studies of Postfordism under analysis here take Foucault’s analysis further and look at

biopolitical production precisely at the point where this process has reached its apex. In the paradigm of

immaterial labour, the body is fixed capital. Labour is no longer ‘employed’ by capital and the instruments of

labour are the brain-machines of social cooperation.

[28]

In so far as disciplinary power was productive of

subjectivities within institutions, it had a ‘place’. Now these institutions are breaking down and with them the

function of representation, negotiation, and delegation. Subjectivity is immediately individuated by power and

made productive by capital; the importance of immaterial and affective labour lies in its function as producer

of value-subjectivities.

From the point of view of labour, the working class through the endeavour of its own agents collapses the

privileged sector of the Fordist worker and instantiates new forms of subjectivities and a different class

composition. Negri is decisive about the periodisation in the movement towards the social worker. The fact

that he locates it in 1968 shows the persistent political dimension of his thought about reality and the

importance of the event. For our theorists, the 1970s undoubtedly marked a bloody period in what were the

staged battles of this transition. Against the powerful labour force, the crisis state became centralised as a

constant reality. But what is more crucial perhaps is the birth of struggles outside of the factory, which was

reflected in the extension of the state administration of discipline (now control) into directly managing the

production of subjectivity, whilst (and as a response to) subjects resisting the reduction of themselves to labour

power. The idea of immaterial labour comes to be theorised as a result of the changes in the quality of labour

brought about by the postmodernization/ informatization of the economy. The Italian tradition of Operaismo

links the notion of immaterial labour to the move from Fordist to lean production (or Toyotism), where prior to

being manufactured, a product must be sold.

[29]

The main requirement for the introduction of this model is the

establishment of a system of communication between production and consumption, between factories and

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markets. The kind of immaterial labour involved in the industry primarily entails the transmission of data,

which dictates that an increasing proportion of capital must be invested in the increasing the power of

communicative techniques, corresponding to the increasingly cerebral and affective nature of labour. The

importance of this form of labour is fully recognised by those in charge of economic policy making, as

Christian Marazzi argues in Il posto dei calzini. Under the name Clintonomics, Marazzi analyses precisely this

change in political economy and provides a great deal of evidence for the significance of policy makers for the

establishment of a new economy.

Clintonomics is the name ascribed to a set of policies implemented during Clinton ’s presidency in the US . It is

important for us because its main theory (expounded in Robert Reich’s The Work of Nations) recognises the need

to reconstruct the economy following a twelve-year period of neo-liberal policies and turns to the potential of

immaterial labour to this purpose. In this respect, it recognises the crisis of the disciplinary paradigm and the

traditional regime of labour and seeks a more economical and efficient way to exercise power. Robert Reich

(Secretary of Labour under Clinton ) recognises the centrality of immaterial labour for the reconstruction of a

political and social class that seemed to have fallen out of control in voting Perrot. Immaterial labour is defined as

the activity of the ‘manipulation of symbols’. This he recognises as central for a state intervention that with

Clinton takes the form of economic and political engineering aimed at circumscribing the conflictual situation the

US found itself in. Clintonomics puts industrial politics back on the agenda and recognises the inefficacy of

deregulation for economic growth. Reich’s theory puts forward the idea of ‘externalities’. It starts from the

assumption that interactions amongst economic agents do not necessarily have to go through the market.

Externalities (elements external to the market) can be of a positive or a negative kind. Positive externalities are

things such as professional training and ‘education’. Negative ones are for instance the effects on the environment.

These externalities represent added costs or benefits that are not included in market transactions and are

‘regulated’ by the collectivity. It is here, in the regulation of externalities, that the State can find legitimation for its

active intervention. As we can see, once the inefficacy of deregulation is recognised in economic terms, state

intervention can be justified on the basis that the spontaneous equilibrium of the sum of individual initiatives is

insufficient for an optimal collective equilibrium. Paul Romer focuses on the gap between rich and poor and its

consequence for economic growth. At the beginning of the 1990s the US experienced a major slow down of

economic growth. Romer identifies ‘inequality’ of distribution of wages and education as its cause rather than

effect. The State needs to intervene in order to regulate the level of productivity of its population. The idea of

endogenous development hence summarises the effort of Clintonomics towards a synergy of individual investment

and a collective productivity managed by the State. Marazzi provides an insightful analysis from a macro-

economic point of view of the policy changes undertaken by the US government of the Clinton administration in

reconfiguring its role as maximiser of capitalist productivity. It is Reich in particular who points to the necessity of

investing in immaterial labour not only for economic but primarily for political reasons in the new global order. As

Marazzi argues:

In the long run, the products of immaterial labour will be the crucial assets for each nation: scientific
and technological research, training of the labour-force, development of management,

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communication, electronic financial networks. In the universe of intellectual labour we find:
researchers, engineers, computer scientists, lawyers, some creative accountant, management
consultants, financial advisors, publicists, the ‘practitioners’, editors and journalists, university
professors. This ‘rank’ is destined to accelerate the process of decline of all activities of the Taylorist
kind, i.e. the repetitive and executive ones, that are easy to reproduce in countries with low-cost
labour force; whilst services to people, even though still important in a society with a strong tertiary
sector, cannot benefit from material subsidies, since they are not, according to Reich, value creating
activities. The economist’s reasoning runs more or less like this: the globalisation of the economy
does no longer allow one to refer ownership of capital to the national composition of the means of
production. For instance, a Ford is the result of partial and combined activities that are dispersed
around the globe and concerted within global webs, where what counts is efficiency and the
productivity of communication. The car that results from this process of production is a composite of
parts produced in different nations, by means of a capital of multinational ownership. However, what
is lost as a consequence of the de-nationalisation of capital ownership (i.e. the means of production,
constant capital) is recuperated at the level of ownership of immaterial labour, of the control of
knowledge production. The denationalisation of physical-material capital is counterbalanced by the
nationalisation of knowledge, and the command on its organisation. ‘Buy American’ means from now
on: ‘Valorise American knowledge’. Nationality, according to Reich’s reasoning, is recuperated
through a strategic investment in activities that create more value, i.e. immaterial activities that
characterise the postfordist mode of production. The income generated by immaterial activity must be
nationalised in order to deal with the unemployment of the unskilled American labour-force and
reduce the disparity of income between skilled labourers and the working poor (competition with
emerging countries) without inhibiting the comparative advantage of the US with respect to the rest of
the world. American pride ought to function as solidaristic glue: when compared with competitive
countries, the greater wealth generated by greater productivity and skill of immaterial labour provides
the fiscal means to temper the deterioration of the life conditions of unqualified and defeated
American people.

[30]

We can see here how knowledge production becomes crucial to the economy of control society. This is no

longer simply the production of that scientific knowledge used in the disciplinary operations of integration and

exclusion, that which could ‘scientifically’ establish the difference between the sane and the insane, the

dangerous and the safe, the normal and the deviant. Here the double capture of the worker Donzelot analyses

in its inscription into political discourse as the subject of rights and object of science implodes onto itself.

Knowledge production under Postfordism becomes directly the production of subjectivity, of linguistic and

social performances that are immediately valorised. Whilst in the period of Fordist manufacture labour activity

could be silent and automated, now the labourer is required to invest his/her subjectivity in the activity of

work, for the latter consists of symbolic interactions and the production of meaning. When analysing

immaterial labour we see how both the labouring activity and the nature of the products has changed. As far as

the products are concerned, the formation of brands is only one aspect of the process of cultural revalorisation

mentioned by Marazzi. Yet it is important, for one of the shifts occurring in Postfordism is that an increasing

separation occurs between factory and enterprise,

[31]

whereby the latter assumes as its main role that of the

production of subjectivity.

The idea that immaterial labour directly produces the capital relation – whilst with

material labour, this was clandestine- changes the phenomenology of capital and the substance of its social

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power and the nature of labour, for immaterial workers are primarily producers of subjectivity.

[32]

If production today is directly the production of a social relation, then the ‘raw material’ of immaterial
labour is subjectivity and the ‘ideological’ environment in which subjectivity lives and reproduces.
The production of subjectivity ceases to be only an instrument of social control (for the production of
mercantile relationships) and becomes directly productive, because the goal of our post-industrial
society is to construct the consumer/communicator -and to construct it as ‘active’. Immaterial workers
(those who work in advertising, fashion, marketing, television, cybernetics, and so forth) satisfy a
demand by the consumer and at the same time establish that demand.

[33]

In this sense, the function of the enterprise is one of producing the world which the consumer, the producer

and the product inhabit.

[34]

This is where the role of communication and the linguistic production becomes

pivotal. ‘Consumption is not reduced to the act of buying and carrying out a service or a product, as political

economics and its criticism teach, but instead means, first of all, belonging to a world or a universe.’

[35]

Thus

the basis of postfordist production is the production of subjectivity in terms of social relations, relations to the

self and to others as well as of a certain way of belonging to the world. This is not an issue limited to the

communicative industry for it extends to the whole of social production. In fact, our interest in the analysis of

Maurizio Lazzarato, Christian Marazzi and others in relation to Foucault lies in their recognition that

language, far from being simply the means for exchange of data and information, becomes valorised in its role

as a productive force.

[36]

The workings of financial capital too are based on the self-referentiality of social conventions that functions

through the production of affects. So alongside the informational content of immaterial labour, and the cultural

aspect of its productive role, what is valorised in contemporary capitalism is also its ‘affective’ character.

Affective labour is that ‘embedded in moments of human interaction and communication’. It acts wherever

human contact is required and is essentially involved with ‘producing social networks, forms of community

and biopower. What is created in the networks of affective labour is a form-of-life’.

[37]

Affective labour ends the dominating tendency in the measure of value that was only appropriate to the time

when labour was outside of capital and needed to be reduced to labour power.

[38]

Biopolitical production is

directly involved with the production of social relations and that becomes coextensive with social

reproduction. The biopolitical notions of life and body are determined in the political constitution and in the

real daily affirmations of social subjectivity.

[39]

The putting to work of what is common, of language and the

intellect, causes a ‘personalisation’ of subjectivation that is all the more evident in the development of a

sinister drive towards self-exploitation of immaterial labourers, one of the results of the subsumption of life

under production,

[40]

proved by the fact that rather than reducing labour time, new technologies and the new

economy have in fact increased the length of the working day by exploiting the process that had driven

towards a form of mass entrepreneurship.

[41]

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However, at the level of labour, the productive subject also has social cooperation as its absolute basis. Networks

of information and communication form the marrow of every element in the synthesised and globalised productive

space. Immaterial labour and affective labour are the basis for the collapse of mediation: justification becomes an

immanent affair.

[42]

The myth of a realm of public space as negotiating ground finally decomposes.

[43]

The

social state in its traditional guise is substituted by the management of differentiating subjectivities.

[44]

The form

of capital’s command over labour in biopolitical production is a sinister state where ‘the new slogan of Western

societies is that we should all ‘become subjects’. This is where Foucault’s warnings against a discourse on

practices of freedom that uncritically poses the self at its centre and regards subjectivity in terms of self identity

become all the more urgent.

[45]

In control society, participative management is a technology of power, a

technology for creating and controlling the subjective processes.

[46]

However, productive cooperation is at

once indispensable and destabilising for postfordist production.

Theories of immaterial labour rely on the idea that communication has acquired an active role in the process of

production, since the shift from Fordist to lean production. What this entails at the 'bio-political' level and at the

level of subjectivity is not only a change in the nature of labour as productive activity, but more profoundly of

social relations. It means that we are producers at all times, simply by virtue of communicating, of being social, of

speaking and that there is no realm out of production since the process of valorisation and the time of exploitation

is dislocated in time and space and extended to our whole lifetime/bios. In this sense, this notion of immaterial

labour also sharply opposes the ‘conventional’ discourse of neo-liberal economics that emphasises that

consumption and demand and supply are a politically 'empowering' feature of capitalism. Theorists of postfordism

shift this political emphasis from the consumers on the producers, hence emphasising the potential immanent to

social cooperation in productive activity. The process whereby the need for labour to function through networks of

cooperation corresponds to a hierarchical centralisation of modes of control over production turns command into

parasitical and arbitrary.

[47]

On the one hand then, the deterritorialisation of production, fully integrated with

techniques of 'labour management', 'place labour in a weakened bargaining position'

[48]

at the level of rights,

whilst on the other hand, 'the cooperative powers of labour power afford labour the possibility of valorising

itself.'

[49]

This is a process in the making and not something we can easily take a distance from: in so far as it

is developing and founded upon social cooperation it is from the latter we need to start to reverse -where

possible -or negate- where necessary - its operations.

Technologies of the common

Negri’s notion of the common and Foucault’s idea of technologies of the self can aid our project to point

towards a theorisation of the possible configurations of a critical ontology of the present and of resistance to

the society of control. In several writings, Negri has expounded his view that the common cannot be theorised

today in terms of a public sphere or goods. The common today, for Negri, is primarily the common of

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exploitation. However, Negri asserts that the postmodern multitude is a ‘group of singularities whose

instrument for living is the brain and whose productive force consists in cooperation’. The question posed in

relation to the common then becomes one of what forms of self government modern subjectivity can exercise.

Here self-government is seen in terms of a mode of creative resistance to forms of subjectivation that are

immediately valorised by contemporary capitalism. If by technology we mean the techniques of power that

ensure obedience and the production of subjectivity for capital, the figures of simple sabotage, resistance or

counter-power cannot be productive.

Virno’s notion of exodus in this context is important and in our view it

represents the social correlative of what Foucault’s conceptualised as the individual practice of déprise.

[50]

The

political aspect of exodus lies in its potential for 'innovation'. ‘The exit can be seen as free-thinking inventiveness

that changes the rules of the game and disorients the enemy' in 'social conflicts that manifest themselves not so

much as protest, but most particularly as defection.'

[51]

A possible reading of this ‘exit’ is one that sees it as a

form of 'radical disobedience' that in not 'confronting' Power on its own grounds constitutes at once its

delegitimisation and the positing of an alternative. However, when transposed on the plane of production and

labour, following the analysis of biopolitical production of subjectivity, exodus poses a series of problems. As we

have seen, beyond the scientific knowledge embodied in fixed capital immaterial labour also characterises the

direct production of social relations and, above all, of subjectivity. Through the destruction of the factory and the

expropriation of social knowledge social cooperation is theorised as ontologically prior to its 'being put to work',

its value-producing use by capital. In this sense as a means of production it is not all the exclusive property of

capital, and thus the possibilities of ruptures and the vulnerabilities of the current mode of postfordist production

referred to become greater. In concrete terms, forms of immaterial labour that practice exodus are, for instance,

those that ignore copyright laws. The possibility of positing such practices outside of the capitalist mode of

production, in real subsumption, is hard to conceive of, yet the political importance of this is that the proliferation

of modes of productive activity that use social cooperation in the manner of exodus, would produce 'against'

capital by being 'in spite of it'. Exodus seems a useful theoretical tool for describing these concrete and social

forms of subversion and constitution of the common, because it points to a refusal to 'speak' the language of

Power. It cannot be seen as escapism in so far as exodus is what follows the exhaustion of the centripetal power vs.

resistance repetition and what at once inserts itself in the interstices between power and resistance. Even though as

this notion might still be loaded with u-topian overtones about autonomous spheres –especially in Virno-, it

nonetheless seems the most adequate way to address the question of what comes beyond refusal, when the latter

has saturated its 'creationist' impulses: in other words, when the workings of control are capable of reprogramming

themselves with inbuilt immunity against it through the management of unpredictability. Seeing that Power acts on

the ground of preventive and pre-emptying intervention, the question is how to create a rupture that is not post-

factum? The discourses of resistance and processes of liberation do not seem to take this operative aspect of

control society into serious account, which in our view the exodus strategy of 'engaged withdrawal' aptly

problematises. The question then needs to be posed in terms of resistance and creation, and must look into the

productive activity of the common as a form of life that escapes political representation. As Lazzarato writes:

The determination of the relationship between resistance and creation is the last limit that Foucault’s
thought attempted to breach. The forces that resist and create are to be found in strategic relations and in

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the will of subjects who are virtually free to “control the conduct of others.” Power, the condensation of
strategic relations into relations of domination, the contraction of the spaces of freedom by the desire to
control the conduct of others, always meets with resistance; this resistance should be sought out in the
strategic dynamic. Consequently, life and living being become a “matter” of ethics through the dynamic
that simultaneously resists power and creates new forms of life.

[52]

This limit is the very operative field of subjectivity. However, if one is to take the theoretical accomplishments of

the reconfiguration of the category of subjectivity seriously, the notion of the self needs to be clearly distinguished

from that of the individual in order to move beyond the sovereign subject as the central point of political analysis.

For this reason, we take the common to name the subjectivity proper to postfordist production, and its political

activity as one of creation of language and forms of life. This is the reason for our insistence on positing the debate

on language at the centre of philosophical and political analysis. For it is the very means of reproduction of

subjectivity today, of value, affect, as well as power relations.

Next Chapter

back to Table of Contents

[1]

Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri Empire, Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2000

[2]

For definitions of Operaismo, please refer to Matteo Mandarini’s Introduction to Time for Revolution, London : Continuum Books, 2002, Steve Wrights’

Storming Heaven. Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomism. London : Pluto Press, 2002 and G. Borio, G. Roggero & F. Pozzi, Futuro Anteriore.
Roma: Deriveapprodi, 2002.

[3]

Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt, Labor of Dionysus. A Critique of the State Form. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press , 1994, p.62

[4]

ibid. p. 61

[5]

see on this Negri’s article on ‘Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State’ in Labour of Dionysus, 1994, Chapter 2

[6]

M. Foucault, ‘Archivio Foucault, Volume 3. 1998

[7]

see Virno’s account of the Hot Autumn in Italy in Hardt and Virno (eds) Radical Thought in Italy, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press , 1996

[8]

From Graham Burchell (ed.) The Foucault Effect, 1991, chapter 13 ‘Pleasure in Work’, by Jacques Donzelot - “It is not a question of creating joy through work,

nor joy despite work, but of producing pleasure and work, and to better realise this design of producing the one in the other. Pleasure in work diverts people from
individual egoism as much as from nationalistic hysteria putting before them a model of happiness in an updated, corrected social domain, where attention to the
social costs of technique and to techniques of reducing the cost of the social create the possibility and necessity for a new social concert, in which the effacement of
the juridical status of the subject removes inhibitions about his participation.” p. 280

[9]

In fact, in the context of Negri’s analysis, confusion arises when the 'socialised worker' is placed in the context of the 'resurgence of the social' as substitutive

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rather than 'incorporative' of the political.

[10]

Two important essays analyse the role of civil society and the demise of the political:

www.deriveapprodi.org/rivista/17/hardt17.html

(it) www.geocities.com/

cordobakaf/crisisa.html (en)

[11]

The collapsing of a separation between inside and outside of power re-problematises how Foucault’s explicit writings on power had given cause to think of

power and resistance as symmetrically opposed, as well as how Negri had previously theorised 'antagonism' in terms of autonomy by building an almost
symmetrical relation between labour and capital, whereby the former functioned as the outside of the latter. In fact, the 1997 Introduction to La costituzione del
tempo (recently translated by Matteo Mandarini as part one of Time for Revolution, London: Continuum Books, 2003), Negri criticises precisely himself and the
tendency in Operaismo to: ‘block research by coming to a standstill at the moment of describing a topos, a place for struggle, an antagonism intrinsic to capitalist
relations that produces two different and symmetrical -in this case- temporalities and subjectivities.’ (my trans.) He explains this attitude to be the effect of a
preoccupation with avoiding the 'dialectical' synthetic (and reformist) recuperation of the opposing tendencies; however, he blames this experiment for assuming
the tones of a negative dialectic, of a space where the only 'opening' would have to be constituted in ethical terms. Negri poses the overcoming of this impasse in
research as the complementing of the topos with a telos, which he identifies as the constituent side of this relation and the element that immanently causes the
explosion of this symmetrical block. The question on inside and outside in Empire is important for this debate because the collapse of this division is equated with
the end of liberal politics. This is crucial for a critique of the resurgence of a theory of civil society as well as of the 'autonomy of the political'. The latter has been
carried out in the last century by Marxists and non Marxists by means of various re-readings of Aristotelianism and the rehabilitation of Hannah Arendt but is also
the predominant concern in mainstream political theory in so far as it is preoccupied with a 'public sphere' or a 'space for politics' that is somehow preserved
'immune' from the corrupted, technocratic, instrumental and economic dictates of reason, or even from the dictates of our situatedness as social beings.

[12]

The interesting point of Hardt’s and Negri’s analysis, rather than dwelling on the effects in practices of power for the political discourse of sovereignty and

civil society, concentrates more of a description of the 'subjective face' given to the 'objective process'. For instance, they do not analyse the American constitution
but rather its ambitions and in this they follow the spirit of those who looked to the economically most advanced country in search of a glimpse on the rest of the
world's possible future. Their argument is imbued with a political sociology similar to that of A. Tocqueville, who recognised the progressive elements of the US
constitution and also its intrinsic dangers. At the level of Empire, they analyse a politically, constitutionally anti-centralistic ambition (in the division of powers and
the organisation of state bureaucracy), and its social effects in terms similar to those of conformism and absolute tyranny Tocqueville warned his contemporaries
against. Tocqueville saw it as inevitable that since all modern Western societies tended to become 'formally' egalitarian (post-rank), the kinds of socio-political
regimes likely to emerge as a result would entail a growth of state power, since power is only stopped by power (in an immanent way). Clearly, Tocqueville’s
warning against the dangers of 'totalitarian democracy' stands closer to the kind of biopolitical imperial order Hardt and Negri are trying to describe than the
Napoleonic/French republican centralist or imperialistic debates on the limits of sovereignty. By refusing the idea that power is centralised, Hardt and Negri look at
the US ambitions in the constitution as the best judicial expression of a 'de-centralised' imperial exercise of command.

[13]

M. Foucault, ‘La société disciplinaire en crise’. In Dits et écrits. Vol III, 1994, p. 532-533

[14]

M. Foucault, ‘About the concept of the “dangerous individual” in 19

century legal psychiatry’, in the Journal of law and psychiatry, vol. 1, 1978, p. 1-18

[15]

M. Foucault, ‘Un système fini face à une demande infinie', interview by Bono, R., in R. Bono, Sécurité Sociale: l'Enjeu, Paris: Syros, 1983, p. 39-63.

[16]

M. Foucault, ‘La société disciplinaire en crise’, 1994

[17]

This is where we think Foucault’s aesthetic of existence is intended as a new and effective form of response to 'control' power.

[18]

Negri and Hardt analyse this mostly in chapter 2 of Empire, 2000

[19]

Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on control societies’, in Negotiations, 1972-1990. New York : Columbia University Press, 1990. p.179

http://textz.gnutenberg.net/textz/deleuze_gilles_postscript_on_the_societies_of_control.txt

[20]

Hardt and Negri, Empire, 2000, p.29

[21]

M. Foucault, History of sexuality volume I: The Will to knowledge, 1978 p. 137

[22]

Hardt and Negri, Labour of Dionysus, 1994, p. 237

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[23]

For the attachment of the political organisation of class to the professional worker, see Zygmunt Bauman, Memories of class. The Pre-History and After-Life of

Class. London : Routledge, 1982

[24]

‘faire mourir-laisser vivre/faire vivre-rejeter dans la mort’. In M. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 1998, p. 138

[25]

Ibid.

[26]

Foucault, ‘Le Pouvoir de la Norme’, cited in François Ewald (ed.) Michel Foucault Philosopher. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992

[27]

For an important contribution to understanding the transition from discipline to control in Foucault, see: Alessandro Pandolfi, Tre studi su Foucault, Napoli :

Terzo Millennio Edizioni, 2000, chapter 2.

[28]

Antonio Negri, ‘Back to the future’. In J. Bosma, P. van Mourik Broekman, T. Byfield, M. Fuller, G. Lovink, D. McCarty, P. Schultz, F. Stalder, M. Wark, F.

Wilding (eds) Read me! Filtered by Nettime. Ascii Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge. New York : Autonomedia, p. 182.

[29]

For more on this issue, see Lessico Postfordista, Milano: Feltrinelli, 2000, which we are currently translating for Autonomedia Publishers.

[30]

Christian Marazzi, Il posto dei calzini. La svolta linguistica dell’economia e i suoi effetti sulla politica. Torino

: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999, p. 90-91. In the

work of Maurizio Lazzarato, immaterial labour refers to two different aspects of labour. ‘As regards the ‘informational content’ of the commodity, it refers directly
to the changes taking place in workers’ labour processes in big companies in the industrial and tertiary sectors, where the skills involved in direct labour are
increasingly skills involving cybernetics and computer control (and horizontal and vertical communication).As regards the activity that produces the ‘cultural
content’ of the commodity, immaterial labour involves a series of activities that are not normally recognised as ‘work’ - in other words, the kinds of activities
involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and more strategically, public opinion.’

[31]

‘In contemporary capitalism, we must first distinguish the enterprise from the factory. Two years ago a large French multinational corporation announced that

it would part with eleven production sites. This separation between enterprise and factory is a borderline case, but one that is becoming increasingly frequent in
contemporary capitalism. In the majority of cases, these two functions are mutually integrated; we presume, however, that their separation is symbolic of a more
profound transformation of capitalist production. What will this multinational corporation retain? What does it understand as "enterprise"? All the functions, all the
services and all the employees that allow it to create a world: marketing, service, design, communication, etc.’ Maurizio Lazzarato, Struggle, Event, Media
published on MakeWorld paper #4 (http://www.makeworlds.org)

[32]

When talking of subjectivity we immediately take a distance from the notion of the subject. This is in so far as we recognise being and power as a series of

processes of subjectification that at points become crystallised in mechanisms. Thus, the notion of a subject of resistance is suited to the contractual (juridical)
theories of people, the repressive (institutional) hypotheses, and the discourses of sovereignty and right that dwell on processes of liberation from alienation, in
Marcusean terms. These, we have seen, are processes and discourses that speak through the subject in order to make it intelligible and identifiable. Foucault
historicizes, questions and explicitly rejects these models in favour of a notion of subjectivation as open process operating at the level of the intransitivity of
freedom. 'Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only in so far as they are free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field
of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments may be realized. Where the determining factors saturate the whole
there is no relationship of power, slavery is not a power relationship.... since without the possibility of recalcitrance, power would be equivalent to a physical
determination [...] If it is true that at the heart of power relations and as a permanent condition of their existence there is an insubordination and a certain essential
obstinacy on the part of the principles of freedom, then there is no relationship of power without the means of escape or possible flight. Every power relationship
implies, at least in potentia, a strategy of struggle, in which the two forces are not superimposed, do not lose their specific nature, or do not finally become
confused. Each constitutes for the other a kind of permanent limit, a point of possible reversal. The agonism between power relations and the intransitivity of
freedom is a permanent political task inherent in all social existence.' M. Foucault, ‘The subject and Power’ in Dreyfus and Rabinow Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics, 1982. Negri’s and Foucault’s analysis of subjectivity in post-disciplinary society is carried out at the price of a clear-cut definition of subversion.
There are moments in Foucault’s thought where there is a symmetrical tension between power and resistance that takes overly Nietzschean tones and sees struggle
as constitutive of power relations. Foucault says that in order to take seriously the assertion that struggle is at the centre of every power relation we should get rid of
the old logic of contradiction and the 'sterilizing constraints of dialectics'. The notions of governmentality and biopower are the grounds of the alternative to
negative criticism, because they point to how our possible field of action is structured by others and more importantly, what precisely is at stake in the struggle
itself. Negri's politics of subversion is also informed by an idea of 'reappropriation', obviously not of a 'lost liberty of human essence' but of the conditions of
production, of that collective field of action where self government is possible, and this runs parallel to Foucault’s criticism of the analysis that demonises Power
per se and his reading of the problem of power as one of limitation of elements of domination.

[33]

M. Lazzarato, ‘Immaterial Labour’, in P. Virno & M. Hardt (eds) Radical Thought in Italy, 1996, p. 143

[34]

‘Let us start with consumption, because the relationship between supply and demand has been reversed: the customers are the pivotal point of the enterprise

strategy. In reality, this definition from political economy does not even touch the problem: the sensational rise, the strategic role played in contemporary capitalism
by the expression machine (of opinion, communication, marketing and thus the signs, images and statements).’ M. Lazzarato, Struggle, Event, Media, MakeWorld

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paper #4, 2004, (http://www.makeworlds.org)

[35]

Ibidem

[36]

‘The labourer is (and must be) loquacious. The famous opposition established by Habermas between ‘instrumental’ and ‘communicative’ action (or between

labour and interaction) is radically confuted by the postfordist mode of production. ‘Communicative action’ does not hold any privileged, or even exclusive place in
ethico-cultural relations, in politics, in the struggle for ‘mutual recognition’, whilst residing beyond the realm of material reproduction of life. On the contrary, the
dialogic word is installed at the very heart of capitalist production. Labour is interaction. Therefore, in order to really understand postfordist labouring praxis, one
must increasingly refer to Saussure, Wittgenstein and Carnap. These authors have hardly shown any interest in social relations of production; nonetheless, having
elaborated theories and images of language, they have more to teach in relation to the ‘talkative factory’ than professional sociologists.’ Paolo Virno, ‘Labour and
Language’ in Lessico Postfordista, Milano: Feltrinelli, 2000- in English on http://www.generation-online.org/t/labourlanguage.htm (my trans.)

[37]

Michael Hardt, ’Affective Labour’, in boundary2, 26, no. 2 (Summer 1999)

[38]

Antonio Negri, ‘Value and Affect’, in boundary2, 26, no. 2 (Summer 1999). Negri makes an interesting point here, that the notion of socially necessary labour

time referred to pre-existing communal norms of consumption and standard of life. So when interior to capital, this measure becomes perfunctory – beyond
measure.

[39]

For more on the issue of immaterial workers, see the journal DeriveApprodi on Immaterial workers of the world, Anno VIII, n. 18 Primavera 1999. http://

www.deriveapprodi.org/ind18.html

[40]

This is best analysed in Franco Berardi (Bifo)’s La fabbrica dell’infelicitá, Roma: Deriveapprodi, 2001.

[41] ‘The notion of a new mass entrepreneurship refers to a new social and productive stratum of society that was consolidated both in terms of socio-economic and
class structure and in terms of political organisation. This new stratum contributed to a radical change of the old equilibrium that characterised the Italian society of
the Fordist compromise and the First Republic . In part, this group has formed the social bases of the Northern Leagues.’ The various new forms of social
transformation that emerged in Italy in the 1970’s – the so-called auto-reduction struggles, the user and consumer strikes, and the radical critiques of the health care
system and the total institutions of disciplinary society- all were centred precisely in the attempt to re-appropriate the structure of welfare and invert their logic
based on the reproduction of the norm of the wage relationship. From the beginning of the 1970’s this new subjectivity, far from passively accepting the terrain of
productive flexibility, appropriated the social terrain as a space for struggle and self-valorization. The dramatic increase in small businesses and in the informal
economy in the central and northern parts of the country can be understood only in terms of the diffusion across the social terrain of struggles and practices that
attempted to make use of this deepening of the social division of labour between the businesses to experiment in alternative forms of productive cooperation. There
was a new form of mass entrepreneurship that would in the following years act as the protagonist in the new economic miracle of the so-called diffuse economy.
This new subjectivity that was based on the ‘refusal to work; and on the high education level of the majority of the population invested all the interstices of the
clientelist-Mafia model of regulation of the South along with all the articulations of its integration as dependent participant, realizing finally that class unity
between North and South that Gramsci dreamed of in vain in terms of a social bloc between the industrial workers of the North and the peasants of the South.’ M.
Hard and P. Virno (eds.) Radical Thought in Italy , 1996, p. 83-84. We see a similar process occurring today with the opening of financial markets to the mass. This
is politically analysed by Franco Berardi, whilst at the level of the economy, Marazzi provides useful insights into the crisis of the financial market and the role of
convention, in Capitale e linguaggio. Ciclo e crisi della new economy. Soveria: Rubbettino Editore, www.rubbettino.it, 2001.

[42]

‘What the theories of power of modernity were forced to consider transcendent, that is, external to productive and social relations, is here formed inside,

immanent to the productive and social relations. Mediation is absorbed within the productive machine. The political synthesis of social space is fixed in the space of
communication. This is why communications industries have assumed such a central position. They not only organise production on a new scale and impose a new
structure adequate to global space, but also make its justification immanent. Power, as it produces, organises: as it organises, it speaks and expresses itself as
authority. Language, as it communicates, produces commodities but moreover creates subjectivities, puts them in relation, and orders them. The communication
industries integrate the imaginary and the symbolic within the biopolitical fabric, not merely putting them at the service of power but actually integrating them into
its very functioning. [...] It is a subject that produces its own image of authority. This is a form of legitimation that rests on nothing outside itself and is reproposed
ceaselessly by developing its own language of self-validation’. Hardt & Negri, Empire, 2000, p. 33.

[43]

With Habermas and Rawls versions of liberalism and discourse ethics as negotiable ethics, a subject centred communication that aims at reaching rational

agreement, so that communicative action limits politics to consent, is opposed to Negri’s idea of the function of command.

[44]

On the difference between the rights-state and the social-state: the former operates on the terrain of private and individual interests, and is the guarantor state,

guaranteeing the harmony of competing claims. The social state, on the other hand, that where the social power of labour in all its connotations is grounded in its
political form, is effective at a different level. It interiorises the class relationship, and plans accordingly. It represses those who do not accept its right to act as
stabiliser of the general social (capitalist) interest. The contradiction of the rights state was that of being effective at the level of private interests and rational order,
the order that capital could not practically allow given the demands of accumulation. Law in this sense was more of an abstract (whilst more pragmatic in the social
state) or formal, reflected in the liberal political theory the corresponding to it, i.e., the problem of rights in the context of pre-constituted facts about social reality.
In the social state the attempt is made to retain most elements of the rights-state, such as freedom and equality, whilst making them compatible with sociality. It
does this, in its reformist guise, with the language of natural right.

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III

[45]

When asked about ‘the much-discussed 'recuperation' of the body through pornography and advertising’, Foucault replied: I don't agree at all with this talk

about 'recuperation'. What's taking place is the usual strategic development of a struggle. Let's take a precise example, that of auto-eroticism. The restrictions on
masturbation hardly start in Europe until the eighteenth century. Suddenly, a panic-theme appears; an appalling sickness develops in the Western world. Children
masturbate. Via the medium of families, though not at their initiative, a system of control of sexuality, an objectivisation of sexuality allied to corporal persecution,
is established over the bodies of children. But sexuality, through thus becoming an object of analysis and concern, surveillance and control, engenders at the same
time an intensification of each individual's desire, for, in and over his body. The body thus became the issue of a conflict between parents and children, the child
and the instances of control. The revolt of the sexual body is the reverse effect of this encroachment. What is the response on the side of power? An economic (and
perhaps also ideological) exploitation of eroticisation, from sun-tan products to pornographic films. Responding precisely to the revolt of the body, we find a new
mode of investment which presents itself no longer in the form of control by repression but that of control by stimulation. 'Get undressed—but be slim, good-
looking, tanned'' For each move by one adversary, there is an answering one by the other. But this isn't a 'recuperation' in the Leftists' sense. One has to recognise
the indefiniteness of the struggle—though this is not to say it won't some day have an end ....’. However, identity politics can be historically seen as a successful
form of recuperation of the struggles that fought against the notion of a formally sovereign political subject and posed the problem of the everyday. In our days the
preoccupation with identity takes the form of a self-obsessed politics. In post politically correct society identity politics brings about self-victimisation and the
hypostasis of the category of experience in its narrowest form whilst cancelling out any question of the positioning of knowledge and the self in relation to the
world. It reasons through the binary mode of rejection or acceptance and is the result of a progressive psychologisation of politics. Franco Berardi (Bifo) refers to
Alain Ehrenberg’s La fatigue d’être soi, when he writes: 'Depression starts emerging at a time when the disciplinary model of behavioural management, the rules of
authority and conformity to the laws that assigned to social classes and sexes a destiny, fell apart in the face of norms that incite each person to individual initiative
pushing her to be herself. Because of this normativity, the entire responsibility of our lives is placed upon us. Depression then presents itself as an illness of
responsibility in which the feeling of inadequacy/insufficiency predominates. The depressed is not worth it; he is tired to have to become himself. (La fabbrica
dell’infelicitá, 2001, p.10). Identity politics can be regarded as the 'healthy', unfatigued response to this process, which calls for nourishing the 'responsible' self.
Identity politics cannot go beyond self assertion at the expense of some other, but its worst by product is that it pre-empts political debate though pretending to be
having one. It is close to Habermas in its reliance on procedure, the means that is the end in itself, because in asserting its being it expresses all its fear of becoming.
The political theories on networks and networking are indicative of this procedural obsession.

[46]

M. Lazzarato ‘Immaterial Labour’, 1996.

Ibid p. 297

Ibid p. 296

Ibid p. 294

On the question of exodus and its difference from refusal Virno provides an interesting example in his 'Virtuosity and Revolution: the political theory of

exodus' (the North American workers' colonisation of low-cost land in the 19th century and the self-precarisation of young labourers in late 1970s Italy ). See www.
generation-online.org/t/translations.html : Maurizio Lazzarato interviews Paolo Virno on the multitude and the working class (trans. Arianna Bove). See also his

Esercizi di esodo. Linguaggio e azione politica. Verona

: OmbreCorte. 2002.

[51]

M. Hardt and P. Virno (eds) Radical Thought in Italy, 1996, p. 199

[52]

Maurizio Lazzarato ‘From Biopower to Biopolitics’, in Pli. Warwick Journal of Philosophy, no. 12, 2002.

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Concluding remarks

Concluding remarks

What is at stake, for those like us who are outside of discourse and inside the word, outside of categories
but inside linguistic acts, for us who refuse to be reduced to objects and demand the power to produce
ourselves as subjects, maybe is this: to what extent can the exodus from a world we don’t recognise as
ours be not only resistance but also production? To what extent can refusal and critique also be moments
of invention for everyone? How to speak a different language and still be understood? This is
‘communication’ but we might call it politics, or we might call it life.

[1]

This research aimed to investigate what Foucault meant by ontology of the present and what it would entail to

posit the project of an ontology of the present as a philosophical task for our times. This led us to follow several

different paths: one was the role of writing history.

The Annales School was the movement that broke with the ‘order of discourse’ by problematising the ways in

which we approach the past in a search for continuity and causality. Foucault’s genealogies follow the course

opened up by the philosophical reflection on periodisation and interdisciplinarity carried out by Annales

movement, in order to criticise the search for continuity as actually one for necessity. Complementing their project

of the criticism of philosophy of history, he carries out a critique of the history of philosophy as one of the

progression of ideas in time. This leads him to the notions of discourse, the episteme and the archive, which as we

have seen are the grounding elements of his project of historical ontology.

These notions, whilst developing out of a reflection on history, also insert themselves directly in the

debate on language. Foucault and the Formalists strongly criticised analyses of language that made recourse to

notions of genesis, origin and the subject, in order to bring the debate on language to the level of concrete

existence, which is only graspable outside of the framework of unitary language. What is the constitutive function

of language? How is it first and foremost a practice? What autonomy can a reflection on language have with

respect to a reflection on ontology? The reflection on language is one on philosophy and its role in relation to

science and history. Foucault’s answer to these questions in the notion of discourse and the archive is also a

political intervention that attempts to criticise notions of a founding subject, philosophy of consciousness,

originating experience and continuity that in imposing an order on the said are productive of grilles of

intelligibility as well as operative in practices of power relations. The question of subjectivity and language is

inevitably one of the formation and practices of veridiction in their effects, but as the Subject disappears in

discourse, the ‘I speak’ needs to be reconfigured as the point of convergence and departure for a new way of

linking ontology and epistemology whilst exorcising the dangers of a ‘rational psychology’. Kant thought that this

danger would lead to a substantialism that was ultimately tautological; Foucault believed it to underlie the

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Concluding remarks

scientism that, in its circularity, had great consequences for the ordering of modern society in the configuration of

the normal and the pathological. If the Subject was structurally presupposed in the ‘I think’, in the modern

episteme the notion of subjectivity stems from the role of the ‘I speak’ which points to a relation of exteriority.

Because of this, through an analysis of the ontological dimension of language we approach a notion of subjectivity

bound to open up new questions on philosophical anthropology. This comes to light in Foucault’s Commentaire,

where it is in the insertion of linguistic exchange in the reflection on man that we find the only possible ground for

thinking anthropology in terms of what man makes of himself, in terms of an ontology of ourselves.

In terms of an ontology of our present, we have suggested, through the exposition of the theories of Postfordism,

how language today can be seen as productive of subjectivity and forms of life, and have exposed some of the

ways in which, as the order of discourse goes to work, language operates in a field that now more than in the past

is open to recuperation and valorisation of power, with no mediation. We have seen how this occurs in a realm that

is much wider than the communication industries. What since the explosion of mass communication has been

theorised in terms of the commodification of knowledge and criticised from the consumer end, Postfordist studies

see in terms of production, albeit one that is antagonistic, conflictual and open and one that we are involved in, not

simply as receivers. To think language today entails thinking subjectivity as production, and in this context

Foucault has a stronger power of diagnosis. Beyond the paradigm of domination and repression, practices of

transformation need to search for a different language, one that experiments not only in resistance to discursive

effects of interdiction and to incitements to self-expression and confession, but one that is also capable of

capturing the constituent traits of subjectivity in autonomous practices of self-transformation and self-valorisation,

to use the postfordist lexicon.

As we have pointed out, the questioning of the role of language in the production of subjectivity also leads us to a

reflection on the role of anthropology. In Anthropology and Myth, Lévi-Strauss wrote: The originality of

anthropology has always consisted in studying man by placing itself at what, in each epoch, has been considered

the boundaries of humanity. [...] As an 'interstitial' science devoted to the exploration of this mobile frontier

separating the possible from the impossible, anthropology will exist as long as humanity and is, in this sense,

eternal.

In his engagement with Kant, Foucault regards this as the task of philosophy, but one that needs to

expose the epistemological constrictions of an analytics of finitude as ontological limits placed on being: against a-

historical ambitions to scientism, they represent more than a problem confined to epistemology. In this sense, the

analysis of the role of the inner sense and its relation to spontaneity and receptivity becomes central. It is Time as a

form of the inner sense that endangers the possibility of synthesising the unconditioned. In Foucault’s rethinking

of Kantian Dialectics Time invests the synthetic activity, and the world presents itself as the domain, source and

limit for Kunst, exercise, épreuve,

•

χνη

. Thus Dialectics becomes the study of rationality: not as the faculty

productive of principles with a regulative function, but as what produces codes for practice as well as their

justification. What is it to reason if not the attempt to unravel the mechanisms effectively operating through the

rationality of our time? What happens when we take the paralogisms of reason and our finitude as the point of

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Concluding remarks

departure from which to break these boundaries? For Foucault, the study of rationality is the study of paradigms,

of what constitutes something whilst making it intelligible. Inserting an anthropological reflection in the present,

one for which ontology and epistemology remain inseparable from the question of transformation, demands that

we take modern subjectivity as the field traversed by this rationality. Theorists of Postfordism have partly carried

out this research on the transformations of forms of subjectivity, ways of living, working, communicating, in the

changing mechanisms of subjugation and resistance.

Antiquity is revisited with the Enlightenment motto in mind, precisely to continue this genealogy into the mobile

frontiers established between ontology and epistemology, philosophy and spirituality. Sapere aude is mutare aude:

for Foucault the ethical task was not one to be carried out in a progression from knowing to being. For his ethics,

to know is to change oneself. Again, counter to the repressive hypothesis, the antidote to domination cannot entail

turning inwards for a hermeneutics of interiority in the search for a truth that can save us, but demands for an

opening of subjectivity to the relational nature of knowledge and transformation. In an inversion of the

Enlightenment motto, knowledge stems from freedom rather than the opposite, for ethics is the practice of freedom

in the subjectification of truth and in the infinite labour of critique. What is at stake is not the insertion of the self

as object in an epistemic discourse, but the insertion of the self in the world as the field and condition of possibility

for its épreuve.

In the endless accumulation of knowledge produced by a modernity that relegated philosophy to the study of

epistemology and finitude, Foucault searches for those discourses that in their time attempted to function as

interventions in the changing forms of the political and social world. There he finds the historicism of the war of

races, which is presented to us in its character as an event. We chose to analyse this peculiar genealogy of the war

paradigm because by pointing to the tactical reversibility of the paradigm, Foucault is also trying to capture the

elements of this discourse that re-emerged at specific historical moments under different guises. These are the

discourses with an alternative understanding of political crisis and strategy, which take struggle and control as the

objects of analysis, unlike the pacifying discourses of political formalism. We aimed to question the process whereby

the reflection on war is disqualified in a certain philosophy that becomes in modernity the realm of syntheses and

reconciliation, because as a paradigm operative at the level of knowledge and practices it should not be relegated to

the political scientism of military studies. In fact, war always seems to catch us by surprise.

It is in this spirit that we read Agamben’s intervention on the state of exception as an update of Foucault’s reversal

of Clausewitz’s formula. We have seen how the historical-political analysis that Foucault outlines in his 1976

lectures operates in the directions of domination on the one hand and totalisation on the other. The latter is

embodied in the discourse on sovereignty, the former in the paradigm of war. Agamben’s political analysis

establishes the relation between the two in the state of exception, for it is in the relation of sovereignty to biopower

that political discourse attempts to neutralise the fundamental biopolitical fracture, a discourse that has historically

developed from the register of military war to that of civil war and today of ‘humanitarian’ war, whilst casting the

debate on peace respectively around the notions of political, civil and human rights.

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Concluding remarks

The studies of Operaismo had worked within the war paradigm in so far as they saw antagonism as the

very lever of innovation and social change. Following Foucault and taking the analysis of contemporary forms of

subjectivity to be also one of the current modes of subjectivation, current studies of Postfordism see power

relations as always operating through struggle, which also determines that element of freedom intrinsic to

processes of subjectivation, social determination and resistance.

Because of biopolitical production, a critique of power today is inseparable from a critique of labour.

The social relations that emerged out of the crisis of the welfare state on the one hand and the critique of the

Labourist ideology on the other, have given rise to phenomena that cannot be parcelled out into social, political

and economic spheres. In this lies the crucial import of Foucault’s notion of biopower: the ability to diagnose a

state of affairs where life is invested by processes of capital valorisation. The control paradigm uses technologies

and instruments of appropriation that render the separation between private and public space, free time and labour

time, ethics of affect and ethics of reason, state and civil society absolutely inadequate to capture the conflicting

modes of contemporary processes of subjectivation and valorisation.

The import of Foucault’s work in philosophy is invaluable. He inverts Descartes in one important respect: if in

Descartes the first rule of method that leads to the certainty of the ‘I think’ was immediate self evidence, for

Foucault it is the breach of self-evidence that constitutes the political and theoretical task of philosophical exercise.

The guiding thread of our research into his thought has been the notion of an ontology of the present. This is a

project in historical, linguistic, anthropological and political theory that is grounded on an ethics of freedom.

Philosophical critique today could use this force of diagnosis in two ways: firstly in the medical sense used by

Foucault, where diagnosis is not a mere description, but the process whereby we determine the nature of a problem

from an observation of its symptoms. Secondly, in its etymological sense, where diagnosis means through

knowledge, it operates in a sagittal relation to the present. In other words, philosophical critique could open up

problematisations that can transform us.

back to Table of Contents

[1]

Judith Revel, ‘Idee Parole Linguaggio’. http://www.infoxoa.org/comunica/index.html. (January 2004) (my translation) See also http://www.generation-online.org/p/

prevel.htm

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Foucault's These Complementaire on Kant's Anthropology

¦¦

¦¦

¦¦

¦¦

Introduction à l'Anthropologie de Kant

Thèse complémentaire pour le doctorat dès

lettres*

Michel Foucault

Une note de l'Anthropologie indique qu'avant d'être

rédigé, le texte en avait été prononcé pendant quelque

trente ans ; les leçons du semestre d'hiver lui étaient

consacrées, celles de l'été devant être réservées à la

géographie physique. En fait, ce chiffre n'est pas exact ;

Kant avait commencé son enseignement de géographie

dès 1756; les cours d'Anthropologie en revanche n'ont été

inaugurés probablement que pendant l'hiver 1772-1773 .

L'édition du texte que nous connaissons coïncide avec la

fin des cours, et avec la retraite définitive de Kant

comme professeur. Le Neues deutsches Merkur de 1797

fait mention de la nouvelle qui lui est transmise de

Königsberg : «Kant publie cette année son Anthropologie.

Il l'avait jusqu'à présent gardée par-devers lui parce que,

de ses conférences les étudiants ne fréquentaient guère

plus que celle-ci. Maintenant, il ne donne plus de cours,

et n'a plus de scrupule à livrer ce texte au publique» .

Sans doute, Kant laisse-t-il son programme figurer encore

au catalogue du semestre d'été 1797, mais il avait en

publique, sinon d'une manière officielle, déclaré qu'«à

raison de son grand âge, il ne voulait plus faire de

conférences à l'Université» . Le cours définitivement

interrompu, Kant s'est décidé à en faire imprimer le texte.

De ses divers états, avant cette rédaction dernière, nous

ne connaissons rien, ou presque. A deux reprises Starke a

publié, après la mort de Kant, des notes qui avaient été

prises par des auditeurs . Aucun de ces deux ouvrages

cependant ne mérite une absolue confiance ; il est

difficile de faire crédit à des notes publiées 35 ans après

la mort de Kant. Cependant le second recueil comprend

un élément important qui ne figure pas dans le texte

publié par Kant : un chapitre «Von der intellectuellen Lust

und Unlust». Selon Starke le manuscrit de ce chapitre

aurait été perdu lorsque Kant l'a envoyé de Königsberg à

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Foucault's These Complementaire on Kant's Anthropology

Iéna pour le faire imprimer. En fait, rien dans le

manuscrit de l'Anthropologie, tel qu'il existe à la

Bibliothèque de Rostack, ne permet de supposer qu'un

fragment en a été perdu. Il est plus vraisemblable que

Kant n'a pas voulu faire place, dans l'ouvrage imprimé, à

un texte qui avait par fait partie, jadis, de son

enseignement oral. Quant au premier recueil de Stark, s'il

faut s'y arrêter, c'est qu'il comporte une précision de

date ; les notes qui le constituent avaient été prises au

cours du semestre d'hiver 1790-1791 : sur deux points

touchant à la conception et à la structure même de

l'Anthropologie, elles indiquent qu'un changement a dû se

produire entre l'année 1791 et la rédaction définitive du

manuscrit .

De ce texte, formé et développé pendant 25 ans,

transformé certainement à mesure que la pensée

kantienne se dégageait dans de nouvelles formulations,

nous n'avons donc qu'un état : le dernier. Le texte nous

est donné, déjà chargé de sédimentations, et refermé sur

le passé dans lequel il s'est constitué. Ces 25 années qui

ont vu se clore les premières recherches, s'amorcer la

critique, se développer dans son équilibre tripartite la

pensée kantienne, s'établir enfin le système de défense

contre le retour leibnitien, le scepticisme de Schulze et

l'idéalisme de Fichte, sont enfermées dans le texte de

l'Anthropologie, et sa coulée continue, sans qu'un seul

critère extérieur et certain permette de dater telle et

telle couche de sa généalogie profonde.

Et pourtant, il ne serait pas indifférent de savoir quel a

été le coefficient de stabilité de l'Anthropologie par

rapport à l'entreprise critique. Y avait-il dès 1772, et

subsistant peut-être tout au fond de la Critique, une

certaine image concrète de l'homme qu'aucune

élaboration philosophique n'a pour l'essentiel altérée, et

qui se formule enfin, sans modification majeure, dans le

dernier des textes publiés par Kant?

Et si cette image de l'homme a pu recueillir l'expérience

critique, sans se défigurer pour autant, n'estce pas peut-

être parce que'elle l'a jusqu'à un certain point, sinon

organisée et commandée, du moins guidée, et comme

secrètement orientée? De la Critique à l'Anthropologie, il

y aurait comme un rapport de finalité obscure et

obstinée. Mais il se peut aussi que l'Anthropologie ait été

modifiée dans ses éléments majeurs à mesure que se

développait la tentative critique : l'archéologie du texte,

si elle était possible, ne permettrait-elle pas de voir

naître un «homo criticus», dont la structure diffèrerait

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Foucault's These Complementaire on Kant's Anthropology

pour l'essentiel de l'homme qui l'a précédé? C'est à dire

que la Critique, à son caractère propre de

«propédeutique» à la philosophie, ajouterait un rôle

constitutif dans la naissance et le devenir des formes

concrètes de l'existence humaine. Il y aurait une certaine

vérité critique de l'homme, fille de la critique des

conditions de la vérité.

Mais n'espérons pas d'indubitables réponses à des

interrogations aussi univoques. Le texte de l'Anthropologie

nous est donné dans sa forme terminale. Et nous aurons

pour nous guider dans cette tentative quatre séries

d'indices, toutes très partielles :

a/ Les Reflexionen se rapportant à l'anthropologie que

l'édition de l'Académie a regroupées en essayant de leur

donner une date. Encore faut-il faire remarquer que bien

peu de ces fragments sont assez étendus pour donner une

image de ce qu'a pu être l'Anthropologie à un moment

donné ; et s'il est vrai que la datation approximative est

proposée avec prudence, le regroupement a été fait selon

le plan 1798, comme s'il avait été un cadre permanent

depuis 1772. Dans ces conditions seules des modifications

de détail deviennent déchiffrables.

b/ Les Collegentwürfe ont été répartis dans l'édition de

l'Académie en deux sections : l'une réunissant les années

1770-1780 ; l'autre les années 80-90 . Malgré les mêmes

difficultés que pour les Réflexions on peut apercevoir en

comparant ces textes à celui de 1798, des glissements

majeurs dans le sens même de l'Anthropologie, ou dans le

centre d'équilibre de l'ouvrage (importance plus grande

apportée par les Collegentwürfe, aux thèmes de l'histoire,

de la citoyenneté, du cosmopolitisme).

c/ La comparaison avec les textes de la période

précritique, et la comparaison avec les textes

contemporains, ou à peu près, de la rédaction définitive

de l'Anthropologie. On peut alors isoler quelques éléments

qui sont restés absolument stables depuis le début du

cours jusqu'à sa publication. En revanche certains

problèmes qui ont dominé la pensée de Kant vers les

années 1796-1798 ont à coup sûr fait pression sur le texte

définitif de l'Anthropologie et dans cette mesure,

plusieurs thèmes du texte de 1798 sont d'apport récent.

d/ La confrontation avec les textes contemporains qui

traitent du domaine anthropologique. Certaines

coïncidences, par exemple, avec la Psychologia empirica

de Baumgarten que Kant a lue très tôt, indiquant, à n'en

pas douter, des éléments permanents dans

l'Anthropologie ; d'autres, avec l'Empirische Psychologie

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de C.C.E.Schmidt révèlent au contraire une formation

tardive. Mais là encore, il faut être prudent ; car très

souvent, il n'est pas possible de savoir si l'emprunt a été

fait par Kant à un livre publié, ou inversement si l'auteur

n'a pas emprunté à la doctrine écrite ou à l'enseignement

oral de Kant (transmis par les notes des élèves) tel

élément que l'on retrouve dans l'Anthropologie comme

dans sa patrie d'origine. Il semble, par exemple, que Ith

ait parfaitement connu l'ensemble de l'œuvre de Kant,

souvent citée par lui dans son Versuch emier

Anthropologie ; Schmidt y fait également référence .

Mais tous ces recoupements ne peuvent guère servir qu'à

dégager les abords ; ils laissent inentamé le problème

central des rapports anthropologico-critiques. Mais, aussi

incertaines qu'elles soient, ces indications ne doivent pas

être négligées. En confrontant ce qu'elles peuvent

apprendre avec les textes de l'Anthropologie et ceux de la

Critique, on peut espérer voir comment le dernier des

ouvrages de Kant se trouvait engagé à la fois dans la série

des recherches précritiques, dans l'ensemble de

l'entreprise critique elle-même, et dans le groupe des

travaux qui, à la même époque, tentent de cerner une

connaissance spécifique de l'homme. Et d'une manière

paradoxale, ce triple engagement rend l'Anthropologie

contemporaine à la fois de ce qui précède la Critique, de

ce qui l'accomplit et de ce qui va bientôt la liquider.

Il n'est pas possible pour cette raison même de dissocier

tout-à-fait, dans l'analyse de l'ouvrage, la perspective

génétique et la méthode structurale : nous avons affaire à

un texte qui, dans son épaisseur même, dans sa présence

définitive et l'équilibre de ses éléments, est contemporain

de tout le mouvement qu'il clôture. Seule une genèse de

toute l'entreprise critique, ou du moins la restitution de

son mouvement d'ensemble pourrait rendre compte de

cette figure terminale en laquelle elle s'achève et

s'efface. Mais inversement, la structure des rapports

anthropologico-critiques pourrait seule permettre, si elle

était exactement définie, de déchiffrer la genèse qui

s'achemine vers cet équilibre dernier, — ou pénultième s'il

est vrai que l'Opus postumum fait déjà les premiers pas

sur le sol, enfin rejoint, de la philosophie transcendantale.

Réglons d'abord quelques questions de dates.

Un certain nombre d'indices permettent de situer avec

assez d'exactitude le moment où fut rédigé le texte de

l'Anthropologie, parue chez Nicolovius en octobre 1798.

1) Dans une lettre à Christophe Wilhelm Hufeland qui date

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de la seconde quinzaine du mois de mars 1797, Kant

remercie son correspondant de l'envoi qu'il lui a fait. Il

s'agit de la Makrobiotik oder die Kunst das menschliche

Leben zu verlängern (Iéna, 1796) ; il promet de lire le

livre, mais en mesurant son plaisir, «à la fois pour

conserver la vivacité de son appétit et pour saisir

clairement les idées hardies et exaltantes pour l'âme qui

concernent la force de la disposition morale, animatrice

de l'homme physique, et dont il compte bien se servir

pour l'Anthropologie» .

2) Le 20 septembre 1797, le texte est assez avancé pour

que le cercle des amis et des correspondants s'attende à

une prochaine parution. «C'est avec une grande joie, écrit

Biester, que les lecteurs vont accueillir votre

Anthropologie» ; et pensant probablement que la

rédaction en est désormais achevée, il ajoute : «Il est

excellent que vous donniez ce texte à l'imprimeur cette

année encore, car il y a bien longtemps qu'on désire le

lire. »

3) Le 5 novembre de la même année, Tieftrunk demande

des nouvelles de l'ouvrage, s'étonnant un peu qu'il ne soit

pas encore paru : «Le public attend de vous une

Anthropologie : va-t-elle bientôt paraître ?»

4) En fait, il est difficile de savoir si la rédaction est ou

non achevée à cette date. Autant Kant s'est occupé avec

obstination et minutie de la publication du Conflit des

facultés , autant il est avare, dans sa correspondance, de

renseignements sur l'Anthropologie. Lorsque, dans une

lettre du 13 octobre 1797, il évoque la possiblité sa mort

prochaine, il recommande à Tieftrunk deux «mémoires»

dont le professeur Gensichen se chargera. L'un est

entièrement rédigé — depuis deux ans déjà — , l'autre est

presque achevé . Il est infiniment peu probable que le

manuscrit de l'Anthropologie soit par là concerné ; le

terme d'Abhandlung ne convient pas à un texte si long ; il

s'agit bien plutôt de deux sections du Conflit des facultés.

Dès lors faut-il admettre que la véritable rédaction de

l'Anthropologie n'est pas encore entreprise ou, au

contraire, tout à fait terminée et déjà acheminé à

l'éditeur?

5) Schöndörffer fait valoir que le manuscrit de

l'Anthropologie ne désigne pas nommément le Dr Less à

propos d'Albrecht Haller : il est question seulement d'un

«théologien connu, ancien collègue (de Haller) à

l'université». Or le texte imprimé porte le nom du Dr

Less . Celui-ci étant mort en 1797, on peut supposer que

Kant n'a pas voulu, de son vivant, le citer expressément ;

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la nouvelle du décès serait donc intervenue une fois le

manuscrit achevé et, sans doute, remis à l'imprimeur.

6) Plus important et plus convaincant, les fait que

certains passages qui figurent dans le manuscrit on passé,

au peu près tels quels, dans le texte. Von der Macht des

Gemüts durch die blossen Vorsatz seiner krankhaften

Gefühle Meister zu sein. Ce texte constitue le troisième

partie du Conflit des Facultés. Kant, dans une lettre du 17

avril 1797, donne ce thème de l’ouvrage comme une idée

qui lui est venue tout récemment. Il vient d’entrer dans

sa soixante-quatorzième année est s’est trouvé

heureusement préservé jusque-là de toute maladie; cette

expérience le fonde de parler d’une “psycholgische

Artzneimittel”. C’est un fait que dans sa lettre

précédente à Hufeland (fin du mois de mars), il n’en est

pas encore question. La lecture de la Makriobiotik l’a

déterminé, comme le laisse entendre la “Réponse à

Hufeland” qui ouvre Von der Macht des Gemüts. Or ce

texte a pau dans le Journal der praktischen Arzneikunde

und Wundarzneikunst (4te Stuck, V Band. 1798) avec des

textes prélevés sur le texte de l’Anthropologie. On peut

donc supposer que celui-ci était achevé, ou presque,

lorsque fut redigé l’article destiné à la revue de Hufeland.

7. Une note du text imprimé renvoie à Von der Macht des

Gemüts. Or cette note ne figure pas dans le manuscrit de

Rostock, ce qui laisse suppoer qu’à l’époque où il le

rédigea, Kant n’avait pas achevé et peut-être même pas

encore entamé lc composition de’article qu’il destinait à

Hufeland.

8. On a fait remarquer qu’une note marginae du

manuscrit renvoie à l’ouvrage de Hearne, dont deux

traductions allemandes avaient paru en 1797. Kant leas

aurait donc lues dans la seconde moitié de cette année-

là, une fois le manuscrit rédigé. Mais encore faut-il

remarquer que Hearne était déjà cité dans la Religion a

l’intérieur des limites de la simple raison. Il pourrait donc

s’agir d’une réminiscence et d’une addition.

Tous ces renseignements indiquent une date assez

précise: le manuscrit de l’Anthropologie a dû être mis au

point, pour l’essentiel, dans la première moitié de

l’année 1797 – peut-être dans les trois ou quatre premiers

mois. La brusque inspiration qui a fait naître Von de

Macht n’a pas eu sans doute à interrompre une rédaction

à peu près achevée; mais elle en a repoussée

vraisemblablement l’impression et la mise au point

définitive. C'est une fois Von der Macht achevé et peut-

être envoyé déjà à Hufeland que les dernières

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modifications ont été apportées à l'Anthropologie

(suppression des passages qui faisaient double emploi,

addition de références), et adressées alors directement à

l'imprimeur ou portées sur les épreuves.

En elle-même cette précision de date n'est ni tout à fait

indifférente, ni tout à fait décisive. Elle prend son sens, —

et la mesure de ce sens — , si on rapproche le texte

rédigé à ce moment là, non seulement de ceux qui lui

sont contemporains, mais de ceux qui avoisinaient, dans

le temps, les premiers cours d'Anthropologie. Si on admet

comme point d'origine du texte, l'année 1772, entre la

Dissertation sur le monde sensible et intelligible et l'Essai

sur les Races humaines, on voit que l'Anthropologie a pris

naissance au cours des années qui semblent clore la

période précritique et annoncer la révolution

copernicienne.

Une chose est certaine, en tous cas : le texte publié en

1798 s'ajuste sans difficulté et sans modification notables

à divers écrits de la période précritique.

a/ Observations sur le Beau et le Sublime (1764). Les

concordances entre ce texte et l'Anthropologie ont été

déjà relevées avec soin et exactitude par R. Kempf . Elles

sont notables pour l'analyse des tempéraments. Sans

doute la perspective est-elle, ici et là, entièrement

différente ; dans les Observations, elle s'ordonne au

problème des sentiments moraux, — la classification étant

alors admise comme une donné de fait ; alors que la

description de l'Anthropologie est commandée par une

sorte de déduction des tempéraments, à partir de la

tension et de la détente de l'activité et du sentiment .

Mais le contenu est étonnamment semblable, jusque dans

les expressions et le choix des mots: à propos du

colérique, par exemple, on lit dans les Observations :

«sein Wohlwollen ist Höflichkeit, seine Achtung

Zeremonie» ; et dans l'Anthropologie : «er ist höflich aber

mit Zeremonie» . Mêmes coïncidences à propos du

caractère des hommes et des femmes , des traits

distinctifs des diverses nationalités . Toutes montrent

assez la lointaine origine du texte, la permanence

presque littérale de certains éléments que des décennies

entières ont à peine entamés.

b/ Essai sur les maladies de l'esprit (1764). Là encore,

bien des éléments communs : la distinction entre Torheit

et Narrheit : «Der Tor ist nicht weise, der Narr ist nicht

klug» ; la classification des maladies de la défaillance

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(Ohnmacht), et de la perturbation (Verkehrtheit) qui

deviendra, dans l'Anthropologie, sans que la signification

en soit modifiée, l'opposition des déficiences de l'esprit —

Gemüts-schwäche — et de ses maladies — Gemüts-

krankheiten . Notons cependant que certaines formes de

folies, que l'Anthropologie place dans le cadre des

déficiences (Dummheit, Albemheit, Jorheit), étaient dans

l'Essai, mises à part, et comme dévalorisées par rapport

aux malades véritables, seules dignes de pitié ; elles

étaient désignées comme «diese ekelhafte Krankheiten» .

D'autre part, la distinction fondamentale des grandes

maladies de l'esprit, si elle conserve les mêmes termes,

de l'Essai à l'Anthropologie, leur donne un contenu

radicalement différent. La classification de l'Essai est

simple : la Verrückung altère les concepts de

l'expérience, et fait naître des chimères, comme dans

l'hypochondrie ; le délire (Wahnsinn) affecte le jugement

comme chez le mélancolique ; la démence, enfin

(Wahnwitz) détériore la raison en ce qui concerne les

jugements . Cette classification a été modifiée : les

concepts organisateurs du classement sont ceux qui ont

rapport avec l'expérience possible, tandis que sous

l'étiquette générale d'aliénation (Verrückung), on trouve

échelonnés à la manière de Sauvage ou de Linné les

notions de amentia, dementia, insania, versania . La

parenté du texte de l'Anthropologie avec celui de l'Essai

est encore fort claire, mais on reconnaît mieux ici les

traces d'un réajustement aux découvertes critiques, et

aux développements scientifiques de l'époque.

c/ Notons aussi dans l'Anthoropologie un écho d'un texte

de 1771 où Kant rendait compte d'une Dissertation de

Moscceti : «Von dem körperlichen Unterschiede zwischen

den Struktur der Tiere und Menschen» : 26 ans plus tard,

Kant évoquera ce difficile, et à ses yeux inutile problème

de la posture verticale chez l'homme primitif.

d/ L'Essai sur les Races (1775). L'Anthropologie accorde

moins d'une page au problème qui avait été traité dans

l'Essai ; elle se contente de renvoyer au texte de

Girtanner qui avait résumé peu de temps auparavant les

idées de Kant dans sa Dissertation : «Über das kantische

Prinzip für die Naturgeschichte» . Mais l'Essai sur les Races

se termine sur un bref paragraphe qui est important pour

comprendre quelle place Kant faisait à l'Anthropologie

dans l'organisation du savoir. L'Essai était destiné à

«amorcer» le cours de géographie physique de semestre

d'été 1775 — et dans cette mesure il relève de cette

discipline. Celle-ci cependant n'a pas sa fin en soi, et n'est

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pas en référence exclusive à elle-même : elle forme un

exercice préalable à la connaissance du monde

(Weltkenntniss), dont l'Anthropologie fera plus tard le

synonyme d'une connaissance de l'homme. Cette

constitution d'une Weltkentniss porte avec soi deux

caractères spécifiques :

— elle doit fournir «à toutes les connaissances et

aptitudes acquises» , l'élément du pragmatique, de

manière qu'elles ne servent pas simplement à accroître le

savoir de l'Ecole, mais encore à organiser et guider la vie

concrète ;

— et pour ce faire, les deux domaines où s'exerce le

savoir, la Nature et l'Homme, ne doivent être pris comme

thèmes de notations rhapsodiques, mais doivent être

envisagés d'une manière cosmologique, c'est-à-dire dans

le rapport à ce tout dont ils font partie et où l'un et

l'autre prennent leur place et se situent (darin ein jeden

selbst seine Stelle einnimmt).

Ces thèmes sont proches de ceux qui sont indiqués dans

l'Introduction et dans les dernières pages de

l'Anthropologie. Mais si le contenu thématique ne change

pas (prévalence du pragmatique, et souci d'une

connaissance qui concerne le monde dans la cohésion

serrée d'un tout), les structures, en revanche, sont

décalées : Géographie physique et anthropologie ne

prennent plus place l'une à côté de l'autre, comme les

deux moitiés symétriques d'une connaissance d'un monde

articulé selon l'opposition de l'homme et de la nature ; la

tâche de se diriger vers une Weltkenntniss est tout

entière confiée à une Anthropologie qui ne rencontre plus

la nature que sous la forme déjà habitable de la Terre

(Erde). Et par conséquent, l'idée d'une perspective

cosmologique qui commanderait par avance, et de loin(?),

Géographie et Anthropologie, servant d'unité de référence

au savoir de la nature et à la connaissance de l'homme,

devra se dissiper pour faire place à une idée

cosmopolitique, qui a valeur programmatique, et où le

monde apparaît plutôt comme cité à batir que comme

cosmos déjà donné.

A l'autre extrémité de l’œuvre kantienne,

l'Anthoropologie est contemporaine d'un certain nombre

d'autres textes qui, rapprochés, permettent de cerner à

peu près le point d'arrivée ou du moins les apports les plus

récents. Tenant ainsi les deux bouts de la corde, nous

serons peut-être moins désarmés pour aborder ce fait, à

la fois historique et structural, ce fait doublement

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présent dans la chronologie des textes et dans

l'architectonique de l'œuvre, — et qui est la

contemporanéité de la pensée critique et de la réflexion

anthropologique.

A l'époque où Kant met au net pour l'éditeur, ce texte, si

archaïque dans ses préoccupations, si lointainement

enraciné dans son œuvre, quels sont donc les principaux

et les plus récents soucis de la réflexion?

1/ L'épisode final de la correspondance avec Jakob

Sigismund Beck. La dernière lettre d'intérêt philosophique

que Kant adresse à Beck est datée du 1er juillet 1794. Elle

concerne ce que Beck appelle la Beilegung — l'imputation

d'une représentation, en tant que détermination du sujet,

à un objet qui diffère d'elle, et par laquelle elle devient

l'élément de connaissance. Kant fait remarquer que la

représentation n'est pas «dévolue» à un objet, mais qu'à

la représentation est dévolue un rapport à quelque chose

d'autre — par quoi elle devient communicable à autrui. Il

fait valoir aussi que l'appréhension du multiple et son

assomption dans la conscience, ne fait(?) qu'une seule et

même chose avec la représentation de ce qui n'est

possible que par la composition. Et ce n'est que du point

de vue de cette composition que nous pouvons

communiquer les uns avec les autres : en d'autres termes,

c'est le rapport à l'objet qui rend la représentation

valable pour chacun et partout communicable : ce qui

n'empêche pas que nous devons opérer nous-mêmes la

composition. Les thèmes majeurs de la Critique, —

rapport à l'objet, synthèse du multiple, validité

universelle de la représentation — sont ainsi fortement

regroupé autour du problème de la communication. La

synthèse transcendantale ne se donne jamais

qu'équilibrée dans la possibilité d'un partage empirique,

manifesté sous la double forme de l'accord

(Übereinstimmung) et de la communication (Mitteilung).

Que la représentation ne soit pas affectée à une chose,

que la multiplicité ne soit pas offerte déjà nouée sur elle-

même, garantit, dans une contradiction qui n'est

qu'apparente, l'échange toujours possible des

représentations : c'est que le sujet ne s'y trouve pas

déterminé par la manière dont il est affecté, mais qu'il se

détermine dans la constitution de la représentation : «Wir

können aber nur das verstehen und anderen mitteilen,

was wir selbst machen können» .

Là s'arrète la correspondance philosophique avec Beck.

«Je remarque», écrit Kant en terminant sa lettre «que je

ne me comprends plus suffisamment» ; et il souhaite

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qu'un mathématicien comme Beck, puisse présenter avec

assez de clarté «les fils ténus et simples de notre faculté

de connaître». En fait, si le dialogue avec Beck ne doit

plus être renoué jusqu'à la fin, il se poursuit, comme de

biais. Beck en effet adresse trois nouvelles lettres à

Kant : la première relève encore de la problématique

précédente : unité synthétique de la conscience,

représentation qui n'est pas liée à l'objet par un lien

extérieur à l'acte même de représentation . La seconde

concerne deux thèmes :

d'une part l'irréductibilité de la sensibilité et de

l'entendement (l'objet qui affecte les sens est-il chose en

soi ou phénomène? ; — l'entendement peut-il constituer

son objet en dehors de la sensibilité? — leur rôle est-il

pour la sensiblilité d'affecter le sujet, pour l'entendement

de rapporter cette affection subjective à un objet?) ;

d'autre part le rapport du théorique et du pratique (dans

la conscience pratique, l'homme, qui s'élève au-dessus de

la nature demeure-t-il un Naturgegenstand). Enfin la

troisième concerne, avec le problème de la liaison

originaire dans l'entendement, l'erreur fichtéenne de ne

point faire de différence entre philosophie pratique et

philosophie théorique . A tout cela, Kant ne donne pas

réponse, du moins directement : une lettre rapide à

Tieftrunk évoque les difficultés avec Beck ; mais la

véritable réplique, on la trouve dans l'Anthoropologie, en

partie dans le texte imprimé, en partie aussi dans un long

passage du manuscrit que l'édition a laissé de cöté.

a) Dans le texte imprimé, il faut noter l'ampleur et la

consistence accordées au domaine de la sensibilité. Sans

doute existe-t-il un pouvoir d'attention (Auffassung-

vermögen) qui semble définir un pouvoir producteur par

rapport au contenu sensible : n'est-t-il pas capable de

faire naître l'intuition (die Anschauung hervorzubringen).

Mais il s'agit là d'entendement, considéré comme faculté

de connaître en général . Mais pris au sens étroit

l'entendement s'oppose à l'intuition sensible qui lui

demeure absolument irréductible, au point que

l'imagination comme pouvoir de reproduction s'ordonne à

la productivité originaire et insurmontable de l'intuition

sensible . Mais ce pouvoir d'exhibition première que

l'entendement ne peut ni réduire ni construire, n'en est

pas moins fondamentalement lié au sujet par les formes a

priori de l'intuition. Cette opposition de l'entendement et

la sensibilité n'est pas menaçante pour l'unité de ce que

Beck appelait, afin d'en mieux marquer l'identité, «das

Erfahrende». «Ich als denkendes Wesen bin zwar mit mir

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als Sinnewesen ein und dasselbe Subject» .

L' Anthropologie prend soin de distinguer aussi sens

interne et apperception. Celle-ci est définie par la

conscience de ce que l'homme fait ; celui-là, par la

conscience de ce qu'il éprouve . Définitions qui recoupent

celles de la Critique, mais avec un certain décalage.

L'apperception que la Critique ramenait à la simplicité de

Je pense , est rapprochée maintenant de l'activité

originaire du sujet, tandis que le sens interne, que la

Critique analysait selon la forme a priori du temps est ici

donné dans la diversité primitive d'un «Gedankenspiel» ,

qui se joue hors de la maîtrise même du sujet, et qui fait

du sens interne plus le signe d'une passivité première que

d'une activité constituante.

b) Dans le texte resté inédit, Kant développe avec plus de

détail le problème de la connaissance de soi. Le sens

interne, défini alors comme conscience empirique ne peut

percevoir le moi que dans son statut d'objet, — moi

observé qui a alors pour sens d'être l'Inbegriff des objets

de la perception interne. L'apperception de son côté est

définie, dans un sens beaucoup plus proche de la Critique,

par la conscience de soi intellectuelle; elle ne se rapporte

alors à aucun objet donné ; à aucun contenu intuitif ; elle

ne concerne qu'un acte du sujet déterminant, et dans

cette mesure elle n'est à mettre au compte ni de la

Psychologie, ni de l'Anthropologie, mais de la Logique.

Alors se profile grand danger évoqué par Fichte de la

division du sujet, en deux formes de la subjectivité qui ne

peuvent plus communiquer l'une avec l'autre que dans le

déséquilibre du rapport sujet-objet . C'est là, Kant le

reconnaît, une «grande difficulté» : mais il faut garder à

l'esprit qu'il ne s'agit pas d'un «doppeltes Ich», mais d'un

«doppeltes Bewußtsein dieses Ich» . Ainsi le Je conserve

son unité, mais s'il vient à la conscience ici comme

contenu de perception, là comme forme du jugement,

c'est dans la mesure où il peut s'affecter lui-même, étant,

en un seul et même acte «das bestimmende Subjekt» et

«das sich selbst bestimmende Subjekt». Une sensibilité

irréductible à l'entendement ne risque donc pas de

dissocier le sujet, et il n'est pas besoin pour écarter ce

péril de ramener tout le champ de l'expérience sous la

seule souveraineté de l'entendement, ni de faire de celui-

ci l'Erfahrende par excellence, ni enfin de désigner dans

les catégories la forme originaire de «Verstandes-

Verfahren» : autant de solutions extrêmes que Beck,

impressionné par la pensée fichtéenne, se croyait obligé

d'adopter pour éviter la division du sujet kantien.

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Les lettres de Beck parvenues à Kant, au moment où il

rédigeait le texte définitif de l'Anthropologie (ou en tous

cas peu de temps auparavant), ont été à l'origine de ces

réponses diagonales qu'on peut déchiffrer tant dans

l'ouvrage imprimé que dans le manuscrit. On peut même

supposer que les passages restés inédits représentaient de

trop près une réponse à Beck, et une reflexion sur les

problèmes qu'il posait, pour pouvoir figurer dans

l'Anthropologie proprement dite. En même temps, pour

marginal qu'il ait été, ce débat permettait de définir

l'espace dans lequel une Anthropologie, en général, était

possible : région dans laquelle l'observation de soi

n'accède ni à un sujet en soi, ni au Je pur de la synthèse,

mais un moi qui est objet, et présent seulement dans sa

seule vérité phénoménale. Mais ce moi-objet, offert au

sens dans la forme du temps n'est pourtant pas étranger

au sujet déterminant, puisqu'il n'est pas autre chose en

fin de compte que le sujet tel qu'il est affecté par lui-

même. Et loin que le domaine de l'Anthropologie soit celui

du mécanisme de la nature et des déterminations

extrinsèques (elle serait alors une «physiologie»), il est

tout entier habité par la présence sourde, dénouée et

déviée souvent, d'une liberté qui s'exerce dans le champ

de la passivité originaire. Bref, on voit s'esquisser un

domaine propre à l'Anthropologie, celui où l'unité

concrète des synthèses et de la passivité, de l'affecté et

du constituant, se donne comme phénomène dans la

forme du temps.

Mais une telle mise en place de l'Anthropologie n'est

possible que du point de vue d'une réflexion

transcendantale. Il était donc normal que Kant renonçait

à publier un texte aussi étranger, sinon au problème de

l'Anthropologie, du moins au niveau de réflexion qui lui

est propre. Dans l'Anthropologie, ne devait figurer que ce

qui est à son niveau : l'analyse des formes concrètes de

l'observation de soi. Mais regroupés, le texte inédit et le

texte imprimé constituent, à deux niveaux différents,

l'unité d'une démarche qui tout à la fois répond à Beck,

conjure le péril fichtéen, et dessine de l'extérieur,

comme en creux, la place possible de l'Anthropologie.

2/ Les discussions à propos de la métaphysique du Droit.

La pensée juridique, depuis le XVIe siècle, s'était surtout

attachée à définir le rapport de l'individu à la forme

générale de l'Etat, ou de l'individu à la chose dans la

forme abstraite de la propriété. Mais voilà que dans la

seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, on s'interroge sur les

rapports d'appartenance des individus entre eux dans la

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forme concrète et particulière du couple, du groupe

familial, du foyer, de la «maison» : comment la société

civile, que la bourgeoisie présuppose comme son

fondement et sa justification peut-elle se particulariser

en des unités restreintes, qui n'empruntent plus rien au

modèle féodal, mais ne doivent pas se dissoudre au

moment où il disparaît pour toujours. Christian Gottfried

Schütz s'était inquiété de voir, dans la Métaphysique du

droit, ces rapports se modeler trop fidèlement sur les

formes majeures du droit des choses. Kant ne leur faisait-

il pas place dans la section intitulée : «Von dem auf

dingliche Art persönlichen Recht», qui se divisait en trois

domaines, selon les trois formes essentielles de

l'acquisition : l'homme acquiert (erwirbt) une femme ; le

couple acquiert des enfants ; la famille acquiert des

domestiques . Or Schütz se refuse à croire que dans le

rapport matrimonial «la femme devienne la chose de

l'homme» ; la forme de satisfaction que, dans l'ordre du

mariage, l'homme peut tirer de la femme ne réduit pas la

femme à un statut aussi primitivement simple ; la

chosification d'autrui n'a de vérité que dans le

cannibalisme : le mariage et les droits qu'il donne ne font

pas des personnes des «res fungibiles». De même à l'égard

des serviteurs qui ne pourraient être considérés comme

des choses que si leur capture et le droit à leur capture

pouvaient être inscrit dans les règles fondamentales de la

vie en société. Bref, le problème que pose Schütz, sous

divers aspects, se ramène à la constitution de ces îlots

concrèts de la société bourgeoise dont ne peuvent rendre

compte ni le droit des gens, ni le droit des choses :

synthèses spontanées que n'épuisent ni une théorie du

concret ni une analyse de l'appropriation, franges du droit

où la domination n'est ni souveraineté ni propriété.

Dans la lettre à Schütz du 10 juillet 1797, — à l'époque où

probablement il achevait la rédaction de l'Anthropologie,

— Kant répond aux objections qu'on lui a faites : le

mutuum adjutorium du rapport sexuel est la conséquence

juridiquement nécessaire du mariage : c'est à dire que la

chosification dans le rapport de l'homme et de la femme

n'est pas un fait qui fonde le droit, mais un fait qui

résulte d'un état de droit, et qui ne le conteste que s'il

s'affirme en dehors de lui : au-delà ou en deçà des limites

du mariage, le libertinage d'un Freidenker n'est pas

différent, sauf pour la forme de l'Anthropologie. Mais

inversement, si la signification morale du rapport sexuel

est très différente selon qu'il est accompli ou non dans la

forme juridique du mariage, le contenu lui-même ne

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change pas ; partenaire devient pour l'autre, une chose,

un adjutorium de son plaisir. Le droit autorise le fait :

mais en le fondant, il n'en altère pas le contenu, et ne

procède sur lui à aucune métamorphose.

De même pour le rapport avec les domestiques : sans

doute s'agit-il là de personnes ; mais le rapport est

juridiquement un rapport de possession. Qu'on ait

quelqu'un en sa possession désigne un jus in re ; le

domestique — à la différence de l'homme qui travaille à la

journée — fait partie intégrante du Hauswesen. Le

rapport juridique qui chosifie, ne change pas en chose

l'essence de la personne, mais établit de personne à

personne des rapports qui sont ceux de la personne à la

chose. Schütz, dans sa protestation confondait le point de

vue moral et le point de vue juridique, la personne

humaine et le sujet de droit. Distinction que rétablit, en

sa rigueur, la réponse de Kant . Mais l'objection de Schütz

allait au cœur même de la préoccupation

anthropologique, qui est un certain point de convergence

et de divergence du droit et de la morale. L'Anthropologie

est pragmatique en ce sens qu'elle n'envisage pas l'homme

comme appartenant à la cité morale des esprits (elle

serait dite pratique) ni à la société civile des sujets de

droit (elle serait alors juridique) ; elle le considère

comme «citoyen du monde», c'est-à-dire comme

appartenant au domaine de l'universel concret, dans

lequel le sujet de droit, déterminé par les règles

juridiques et soumis à elles, est en même temps une

personne humaine qui porte, en sa liberté, la loi morale

universelle. Etre «citoyen du monde», c'est appartenir à

cette région aussi concrète qu'un ensemble de règles

juridiques précises, aussi universelles que la loi morale.

Dire qu'une Anthropologie est pragmatique et dire qu'elle

envisage l'homme comme citoyen du monde revient donc

à dire la même chose. Dans ces conditions, il appartiendra

à l'Anthropologie de montrer comment un rapport

juridique qui est de l'ordre de la possession, c'est-à-dire

un jus rerum, peut préserver le noyau moral de la

personne prise comme sujet de liberté. Le préserver non

sans le compromettre en même temps.

Tel est le paradoxe du rapport de l'homme à la femme

décrit par l'Anthropologie : dans l'état de nature, la

femme n'est que le Haustier; déjà la polygamie barbare

instaure un jeu dans lequel, si les femmes sont chosifiées,

les possibilités de conflit entre elles, les rivalités et les

coquetteries font de leur possesseur l'objet de leurs

luttes ; et à l'arbitraire du maître, les ruses du harem ont

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tôt fait de substituer l'arbitraire soumission du souverain à

l'épisodique maîtresse. La structure monogamique de la

société civilisée n'affranchit pas la femme de son

caractère de chose possédée ; à ce point même que

l'infidélité de la femme, en détruisant ce rapport, permet

à l'homme d'anéantir l'objet même du rapport devenu

vide : c'est à dire de tuer la femme. Mais la jalousie

comme rapport violent, comme chosification de la femme

jusqu'à la destruction incluse est une reconnaissance de la

valeur de la femme ; ce serait au contraire l'absence de

jalousie qui réduirait la femme à n'être qu'une

marchandise interchangeable. Le droit à être jaloux —

jusqu'à l'assassinat — est une reconnaissance de la liberté

morale de la femme. Or la première revendication de

cette liberté est d'échapper à la jalousie, et de prouver

qu'on est plus qu'une chose en suscitant une jalousie qui

restera impuissance devant l'exercice irrépressible de

cette liberté ; alors s'instaure dans le droit monogamique,

la galanterie, point d'équilibre entre le jus rerum qui fait

de la femme la chose de son mari, et de la loi morale qui

reconnaît en toute personne un sujet de liberté. Point

d'équilibre ne veut dire d'ailleurs ni point d'arrivée ni

partage équitable ; car la galanterie n'est qu'un

enchevêtrement de prétentions : prétention de l'homme à

réduire dans le mariage qu'il espère la liberté de femme ;

prétention de la femme à exercer, en dépit du mariage,

sa souveraineté sur l'homme. Ainsi se trame tout un

réseau où ni le droit ni la morale ne sont jamais donnés à

l'état pur ; mais où leur entrecroisement offre à l'action

humaine son espace de jeu, sa latitude concrète. Ce n'est

pas le niveau de la liberté fondatrice ; ce n'est pas le

niveau de la règle de droit. C'est l'apparition d'une

certaine liberté pragmatique, où il est question de

prétentions et de ruses, d'intentions louches et de

dissimulations, d'efforts inavoués vers l'emprise, de

compromis entre des patiences.

C'est à tout cela sans doute que Kant faisait allusion,

lorsque dans la Préface de Anthropologie, il lui donnait

comme objet de déterminer ce que l'homme fait, — ou

peut et doit faire de lui même en tant que

«freihandelndes Wesen» : commerce de la liberté avec

elle-même, se limitant dans le mouvement par lequel elle

s'affirme ; manipulation où les compromissions de

l'échange ne s'épuisent jamais dans la limpidité d'une

reconnaissance pure et simple. Traitant de l'homme

comme «freihandelndes Wesen», l'Anthropologie dégage

toute une zone de «libre-échange» où l'homme fait

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circuler ses libertés comme de la main à la main, se liant

ainsi aux autres par un sourd et ininterrompu commerce,

qui lui ménage une résidence sur toute la surface de la

terre. Citoyen du monde.

3/ La correspondance avec Hufeland et la troisième partie

du Conflit des Facultés. A l'époque où Kant rédige

l'Anthropologie, sa correspondance le montre moins

préoccupé, à vrai dire, des problèmes de la philosophie

critique, dont il sent à cause de l'âge les fils lui échapper

déjà, que d'une certaine interrogation dans laquelle la

vieillesse s'étonne d'elle-même et se questionne : cette

vieillesse qui n'est plus capable de ressaisir les ténuités

transcendantales, mais qui semble rester maîtresse d'elle-

même dans la prévention soigneuse de toute maladie, que

signifie-t-elle? Est-elle vie prolongée ou vie achevée? Cet

âge de la raison en indique-t-il la maîtrise sur le temps

précaire de la vie? Cet écoulement du temps qui approche

de nous, sans nous, l'échéance de la vie, peut-il être

contourné ou dominé par une synthèse active de la raison

qui fait du flux irrépressible le règne calme de la sagesse?

— Pour la troisième fois le problème de la passivité et du

temps apparaît en surplomb de cette période où s'élabore

définitivement l'Anthropologie. Ce problème recoupe un

texte publié par Hufeland et intitulé «Makrobiotik oder

die Kunst das menschliche leben zu verlängern» . Texte

qui s'inscrit dans tout un mouvement de la médecine

allemande dont Reil, dont Heinroth sont les témoins :

vaste effort anthropologique pour ajuster l'observation de

la maladie à une métaphysique du mal, et pour retrouver

par quelle gravitation commune l'effondrement dans le

mécanisme pathologique recouvre exactement la chute

de la liberté dans le péché . L'ouvrage de Hufeland, pour

n'être pas aussi radical, est situé cependant dans le

voisinage de cette pensée. Il en est, avec une certaine

retenue comme l'envers pragmatique, puisqu'il s'agit de

«traiter moralement ce qu'il y a de physique en l'homme»

et de montrer que «la culture morale est indispensable à

l'achèvement physique de la nature humaine» . La

médecine moralisante qui, dans la dynastie de Rousseau,

a dominé la fin du XVIIIe siècle, trouve là tout à la fois un

achèvement et un retournement de sens. Dans cette

nouvelle physiologie éthique, le lien de la santé à la vertu

ne passe plus comme chez Tissot par l'immédiateté

naturelle, mais par l'universelle maîtrise de la raison. La

santé est l'envers visible d'une existence où la totalité

organique est dominée, sans opposition ni résidu, par une

forme de rationalité, qui au-delà de tout partage est à la

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fois éthique et organique ; elle est l'espace de jeu de la

liberté, — espace où elle peut jouer, mais espace qu'elle

constitue précisément par son jeu. Et si dans le «pathos»

de la maladie, il y a quelque chose qui l'apparente aux

passions, ce n'est plus par trop d'éloignement du monde

calme de la nature, mais par une détente de l'arc spirituel

de la liberté : le déterminisme, — liberté desserrée — ,

n'est ni tout à fait cause, ni simplement effet de la

maladie : il est le processus même de la maladie se

faisant, c'est-à-dire de la rationalité organique se

défaisant, et renonçant dans la faute à sa liberté. C'est

donc dans un bon usage de la liberté que s'enracine la

possibilité «das menschliche leben zu verlängern» en

préservant la mécanique du corps de la chute coupable

dans le mécanisme.

Cette nouvelle inspiration médicale se reconnaît — avant

de devenir bientôt philosophie de la nature — une parenté

avec le kantisme. Hufeland l'accepte sans restriction,

lorsque dans sa lettre du 12 décembre 1796, il annonce à

Kant l'envoi de sa Makrobiotik, envoi doublement justifié

puisque Kant démontre par son existence même que l'on

peut conserver sa verdeur dans la vieillesse au milieu des

travaux spirituels les plus astreignants, et puisque son

œuvre autorise une connaissance de l'homme qui est, au

fond, la véritable anthropologie .

Au moment où il reçoit la lettre et l'ouvrage de Hufeland

— avec un retard assez considérable, au milieu de mars

1797 seulement — , Kant est précisément intéressé par ce

même problème : il s'engage à lire avec soin le texte de

Hufeland, avec lenteur aussi pour se faire des conceptions

de l'auteur une idée claire qui lui permettra de les utiliser

dans son Anthropologie . Environ trois semaines après,

nouvelle lettre à son correspondant ; il lui dit son tout

récent projet («Hier ist der Gedanke in den Kopf

gekommen») d'écrire une Diététique «au sujet du pouvoir

exercé par l'esprit sur ses impressions corporelles

pathologiques». Il compte l'adresser à Hufeland bien qu'il

ne s'agisse point d'un ouvrage médical, mais plutôt d'une

réflexion sur son expérience personnelle. Cette

Diététique sera, par Kant, utilisé deux fois : expédiée à

Hufeland — qui reçoit l'autorisation de l'imprimer dans sa

Revue ou de la publier à part avec introduction et

remarques , elle figurera aussi comme troisième partie du

Conflit des Facultés — constituant ainsi un ensemble

systématique où seront étudiés les rapports de la Faculté

de Philosophie avec les trois autres. Ainsi la contribution

personnelle d'un philosophe à la tentative médicale de

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constituer une Diététique, se trouve en même temps, et

sans modification, signifier un débat et un partage entre

la science médicale et la réflexion philosophique pour la

définition d'un art quotidien de la santé.

A vrai dire, ce qui domine le texte n'est pas de l'ordre du

débat. Alors que le «conflit» entre les Facultés de

philosophie et de théologie n'exigeait pour être résolu ni

plus ni moins qu'un «Friedensabschluß», le rapport entre

la philosophie et la médecine est, d'entrée de jeu,

pacifique. Ordonnance médicale et précepte

philosophique s'emboîtent spontanément dans la logique

de leur nature : en un sens, une philosophie morale et

pratique est une «Universal medizin», dans la mesure où,

sans servir à tout ni pour tout, elle ne doit manquer dans

aucune prescription. C'est qu'elle est, en effet, par

rapport à la médecine l'universel négatif (elle écarte la

maladie) — étant par là rapport à la diététique l'universel

positif (elle définit les lois de conservation dans le jeu de

la santé). La philosophie est l'élément d'universalité par

rapport auquel se situe toujours la particularité de l'ordre

médical. Elle en forme l'imprescriptible horizon,

enveloppant en leur totalité, les rapports de la santé et

de la maladie. Sans doute, cette préséance est-elle

masquée par l'ordre immédiat des vœux humains ; quand

on souhaite vivre longtemps, et en bonne santé, seul le

premier de ces vœux est inconditionné, et le malade qui

invoque la délivrance de la mort, souhaite toujours un

répit quand vient le suprême moment ; mais ce qui est

inconditionné sur le registre des vœux est second dans

l'ordre de la vie ; il n'y a point de mort naturelle qui se

produise en état de santé ; on a beau ne pas sentir la

maladie : elle est là. La maladie est l'indispensable

«noyau de la mort» . L'art de prolonger l'existence n'est

donc pas victoire sur l'absolu de la mort dans la maîtrise

exhaustive de la vie ; c'est, à l'intérieur même de la vie,

l'art mesuré et relatif, d'aménager les rapports de la

maladie et de la santé.

Art dont le sens n'est peut-être pas exprimé au plus juste

par l'idée d'une «maîtrise de l'esprit sur les impressions

pathologiques» : car les impressions étant ce qu'elles

sont, seules peuvent être modifiées l'intensité et la durée

de l'attention qu'on leur porte ; l'hypochondrie est délire

non pas en ce sens que le «Krankheitsstoff» lui fait

défaut, mais que l'imagination projette sur lui et sa

réalité simple, le jeu de ses fantasmes. Quant aux

malades elles-mêmes, elles ne sont accessibles à cette

maîtrise de l'esprit que si elles ont la forme du spasme :

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et par là il faut entendre comme pour toute la médecine

du XVIIIe siècle non pas exactement la contraction

involontaire de la musculature d'un organe creux, mais

d'une façon plus générale toute inhibition et accélération

(celle-ci n'étant que l'effet paradoxal de cellelà) des

mouvements naturels et réguliers de l'organisme. Sur ces

mouvements, ou plutôt sur leurs altérations l'esprit a

pouvoir de rééquilibration: maître de sa pensée, il est

maître de ce mouvement vital qui en est la version

organique et l'indispensable correspondant. Si l'esprit

était immobile, la vie entrerait en sommeil, c'est-à-dire

dans la mort (seul le rêve empêche de périr quand on

dort) ; et si le mouvement de la vie risque de se

déséquilibrer et de se bloquer dans le spasme, l'esprit doit

pouvoir lui restituer une juste mobilité.

Entre le texte remis à Hufeland et l'Anthropologie, la

communication est immédiate : ils sont de même niveau.

Mis à part des deux derniers paragraphes de Von der

Macht , tous les autres s'entrecroisent avec les thèmes

traités dans Anthropologie : hypochondrie, rêve,

problèmes de l'alimentation et de la digestion, réflexions

sur le temps opportun de la pensée. Tout un long passage

sur le sommeil a même été supprimé du manuscrit de

l'Anthropologie parce qu'il faisait double emploi avec le

Conflit des Facultés. Rédigés en même temps les deux

textes appartiennent à la même veine de pensée.

Sans doute la recherche faite pour Hufeland a-t-elle aidé

Kant à résoudre une des difficultés qui n'avait cessé de

peser sur l'Anthropologie : comment articuler une analyse

de ce qu'est l'homo natura sur une définition de l'homme

comme sujet de liberté. Dans les Collegentwürfe des

années 1770-1780, le problème n'est pensé que dans la

forme de la séparation : «1/ Kenntniss des Menschen als

Naturdinges ; 2/ als sittlichen Wesen», ou de la circularité

«Weltkentniss ist 1/ Naturkenntniss ; 2/

Menschenkenntniss ; aber der Mensch hat auch eine

Natur» . Dans les fragments ultérieurs, on voit la solution

s'esquisser dans le sens d'une «utilisation» (Gebrauch),

mais dont le contenu et la possibilité demeurent vide

encore : «Die Menschenkenntniss hat die Idee zum grunde

daß wir die Natur zu unseren Absichten am besten

brauchen können» . Mais il faut attendre le Conflit des

Facultés, et la rédaction de 1797 pour que se précise le

sens de ce Gebrauch. On voit alors comment les

mouvements du corps, pour conditionnants qu'ils soient

(de la vie et de la mort, de la veille et du sommeil, de la

pensée et de la non pensée) peuvent être maîtrisés par

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les mouvements de l'esprit et leur libre exercice. La

théorie du «spasme» a montré comment les synthèses

spontanées et passives du corps peuvent être reprises et

rectifiés dans celles, volontaires, de l'esprit. Celles-ci,

cependant, ne viendront jamais jusqu'au bout d'elles-

mêmes, au profit de s'enlever dans une souveraineté qui

dominerait la mort. Et la vieillesse en porte le signe, qui

est ensablement nécessaire de cette maîtrise dans la

spontanéité des synthèses passives. L'âge n'est pas

maladie mais ce en quoi une maladie n'est plus

maîtrisable. Et le temps, à nouveau domine.

Il faut s'arrêter quelques instants. Et feindre, par souci de

méthode, de situer l'Anthropologie sans référence à la

Critique, comme elle-même nous y invite, puisqu'à nul

moment le texte de 1798 ne la suppose explicitement.

Serait-il pris dans le seul système d'actualité de la période

postcritique, et chargé des seuls souvenirs de l'époque

précritique? Un certain nombre de thèmes, en tous cas,

sont déjà en place. 1— La pensée anthropologique ne

proposera pas de clore la définition, en termes

naturalistes d'un Wesen humain : «Wir untersuchen hier

den Menschen nicht nach dem was er naturlicher Weise

ist», disaient déjà les Collegentwürfe de 1770-80 . Mais

l'Anthropologie de 1798 transforme cette décision en

constante méthode, en volonté résolue de suivre un

chemin dont il est prévu que jamais il ne trouvera son

aboutissement dans une vérité de nature. Il est du sens

initial de l'Anthropologie d'être Erforschung : exploration

d'un ensemble jamais offert en totalité, jamais en repos

en soi-même parce que pris dans un mouvement où

nature et liberté sont intriqués dans le Gebrauch, dont

notre mot d'usage couvre quelques uns des sens.

2 — Etudier donc, non la mémoire, mais la manière de

s'en servir . Décrire non pas ce que l'homme est, mais ce

qu'il peut faire de lui-même. Ce thème a sans doute été,

dès l'origine, le noyau même de la réflexion

anthropologique, et l'indice de sa singularité : «wir

untersuchen hier den Menschen… um zu wissen was er aus

sich machen und wie man ihn brauchen kann». Tel était le

programme défini par les Collegent-würfe . En 1798, il

apparaît doublement modifié. L'Anthropologie ne

cherchera plus à savoir «comment on peut utiliser

l'homme», mais «ce qu'on peut en attendre» . D'autre

part, elle déterminera ce que l'homme «peut et

doit» (kann und soll) faire de lui-même. C'est-à-dire que

l'usage est arraché au niveau de l'actualité technique et

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placé dans un double système : d'obligation affirmée à

l'égard de soi, de distance respectée à l'égard des autres.

Il est placé dans le texte d'une liberté qu'on postule à la

fois singulière et universelle.

3 — Par là, se trouve défini le caractère «pragmatique» de

l'Anthropologie : «Pragmatisch», disaient les

Collegentwürfe, «ist die Erkenntniss von der sich ein

allgemeiner Gebrauch in der Gesellschaft machen lässt» .

Le pragmatique alors n'était que l'utile passé à l'universel.

Dans le texte de 1798, il est devenu un certain mode de

liaison entre le Können et le Sollen. Rapport que la Raison

pratique assurait a priori dans l'Impératif, et que la

réflexion anthropologique garantit dans le mouvement

concret de l'exercice quotidien : dans le Spielen. Cette

notion de Spielen est singulièrement importante :

l'homme est le jeu de la nature ; mais ce jeu, il le joue,

et il en joue luimême ; et s'il lui arrive d'être joué,

comme dans les illusions des sens, c'est qu'il a joué lui-

même à être victime de ce jeu ; alors qu'il lui appartient

d'être maître du jeu, de le reprendre à son compte dans

l'artifice d'une intention. Le jeu devient alors un

«künstlicher Spiel» et l'apparence dont il joue reçoit sa

justification morale . L'Anthropologie se déploie donc

selon cette dimension de l'exercice humain qui va de

l'ambiguïté du Spiel (jeu=jouet) à l'indécision du Kunst

(art= artifice).

4 — Livre de l'exercice quotidien. Non de la théorie et de

l'École. Dans un texte des années 80- 90, l'opposition est

clairement formulée : «Alle Menschen bekommen eine

zweifache Bildung : 1/ durch die Schule; 2/ durch die

Welt» . Sans se réduire, cette opposition s'organise,

formant dans ces leçons d'Anthropologie, qui sont, après

tout, enseignement d'école, une tension fondamentale :

les progrès de la culture, en quoi se résume l'histoire du

monde, constituent une école qui conduit d'ellemême à la

connaissance et à la pratique du monde . Le monde étant

sa propre école, la réflexion anthropologique aura pour

sens de placer l'homme dans cet élément formateur. Elle

sera donc indissociablement : analyse de la manière dont

l'homme acquiert le monde (son usage, non sa

connaissance), c'est à dire comment il peut s'installer en

lui, et entrer dans le jeu : Mitspielen; et synthèses des

prescriptions et règles que le monde impose à l'homme,

par lesquelles il le forme et le met en état de dominer le

jeu : das Spiel verstehen . L'Anthropologie ne sera donc

pas histoire de la culture ni analyse successive de ses

formes; mais pratique à la fois immédiate et impérative

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d'une culture toute donnée. Elle apprend à l'homme à

reconnaître dans sa propre culture l'école du monde. N'a-t-

elle pas, dans cette mesure comme une parenté avec le

Wilhelm Meister, puisqu'elle découvre, elle aussi, que le

Monde est École. Mais ce que le texte de Goethe, et tous

les Bildungsromane disent le long d'une histoire, elle le

répète inlassablement dans la forme présente,

impérieuse, toujours recommencée de l'usage quotidien.

Le temps y règne, mais dans la synthèse du présent.

Voilà donc quelques jalons, au niveau même de

l'Anthropologie, et qui suggèrent la ligne de pente qui lui

est propre. Au départ, comme en témoignent les

Collegentwürfen, elle se déployait dans le partage

accepté de la nature et de l'homme, de la liberté et de

l'utilisation, de l'École et du monde. Son équilibre est

maintenant trouvé dans leur unité admise, sans que celle-

ci revienne jamais en question, du moins au niveau

anthropologique. Elle explore une région où liberté et

utilisation sont déjà nouées dans la réciprocité de l'usage,

où le pouvoir et le devoir s'appartiennent dans l'unité d'un

jeu qui les mesure l'un à l'autre, où le monde devient

école dans les prescriptions d'une culture. Nous touchons

à l'essentiel : l'homme, dans l'Anthropologie n'est ni homo

natura, ni sujet pur de liberté; il est pris dans les

synthèses déjà opérées de sa liaison avec le monde.

Mais le texte de 1798 pouvait-il dire cela qui n'était pas

dit dans les Collegentwürfe, si le discours de

l'Anthropologie était resté étranger au labeur et à la

parole de la Critique?

Quelque chose de la connaissance du monde est donc

enveloppé dans cette connaissance de l'homme qui est

l'Anthropologie. «Weltkentniss ist Menschenkentniss»

affirmait un fragment de la période 70-80 . Et la préface

du texte de 1798 s'assignait comme objet l'homme en

résidence dans le monde, le Weltbürger . Or

l'Anthropologie, au moins jusqu'en ses dernières pages ne

semble guère prendre comme thème privilégié de son

examen l'homme habitant le monde, l'homme établissant,

à travers le cosmos, les droits, les devoirs, les

réciprocités, les limites et les échanges de la citoyenneté.

Et cette lacune est beaucoup plus sensible encore dans le

texte édité que dans les fragments de Nachlaß. La plupart

des analyses, et à peu près toutes celles de la première

partie, se développent, non dans la dimension

cosmopolitique de la Welt, mais dans celle, intérieure, du

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Gemüt. En cela, d'ailleurs, l'Anthropologie demeure dans

la perspective même où Kant s'était placé pour faire

apparaître, selon une organisation encyclopédique, le lien

des trois Critiques : «Die Vermögen des Gemüts lassen

sich nämlich insgesamt auf folgenden drei zurückführen :

Erkenntnissvermögen, Gefühl der Lust und Unlust,

Begehrungs-vermögen» . S'il est vrai que le Gemüt dont il

est question dans l'Anthropologie est bien l'élément

premier de son exploration, on est fondé à poser un

certain nombre de questions :

1/ Comment une étude de Gemüt permet-elle

connaissance de l'homme comme citoyen du monde.

2/ S'il est vrai que l'Anthropologie analyse, de son côté, le

Gemüt, dont les facultés fondamentales et irréductibles

commandent l'organisation des trois Critiques, quel est

donc le rapport de la connaissance anthropologique à la

réflexion critique?

3/ En quoi l'investigation du Gemüt et de ses facultés se

distingue-t-elle d'une psychologie, soit rationnelle, soit

empirique?

A cette dernière question, les textes de l'Anthropologie et

de la Critique de la Raison Pure semblent répondre .

On sait la distinction établie par l'Architectonique entre

Psychologie rationnelle, et Psychologie empirique. La

première appartient à la philosophie pure, donc à la

métaphysique, et elle s'oppose alors à la physique

rationnelle comme l'objet du sens interne, à l'objet des

sens externes. Quant à la psychologie empirique, une

longue tradition lui a fait sa place dans la métaphysique;

bien plus, les échecs récents de la métaphysique ont pu

faire croire que la solution de ses insolubles problèmes se

cachait dans des phénomènes psychologiques qui relèvent

d'une étude empirique de l'âme; et ainsi la psychologie a

confisqué une métaphysique découragée où elle avait

déjà pris une place indûe. Une connaissance empirique ne

peut, en aucun cas, donner les principes ou éclairer les

fondements d'une connaissance issue de la raison pure et

par conséquent entièrement a priori. La psychologie

empirique devra donc être détachée de la métaphysique,

à laquelle elle est étrangère. Et si un pareil déplacement

ne peut pas être fait dans l'immédiat, c'est qu'il faut

préparer à la psychologie son séjour dans une science

empirique de l'homme, qui fera équilibre à la science

empirique de la nature, dans une Anthropologie. Tout

semble clair en cette organisation abstraite.

Et pourtant, l'Anthropologie, telle que nous pouvons la

lire, ne fait place à aucune psychologie, quelle qu'elle

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soit. Elle se donne même explicitement comme refus de

la psychologie, dans une exploration du Gemüt, qui ne

prétend pas être connaissance de la Seele. En quoi

consiste la différence?

a) D'un point de vue formel, la psychologie postule une

équivalence du sens interne et de l'aperception,

méconnaissant ainsi leur différence fondamentale,

puisque l'aperception est une des formes de la conscience

pure, — donc sans contenu, et définie seulement par le Je

pense, tandis que le sens interne désigne un mode de la

connaissance empirique, qui nous fait apparaître à nous-

mêmes dans un ensemble de phénomènes liés sous la

condition subjective du temps .

b) Du point de vue de contenu, la psychologie ne peut

manquer de se laisser prendre dans l'interrogation sur le

changement et l'identité : l'âme reste-t-elle la même dans

l'incessante modification du temps? La condition de

l'expérience qu'elle fait d'elle-même, et le déroulement

nécessairement temporel des phénomènes doivent-ils être

considérés comme affectant l'âme ellemême ? En d'autres

termes, toute la réalité de l'âme s'épuise-t-elle dans la

dispersion phénoménale, ou se retire-t-elle au contraire

dans la solidité non-empirique de la substance? Autant de

questions qui manifestent, sous des éclairages divers, la

confusion entre l'âme, notion métaphysique d'une

substance simple et immatérielle, le Je pense, qui est

forme pure, et l'ensemble des phénomènes qui

apparaissent au sens interne.

Ces textes de l'Anthropologie se situent dans l'obédience

directe de la Dialectique transcendantale. Ce qu'ils

dénoncent, c'est précisément «l'inévitable illusion» dont

rendaient compte les paralogismes : nous nous servons de

la représentation simple du moi, qui est vide de tout

contenu, pour définir cet objet particulier qu'est l'âme .

Cependant, il faut remarquer que les paralogismes ne

concernent que la psychologie rationnelle, non

l'empirique, et qu'ils laissent ouverte la possibilité d'une

«sorte de physiologie du sens intime» dont les contenus

dépendent des conditions de toute expérience possible .

D'autre part, la psychologie rationnelle peut et doit

subsister comme discipline, permettant d'échapper au

matérialisme comme au spiritualisme, et nous faisant

signe de nous détourner de cette spéculation «zum

fruchtbaren praktischen Gebrauch» . Par conséquent, et

bien qu'elle ait l'air de viser toute forme de psychologie

possible, Anthropologie ne met à l'écart que ce qui était

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déjà dénoncé dans la Critique de la Raison pure. Sans le

dire, c'est à l'égard de la psychologie rationnelle qu'elle

prend distance.

Quant aux deux possibilités laissées ouvertes, — une

psychologie empirique et une discipline tournée vers

l'usage pratique —, quels rapports ont-elles avec

l'Anthropologie? Ces deux virtualités sont-elles maintenues

comme telles par l'Anthropologie, dans un voisinage vide,

encore à combler, ou bien reprises par elle dans son

mouvement propre, — ou encore rejetées à leur tour et

rendues impossibles par l'achèvement? même du

programme anthropologique? Deux choses au moins sont

certaines : rien d'abord, dans le texte de l'Anthropologie

ne laisse supposer qu'une psychologie empirique ou qu'une

psychologie rationnelle comme «discipline» puissent être

trouvées ailleurs, sur les extérieurs ou dans le voisinage

de l'Anthropologie elle-même : aucune indication d'une

proche extériorité. Mais inversement aucun élément,

aucune section, aucun chapitre de l'Anthropologie ne se

donne comme discipline prévue par la Dialectique, ou

comme cette psychologie empirique aperçue des sommets

de la Méthodologie. Faut-il conclure que l'Anthropologie,

par un glissement de perspectives, est devenue, elle-

même, à la fois cette discipline transcendantale et cette

connaissance empirique? Ou qu'au contraire elle les a

rendues impraticables en les désamorçant pour toujours?

C'est le Gemüt lui-même qu'il faut maintenant interroger.

Est-il, ou n'est-il pas, de l'ordre de la

Psychologie? Il n'est pas Seele. Mais d'un autre côté, il est

et il n'est pas Geist. Pour être discrète, la présence du

Geist dans l'Anthropologie n'en est pas moins décisive. Sa

définition à vrai dire est brève, et ne semble pas

promettre beaucoup «Geist ist das belebende Prinzip im

Menschen» . Phrase banale, et que maintient dans sa

trivialité cet exemple du langage quotidien : «Eine Rede,

eine Schrift, eine Dame der Gesellschaft ist schön; aber

ohne Geist» . Pour se voir attribuer du Geist, une

personne doit éveiller l'intérêt, et ceci, «durch Ideen» .

Un peu plus loin, Kant reprend toutes ces indications, et

les noue en une seule et énigmatique définition : «Man

nennt das durch Ideen belebende Prinzip des Gemüts

Geist» .

Arrêtons-nous aux mots. Nous avons affaire à un Prinzip.

Non pas à un Vermögen comme la mémoire, l'attention,

ou la connaissance en général. Non pas davantage à l'une

de ces forces (Kräfte) dont parle l'Introduction à la

Critique du Jugement . Non pas enfin à la représentation

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simple comme le «Je pur» de la première Critique.

Principe, donc : mais est-il déterminant, ou régulateur? Ni

l'un ni l'autre, s'il faut prendre au sérieux cette

«vivification» qui lui est prêtée.

Y aurait-il donc, dans le Gemüt, — dans son cours tel qu'il

est donné à l'expérience, ou dans sa totalité virtuelle —

quelque chose qui l'apparente à la vie et qui tient à la

présence du Geist? Et voilà qui ouvre une nouvelle

dimension : le Gemüt n'est pas seulement organisé et

armé des pouvoirs et facultés qui se partagent son

domaine; la grande structure tripartite dont l'Introduction

à la Critique du Jugement semblait donner la définitive

formulation, n'épuisait pas ce qui, du Gemüt, peut

apparaître dans l'expérience. Comme tout être vivant, sa

durée ne s'éparpille pas dans une dispersion indifférente;

il a un cours orienté; quelque chose en lui le projette,

sans l'y enfermer, dans une totalité virtuelle.

A vrai dire, rien ne nous est clairement indiqué de ce

qu'est ce principe lui-même. Mais ce que nous pouvons

saisir, c'est ce par quoi se fait la «vivification», le

mouvement par lequel le Geist donne à l'esprit la figure

de la vie. «Durch Ideen», dit le texte. Qu'est-ce que cela

veut dire? En quoi «un concept nécessaire de la raison,

auquel n'est donné dans la sensibilité aucun objet qui lui

corresponde» peut-il donner vie à l'esprit? Un contre-sens

est ici à éviter. On pourrait croire que le Gemüt, dans

cette dispersion temporelle qui est originaire en lui,

chemine vers une totalisation qui s'effectuerait dans et

par le Geist. Le Gemüt devrait la vie à cette lointaine, à

cette inaccessible, mais efficace présence. Mais s'il en

était ainsi, le Geist serait défini d'entrée de jeu comme

un principe «régulateur», et non pas comme un principe

vivifiant. D'autre part, toute la courbe de l'Anthropologie

ne s'orienterait pas vers le thème de l'homme habitant le

monde et résidant, avec ses devoirs et ses droits, dans

cette cité cosmopolitique; mais vers le thème d'un Geist

qui recouvrirait peu à peu l'homme, et le monde avec lui,

d'une impérieuse souveraineté spirituelle. On ne peut

donc pas dire que c'est l'idée d'un Geist qui assure la

régulation de la diversité empirique du Gemüt, et

promet, sans répit, à sa durée, un impossible

achèvement. Le «durch Ideen» qui nous occupe a donc un

autre sens. L'important paragraphe de la Critique

intitulé : «Du but final de la dialectique naturelle de la

raison humaine» permet d'apercevoir le rôle organisateur

des idées dans la vie concrète de l'esprit. C'est qu'en

effet, libérée de son usage transcendantal et des illusions

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qu'il ne peut manquer de faire naître, l'idée a son sens

dans la plénitude de l'expérience : elle anticipe en un

schème qui n'est pas constituant, mais qui ouvre sur la

possibilité des objets ; elle ne dévoile pas en un

mouvement «ostensif» la nature des choses, mais elle

indique à l'avance comment rechercher cette nature ; en

indiquant enfin que l'accès au bout de l'univers est audelà

de l'horizon de la connaissance, elle engage la raison

empirique dans le sérieux d'un labeur infini . En d'autres

termes, l'idée, pourvu qu'elle reçoive de l'expérience

même son domaine d'application, fait entrer l'esprit dans

la mobilité de l'infini, lui donnant sans cesse «du

mouvement pour aller plus loin» sans pour autant le

perdre dans l'insurmontable de la dispersion. Ainsi la

raison empirique ne s'assoupit jamais sur le donné; et

l'idée, en la liant à l'infini qu'elle lui refuse, la fait vivre

dans l'élément du possible. Telle est donc la fonction du

Geist : non pas organiser le Gemüt de manière à en faire

un être vivant, ou l'analogon de la vie organique, ou

encore la vie de l'Absolu lui-même; mais le vivifier, faire

naître dans la passivité du Gemüt, qui est celle de la

détermination empirique, le mouvement fourmillant des

idées, — ces structures multiples d'une totalité en

devenir, qui se font et se défont comme autant de vies

partielles qui vivent et meurent dans l'esprit. Ainsi le

Gemüt n'est pas simplement «ce qu'il est», mais «ce qu'il

fait de lui-même». Et n'est-ce pas là précisément le

champ que l'Anthropologie définit à son investigation? A

quoi il suffit d'ajouter que ce que le Gemüt doit faire de

lui-même, c'est «le plus grand usage empirique possible

de la raison» , — usage qui ne sera le plus grand possible

que «durch Ideen». Le mouvement qui, dans la Critique,

fait naître le mirage transcendantal, est celui qui dans

l'Anthropologie fait se poursuivre la vie empirique et

concrète du Gemüt.

De là, un certain nombre de conséquences.

a/ Il n'y a d'Anthropologie possible que dans la mesure où

le Gemüt n'est pas fixé à la passivité de ses

déterminations phénoménales, mais où il est animé par le

labeur des idées au niveau du champ de l'expérience. Le

Geist sera donc le principe, dans le Gemüt, d'une

dialectique dé-dialectisée, non transcendantale, vouée au

domaine de l'expérience et formant corps avec le jeu lui-

même des phénomènes. C'est le Geist qui ouvre au Gemüt

la liberté du possible, l'arrache à ses déterminations, et

lui donne un avenir qu'il ne doit qu'à lui-même.

b/ On comprend que l'Anthropologie au fond ait rendu

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impossible une psychologie empirique, et une

connaissance de l'esprit tout entière développé au niveau

de la nature. Elle ne pourrait jamais rejoindre qu'un

esprit ensommeillé, inerte, mort, sans son «belebendes

Prinzip». Ce serait une «physiologie», moins la vie.

Témoin la Préface du texte de 1798: la possibilité d'une

Anthropologie non pragmatique est reconnue en théorie,

et dans une systématique générale de la connaissance de

l'homme. Mais indiquée à titre de symétrie dans les

structures, elle est récusée comme contenu de

connaissance : l'étude de la mémoire comme simple fait

naturel est non seulement inutile, mais impossible : «tout

raisonnement théorique à ce sujet est donc vain» . La

présence du Geist, et avec lui, cette dimension de la

liberté et de la totalité qui transcende le Gemüt, font

qu'il n'y a d'Anthropologie véritable que pragmatique, —

chaque fait y étant pris dans le système ouvert du Können

et du Sollen. Et Kant n'en a point écrit d'autre.

c/ Dans ces conditions, le Geist n'a-t-il pas affaire avec

cette énigmatique «nature de notre raison», et dont il est

question dans la Dialectique et dans la Méthodologie de la

Raison pure? Notion inquiétante qui semble brusquement

renvoyer la Critique, parvenue à son sommet, vers une

région empirique, vers un domaine des faits où l'homme

serait voué à une très originaire passivité. Congé serait

donné tout d'un coup au transcendantal, et les conditions

de l'expérience se rapporteraient finalement à l'inertie

première d'une nature. Mais cette «nature de la raison»

joue-t-elle ici le même rôle que la nature de

l'entendement humain chez Hume : explication première

et réduction finale? Relevons seulement pour l'instant une

analogie de structure entre cette «nature» qui pousse la

raison à quitter «un usage empirique pour un usage pur» ,

sans pour autant contenir en elle-même (n'estelle pas

pure et simple nature?) «d'illusions et de prestiges

originaires» , et la vie concrète de l'esprit telle qu'elle est

décrite dans l'Anthropologie : elle aussi est animée d'un

mouvement spontané qui l'expose sans cesse au danger

d'être jouée dans son propre jeu, mais qui se déploie

toujours dans une initiale innocence. L'une et l'autre sont

toujours prêtres à se perdre, à s'échapper à elles-mêmes,

mais en demeurant, dans leur mouvement propre, «le

tribunal suprême de tous les droits et de toutes les

prétentions» .

d/ Si cette analogie est fondée, on peut se demander si le

Geist, qui se dessine aux confins de la réflexion

anthropologique, n'est pas un élément secrètement

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indispensable à la structure de la pensée kantienne :

quelque chose qui serait le noyau de la raison pure,

l'indéracinable origine de ses illusions transcendantales, le

juge infaillible de son retour à sa patrie légitime, le le

principe de son mouvement dans le champ de l'empirique

où surgissent inlassablement les visages de la vérité. Le

Geist ce serait ce fait originaire qui, dans sa version

transcendantale, implique que l'infini n'est jamais là, mais

toujours dans un essentiel retrait — et, dans sa version

empirique, que l'infini anime pourtant le mouvement vers

la vérité et l'inépuisable succession de ses formes. Le

Geist est à la racine de la possibilité du savoir. Et, par là-

même, indissociablement présent et absent des figures de

la connaissance : il est ce retrait, cette invisible et

«visible réserve» dans l'inaccessible distance de laquelle

le connaître prend place et positivité. Son être est de

n'être pas là, dessinant, en ceci même, le lieu de la vérité.

Fait originaire qui surplombe dans sa structure unique et

souveraine, la nécessité de la Critique, et la possibilité de

l'Anthropologie.

Quels rapports autorise entre ces deux formes de

réflexion cet élément radical qui semble leur être

commun?

A vrai dire la différence de niveau entre Critique et

Anthropologie est telle qu'elle décourage, au début,

l'entreprise d'établir de l'une à l'autre une comparaison

structurale. Recueil d'observations empiriques,

l'Anthropologie n'a pas de «contact» avec une réflexion

sur les conditions de l'expérience. Et pourtant cette

essentielle différence n'est pas de l'ordre du non-rapport.

Une certaine analogie croisée laisse entrevoir dans

l'Anthropologie comme le négatif de la Critique.

a) Les rapports de la synthèse et du donné sont présentés

dans l'Anthropologie selon l'image inversée de ce qu'ils

sont dans la Critique.

La subjectivité, par exemple. Sur ce point, l'analyse

anthropologique a longtemps hésité. Les textes de la

période 70-80 lient l'expression du Je à la possibilité

d'être objet pour soi-même . Mais il n'est pas clairement

décidé si le Je lui-même est à la racine de cette

possibilité, ou dans l'objectivation qu'elle permet. La

Critique, elle, prendra la décision : le Je ne peut jamais

être objet, mais seulement forme de la synthèse. Or dans

le texte de 1798, le Je n'est pas considéré dans sa

fonction synthétique fondamentale, sans pour autant

retrouver un simple statut d'objet. Il apparaît et se fixe

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brusquement dans une figure qui demeurera dès lors

immuable dans le champ de l'expérience. Cette incidence

du Je parlé marque le passage du sentiment à la pensée,

— du Fühlen au Denken, — sans être ni l'agent réel ni la

semple prise de conscience de ce passage, il est la forme

empirique et manifeste, dans laquelle l'activité

synthétique du Je apparaît comme figure déjà

synthétisée, comme structure indissociablement première

et seconde : elle n'est pas donnée entrée de jeu à

l'homme, dans une sorte d'a priori d'existence; mais quand

elle apparaît, s'insérant dans la multiplicité d'une

chronique sensible, elle s'offre comme déjà là, comme le

fond irréductible d'une pensée qui ne peut opérer que

cette figure de l'expérience une fois constituée : c'est

dans ce Je que le sujet fera la reconnaissance de son

passé et la synthèse de son identité. En d'autres termes,

ce qui est a priori de la connaissance du point de vue de

la Critique ne se transpose pas immédiatement dans la

réflexion anthropologique en a priori de l'existence, mais

apparaît dans l'épaisseur d'un devenir où sa soudaine

émergence prend infailliblement dans la rétrospection le

sens du déjà-là.

La structure est inverse pour la dispersion originaire du

donné. Selon la perspective anthropologique, le donné

n'est en effet jamais offert selon une multiplicité inerte

indiquant d'une manière absolue une passivité originaire,

et appelant sous ses diverses formes l'activité synthétique

de la conscience. La dispersion du donné est toujours déjà

réduite dans l'Anthropologie, secrètement dominée par

toute une variété de synthèses opérées en dehors du

labeur visible de la conscience : c'est la synthèse

inconsciente des éléments de la perception et des

représentations obscures que même la lumière de

l'entendement ne parvient pas toujours à dissocier , ce

sont les schèmas d'exploration qui tracent, dans l'espace,

des sortes de synthèses insulaires ; ce sont dans la

sensibilité les réorganisations qui permettent la

vicariance d'un sens à l'autre ; ce sont enfin les

renforcements et les affaiblissements dans les effets

sensibles qui anticipent, comme spontanément, sur les

synthèses volontaires de l'attention . Ainsi ce que la

Critique accueillait comme la surface infiniment mince

d'un multiple qui n'a de commun avec lui-même que d'être

originairement donné, s'éclaire, pour l'Anthropologie,

selon une profondeur inattendue : déjà groupé et

organisé, ayant reçu les figures provisoires ou solides de

la synthèse. Ce qui est pour la connaissance le pur donné,

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ne s'offre pas comme tel dans l'existence concrète. Pour

une Anthropologie, la passivité absolument originaire n'est

jamais là.

Ainsi le rapport du donné et de l'a priori prend dans

l'Anthropologie une structure inverse de celle qui était

dégagée dans la Critique. L'a priori, dans l'ordre de la

connaissance, devient, dans l'ordre de l'existence

concrète, un originaire qui n'est pas chronologiquement

premier, mais qui dès qu'apparu dans la succession des

figures de la synthèse, se révèle comme déjà là; en

revanche ce qui est le donné pur dans l'ordre de la

connaissance, s'éclaire, dans la réflexion sur l'existence

concrète, de sourdes lumières qui lui donnent la

profondeur du déjà opéré.

b) L'Anthropologie suit le partage des «facultés» —

Vermögen —qu'admettait aussi la critique. Cependant le

domaine qu'elle privilégie n'est pas celui où facultés et

pouvoirs manifestent ce qu'ils ont de positif. Mais celui,

au contraire où se manifestent leur défaillance — ou du

moins les périls où ils risquent de se perdre. Ce qui est

indiqué, plus que leur nature ou la forme pleine de leur

activité, c'est le mouvement par lequel, s'éloignant de

leur centre et de leur justification, ils vont s'aliéner dans

l'illégitime. Sans doute la Critique, en son projet

fondamental de Propédeutique, entendait-elle dénoncer,

et démonter l'usage transcendantal de la raison mais par

une référence constante au domaine de positivité de

chaque Vermögen. Dans la recherche anthropologique,

chaque faculté est suivis selon une voie qui est aussi le

chemin de toute déviation possible. La conscience de soi,

par exemple, n'y est pas définie comme forme de

l'expérience et condition d'une connaissance limitée, mais

fondée; elle apparaît plutôt comme la toujours

renaissante tentation d'un égoïsme polymorphe : la

possibilité de dire «Je» fait lever, tout autour de la

conscience les prestiges d'un «Moi bien-aimé» qui la

fascine, au point que, dans un paradoxal retour, elle

renoncera au langage de cette première personne — aussi

décisif cependant qu'il ait été — pour se décliner dans la

fiction d'un Nous . L'étude de la sensibilité, si elle reprend

la grande opposition critique du Schein et de

l'Erscheinung, n'explore pas ce qu'il peut y avoir de fondé

dans le phénomène, mais ce qu'il y a de fascinant et de

précaire à la fois dans l'éclat de l'apparence, comment

elle voile ce qu'elle fait miroiter, et à quel moment, il lui

arrive de transmettre ce qu'elle dérobe . La longue

analyse des déficiences et des maladies de l'esprit fait

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suite à un bref paragraphe sur la raison; et il suffit de voir

quelle importance croissante ont pris dans les notes et

projets les considérations sur la pathologie mentale

jusqu'au texte, très développé, de 1798 , pour

comprendre que ces réflexions sur la négativité étaient

dans la ligne de force de la recherche anthropologique. A

la Critique, représentant l'investigation de ce qu'il y a de

conditionnant dans l'activité fondatrice, l'Anthropologie

répond par l'inventaire de ce qu'il peut y avoir de non-

fondé dans le conditionné. Dans la région

anthropologique, il n'y a pas de synthèse qui ne soit

menacée : le domaine de l'expérience est comme creusé

de l'intérieur par des périls qui ne sont pas de l'ordre de

dépassement arbitraire, mais de l'effondrement sur soi.

L'expérience possible définit tout aussi bien, dans son

cercle limité, le champ de la vérité et le champ de la

perte de la vérité.

c) Un détail enfin a son importance. Tous les

Collegentwürfe et le texte — assez tardif — que Starke a

publié donne, comme plan général à l'Anthropologie, deux

parties : une Elementarlehre, et un Methodenlehre. Le

texte de 1798 donne également deux sections; mais l'une

est une Didactique, l'autre une Caractéristique. Ce

changement survenu sans doute dans les dernières années

est d'autant plus surprenant que le contenu et

l'ordonnance semblent n'avoir subi, de ce fait, aucune

modification. La distinction entre une doctrine des

éléments et une doctrine de la méthode fait corps avec la

recherche critique : d'une part, ce qui constitue la faculté

de connaître, et d'autre part, ce qui régit son exercice

dans le domaine de l'expérience possible. Apparemment

l'Anthropologie est bâtie selon le même modèle : d'abord,

les diverses «facultés» dont l'organisation forme la

totalité du Gemüt : Elementarlehre; ensuite, les règles de

leur exercice chez un individu, dans une famille, à

l'intérieur d'un peuple ou d'une race, au sein de

l'humanité : Methodenlehre. Mais c'est là sans doute une

fausse fenêtre. Un ajustement aux normes de la Critique

qui ne répondait pas à la vocation du texte. Les termes de

Didactique et de Caractéristique qui aparaissent dans le

dernier état de la réflexion, et qui se substituent alors à

la destinction traditionnelle, sont curieusement

accompagnés de sous-titres dont on voit mal le rapport de

sens qu'ils ont avec le titre. Pour la Didactique, il s'agit

«de la manière de connaître l'intérieur ainsi que

l'extérieur de l'homme»; pour la Caractéristique, «de la

manière de connaître l'intérieur de l'homme à partier de

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l'extérieur». Ce changement est-il une réorganisation

d'ensemble, un décrochage par rapport à la Critique? Non,

sans doute. Mais la découverte de ce qui était déjà,

obscurément, et avant toute explicitation, la thèmatique

de l'Anthropologie : à savoir, l'immédiate coordination qui

fait que la recherche dans la demension du Gemüt n'ouvre

pas seulement sur une connaissance intérieure de soi,

mais qu'elle déborde d'elle-même, et spontanément, sans

passage à la limite ni extrapolation, sur la connaissance

de l'homme dans les formes extérieures qui le

manifestent. Tant que le terme d'Elementarlehre était

imposé par la symétrie de la Critique, l'analyse du Gemüt

ne pouvait prendre conscience d'elle-même que sous les

espèces d'une recherche des «pouvoirs», dans la virtualité

des Vermögen et à la racine du possible. Dégagée dans sa

signification véritable, cette exploration sait qu'en ayant

affaire à l'intérieur, elle énonce en même temps

l'extérieur; que l'homme ne dispose pas de ses possibilités

sans être engagé, en même temps dans leurs

manifestations. Ce que la Critique distinguait comme le

possible dans l'ordre des conditions (Vermögen) et le réel

dans l'ordre du constitué (Erscheinung) est donné par

l'Anthropologie dans une insécable continuité : le secret

du Pouvoir se livre dans l'éclat du Phénomène, où il

trouve à la fois sa vérité, et la vérité de sa perversion

(lorsque l'usage devient abus, comme dans le langage en

première personne); et dénoncé dans sa perversion par le

Phénomène, le Pouvoir est impérieusement rappelé par

lui à cette vérité radicale qui le lie à lui-même sur le

mode de l'obligation. C'est ce qui donne à chaque

paragraphe de la Première Partie ce rythme obscurément

ternaire : le Pouvoir à la racine de ses possibilités, le

Pouvoir trouvé et perdu, traduit et trahi dans son

Phénomène, le Pouvoir impérativement lié à lui-même.

Par exemple : la conscience de soi, l'égoïsme, la

conscience effective des représentations; ou encore,

l'imagination comme pouvoir d'«invention» originaire,

l'imagination dans le naufrage fantastique du rêve,

l'imagination dans la poésie liée du signe. Ou encore : le

pouvoir de désirer avec ses émotions; la fausse vérité des

passions; le lieu au souverain bien. Du Vermögen à

l'Erscheinung, le rapport est à la fois de l'ordre de la

manifestation, de l'aventure jusqu'à la perdition, et de la

liaison éthique. Là réside précisément cette articulation

du Könen et du Sollen dont nous avons vu qu'elle est

essentielle à la pensée anthropologique. L'art de

connaître l'intérieur aussi bien l'extérieur de l'homme, est

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donc, de plein droit, non une théorie des éléments, mais

une Didactique : elle ne découvre pas sans enseigner et

prescrire. Quant à la Caractéristique elle révèle que les

ensembles de phénomène — le corps, le couple, la race,

l'espèce, — ne sont pas une fois pour toutes donnés et clos

sur eux-mêmes, mais qu'ils renvoient de la vérité

apparemment immobile des phénomènes à ces radicales

possibilités qui leur donnent sens et mouvement; elle

permet de revenir du signe au pouvoir, «das Innere des

Menschen aus dem Äußeren zu erkennen».

Au modèle critique, qui s'était longtemps imposé, succède

une articulation qui le répète comme en négatif : la

théorie des éléments devient prescription à l'égard du

tout des phénomènes possibles (ce qui était, à

proprement parler, la fin de la Methodenlehre); et

inversement la théorie de la méthode devient analyse

regressive vers le noyau primitif des pouvoirs (ce qui était

le sens de l'Elementarlehre). Reproduction en miroir.

Tant sont proches et lointaines à la fois la région où se

définit l'a priori de la connaissance, et celle où se

précisent les a priori de l'existence. Ce qui s'énonce dans

l'ordre des conditions apparaît, dans la forme de

l'originaire, comme même et autre.

A mesure qu'apparaît plus clairement cette lointaine

proximité, la question devient plus insistante de savoir

quel rapport s'établit entre Critique et Anthropologie.

Deux textes sont d'une importance singulière : un passage

de la Méthodologie transcendantale auquel on a déjà fait

référence à propos de la psychologie; et une indication

assez énigmatique qui figure dans la Logique.

1 — L'Architectonique de la raison pure. Du côté de la

philosophie pure (qui enveloppe la Critique à titre de

Propédeutique), aucune place n'est faite à

l'Anthropologie. La «Physiologie rationnelle» qui considère

la Nature comme Inbegriff aller Gegenstände der Sinne ne

connaît que la Physique et la Psychologie rationnelle. En

revanche dans le vaste champ de la philosophie

empirique, deux domaines se font équilibre : celui d'une

physique, et celui d'une anthropologie qui devra accueillir

l'édifice plus restreint d'une psychologie empirique.

Au premier regard, pas de symétrie rigoureuse entre la

philosophie pure et la philosophie empirique. La

correspondance qui vaut immédiatement pour la physique

ne se prolonge pas lorsqu'il est question du sens intérieur

et de l'être humain. L'Anthropologie, à la différence de la

Psychologie, ne figure que du côté empirique; elle ne

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peut donc être régie ou contôlée par la Critique, en tant

que celle-ci concerne la connaissance pure. Pas plus que

la physique newtonienne n'a eu besoin pour s'édifier et se

vérifier d'une réflexion critique, l'Anthropologie, pour se

construire et occuper la place que lui réserve

l'Architectonique, n'aura pas à recourir à une Critique

préalable. Il n'y a donc pas d'emprise critique possible sur

la forme ou le contenu d'une Anthropologie. De l'une à

l'autre forme de réflexion le contact est nul. Tout cela

n'est-il pas d'ailleurs négativement confirmé par

l'Anthropologie elle-même? Nulle part, le préalable

critique n'est invoqué : et si la correspondance des deux

textes est facilement lisible, elle n'est jamais donnée ni

réfléchie comme telle. Elle est enfouie dans le texte de

l'Anthropologie dont elle forme la trame; et il faut

l'envisager à titre de fait, comme une donné de structure,

non comme la manifestation d'une ordonnance préalable

et intentionnelle.

2 — La Logique. On connaît les trois interrogations

fondamentales que dénombre la Méthodologie

transcendantale: que puis-je savoir? — question

spéculative à laquelle la Critique a donné une réponse

«dont la raison doit se contenter»; que dois-je faire? —

question qui est pratique; qu'estil permis d'espérer? —

interrogation à la fois théorique et pratique. Or cette

triple question qui surplombe, et, jusqu'à un certain point

commande l'organisation de la pensée critique, se

retrouve au début de la Logique, mais affectée d'une

modification décisive. Une quatrième question apparaît :

qu'est-ce que l'homme? — qui ne fait suite aux trois

premières que pour les ressaisir en une référence qui les

enveloppe toutes : car toutes doivent se rapporter à celle-

ci, comme doivent être mise au compte de

l'Anthropologie, la Métaphysique, la Morale et la Religion .

Ce brusque mouvement qui fait basculer les trois

interrogations vers le thème anthropologique, ne trahit-il

pas une rupture dans la pensée? Le Philosophieren semble

pouvoir se déployer exhaustivement au niveau d'une

connaissance de l'homme; le large statut empirique que la

première critique assignait à l'Anthropologie est, de fait

même, récusé, — celle-ci n'étant plus le dernier degré

empirique d'une connaissance philosophiquement

organisée, mais le point où vient culminer dans une

interrogation des interrogations elles-mêmes, la réflexion

philosophique. Mais il faut prendre garde et ne point se

hâter, ni dans la dénonciation d'une prétendue rupture

affectant la résolution transcendantale du criticisme, ni

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dans la découverte d'une hypothétique dimension nouvelle

au long de laquelle Kant approcherait enfin de ce qui lui

était originairement le plus proche.

Et d'abord, que signifie pour les trois questions de «se

rapporter à la quatrième» (sich beziehen auf)? Faut-il

entendre un rapport comme celui de la connaissance à

l'objet, ou comme celui de cette même connaissance au

sujet, — s'il est vrai comme le veut encore un texte de la

Logique que la connaissance ait «eine zweifache

Beziehung : erstlich, eine Beziehung auf das Objekt,

zweitens eine Beziehung auf das Subjekt» . En d'autres

termes, faut-il comprendre qu'en ces trois questions,

l'homme était obscurément le «Gegenstand», — ce vers

quoi elles s'ouvraient et qui se tenait en face d'elles, prêt

à donner la réponse inattendue qu'elles sollicitaient dans

un autre langage? Ou bien faut-il penser au contraire que

ces trois questions doivent être à leur tour interrogées,

contournées dans leur pouvoir de questionnement et

restaurées, par une nouvelle révolution copernicienne,

dans leur gravitation originaire autour de l'homme, qui

croit naturellement s'interroger en elles, alors que c'est

lui qui les interroge et qu'il s'agit, pour dissiper toutes

philodoxie, de les interroger par rapport à lui. Notons

seulement, pour commencer cet examen, que

l'Anthropologie telle que nous la connaissons ne se donne

à aucun moment pour la réponse à la quatrième question,

ni même comme l'exploitation empirique la plus large de

cette même question; mais que celle-ci n'est posée que

plus tard encore, à l'extérieur de l'Anthropologie, et dans

une perspective qui ne lui appartient pas en propre, au

moment où se totalise dans la pensée kantienne

l'organisation du Philosophieren, c'est-à-dire dans la

Logique et dans l'Opus postumum. C'est à la lumière des

réponses données, dans ces textes, au : Was ist der

Mensch, que nous essaierons de comprendre, sur le

chemin du retour, ce que veut dire l'Anthropologie. Les

textes de l'Opus postumum qui datent de la période 1800-

1801 reprennent inlassablement à propos de la division de

la Philosophie transcendantale la définition des rapports

entre Dieu, le monde et l'homme. Et ce qui pouvait nous

apparaître comme rupture ou découverte dans le texte de

la Logique, se révèle alors comme l'interrogation

fondamentale de la réflexion philosophique, ressaisie à la

fois dans la rigueur de ses limites et dans sa plus grande

extension. Un fragment donne cette précision : «System

der Transc. Philosophie in drei Abschnitten : Gott, die

Welt, universum, und Ich selbst der Mensch als

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moralisches Wesen» . Mais ces trois notions ne sont pas

données comme les trois éléments d'un système planifié

qui les juxtaposerait selon une surface homogène. Le

troisième terme n'est pas là à titre de complément, de

tierce part dans l'organisation de l'ensemble, il joue le

rôle central de «Medius terminus» ; il est l'unité concrète

et active en laquelle et par laquelle Dieu et le monde

trouvent leur unité : «Gott, die Welt, und der Mensch als

Person, d.i. als Wesen das diese Begriffe vereinigt» . Il

faut laisser aux fragments de l'Opus postumum leur

caractère de tentative, et à travers l'obsédante répétition

des thèmes, prêter l'oreille à cette divergence qui fait

corps avec l'unité originaire de l'effort. Cette Vereinigung

de Dieu et du monde en l'homme et par l'homme, — quel

sens a-t-elle au juste? Quelle synthèse ou quelle opération

vise-t-elle? A quel niveau, de l'empirique ou du

transcendantal, de l'originaire ou du fondamental, peut-

on la situer?

a) Certains textes l'indiquent comme l'acte même de la

pensée. Si l'homme donne unité au monde et à Dieu, c'est

dans la mesure où il exerce sa souveraineté de sujet

pensant, — pensant le monde et pensant Dieu : «Der

medius terminus… ist hier das urteilende Subjekt (das

denkende Welt Wesen, der Mensch…»

b) Cet acte d'unification est donc la synthèse même de la

pensée. Mais il peut être, dans cette mesure précisément,

défini à partir du pouvoir où il prend son origine : «Gott

und die Welt, und der Geist des Menschen der beide

denkt» ; ou tout aussi bien considéré dans sa seule forme,

comme si Dieu, le monde et l'homme, dans leur

coexistence et leurs rapports fondamentaux restituaient

la structure même du jugement sous le régime de la

Logique traditionnelle; la trilogie Subjekt, Praedikat,

Copula définit la figure du rapport entre Dieu, le monde

et l'homme. Celui-ci est donc la copule, le lien, — comme

le verbe «être» du jugement d'univers.

c) Enfin l'homme apparaît comme synthèse universelle,

formant l'unité réelle où viennent se rejoindre la

personnalité de Dieu et l'objectivité du monde, le principe

sensible et le supra sensible; et l'homme devient le

médiateur à partir duquel se dessine «ein absoluter

Ganze» . C'est à partir de l'homme que l'absolu peut être

pensé.

Réponses, — ou solutions? Ces textes ne doivent pas être

pris pour tels. Mais chemins possibles, — et éprouvés,

pour une pensée qui s'avance sur le sol d'une philosophie

transcendantale enfin atteinte. Et à chaque instant,

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quand il faut repérer la géographie de cette terre

nouvelle, l'interrogation sur l'homme surgit, comme la

question à laquelle ne peut manquer de se rapporter

toute problématique du monde et de Dieu.

Mais ce rapport à la question sur l'homme n'a pas valeur

de référence absolue, — libératrice pour une pensée

sereinement fondamentale. Le contenu même de la

question : Was ist der Mensch? ne peut pas se déployer

dans une autonomie originaire; car d'entrée de jeu,

l'homme se définit comme habitant du monde, comme

«Weltbewohner» : «Der Mensch gehört zwar mit zur

Welt» . Et toute réflexion sur l'homme est renvoyée cir-

culairement à une réflexion sur le monde. Pourtant, il ne

s'agit point là d'une perspective naturaliste dans laquelle

une science de l'homme impliquerait une connaissance de

la nature. Ce qui est en question ce ne sont pas les

déterminations dans laquelle est prise et définie, au

niveau des phénomènes, la bête humaine, — mais bien le

développement de la conscience de soi et du Je suis : le

sujet s'affectant dans le mouvement par lequel il devient

objet pour lui-même : «Ich bin. — Es ist eine Welt ausser

mir (praeter me) im Raume und der Zeit, und ich bin

selbst ein Weltwesen; bin mir jenes Verhältnisses beuisst

und der bewegenden Kräfte zu Empfindungen

(Wahrnehmungen). — Ich der Mensch bin mir selbst ein

äußeres Sinnenobjekt, ein Teil der Welt» . Le monde est

découvert dans les implications du «Je suis», comme

figure de ce mouvement par lequel le moi, en devenant

objet, prend place dans le champ de l'expérience et y

trouve un système concret d'appartenance. Ce monde

ainsi mis à jour n'est donc pas la Physis, ni l'univers de la

validité des lois. Et à vrai dire si sa découverte se trouve

anticipée et rendue possible par l'Analytique

transcendantale et la Réfutation de l'Idéalisme, ce n'est

pas exactement du même monde, ou plutôt du monde au

même sens, qu'il est question dans ce fragment de l'Opus

postumum. Les «choses extérieures» de la Réfutation de

l'Idéalisme étaient condition de la détermination du

temps comme forme de l'expérience intérieure; le monde

de l'Opus Postumum est le concomitant de la

détermination du moi comme contenu objectif de

l'expérience en général. Et au lieu d'être défini par la

«persévérance», l'«obstination» (Beharrliches) d'une

coexistence spatiale, il s'esquisse dans la courbure d'un

tout qui lui permet d'être, pour l'expérience du moi plutôt

enveloppement que repère. Il n'est plus le corrélatif d'une

Zeitbestimmung, mais le présupposé d'une

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Sinnenbestimmung du moi. Il n'est pas donné dans

l'ouverture du All; il est présent dans la flexion sur soi du

Ganz .

Il n'est pas aisé de parler de ce monde. Cet

accomplissement dans la courbure qui le clot semble

l'exclure du langage, et de sa forme première qui est la

prédication : un texte de l'Opus postum parle de la

«personnalité» comme prédicat de Dieu; mais il achoppe

sur ce qui devrait être, par symétrie, le prédicat du

monde. Et ce prédicat reste en blanc, au-dessous du

langage, parce que le monde, comme tout (Ganz) est au-

delà de toute prédication à la racine peut-être de tous les

prédicats. Et pourtant ce monde n'est pas sans structure

ni signification. Son opposition à l'univers permet de fixer

son sens dans une philosophie transcendantale.

1) A la différence de l'univers, le monde est donné dans

un système d'actualité qui enveloppe toute existence

réelle. Il enveloppe cette existence à la fois parce qu'il

est le concept de sa totalité, et parce que c'est à partir

de lui qu'elle développe sa réalité concrète. Double sens

qu'implique le mot même de Inbegriff. «Der Begriff der

Welt ist der Inbegriff des Daseins» . Le monde est la

racine de l'existence, la source qui, en la contenant, tout

à la fois la retient et la libère.

2) Il ne peut y avoir — et par définition même — qu'un

seul univers. Le monde, en revanche pourrait être donné

en plusieurs exemplaires («es mag viele Welte sein»).

C'est que l'univers est l'unité du possible, alors que le

monde est un système de rapports réels. Ce système une

fois donné, il n'est pas possible que les rapports soient

autres; mais rien n'empêche absolument de concevoir un

autre système où d'autre rapports seront autrement

définis . C'est à dire que le monde n'est pas l'espace

ouvert du nécessaire, mais un domaine où un système de

la nécessité est possible.

3) Mais pour licite que soit cette supposition («es mag…»),

on ne saurait éviter de reconnaître qu'il ne peut y avoir

qu'un seul monde : «Es mag nur Eine Welt sein» . Car le

possible n'est pensé qu'à partir du système donné de

l'actualité; et la pluralité des mondes ne se profile qu'à

partir du monde existant et de ce qui peut s'offrir à

l'expérience : le monde est «das Ganze aller möglichen

Sinnen Gegenständen» . La possibilité de concevoir

d'autres mondes, — celui-ci n'étant que, de facto, un

«domaine» —, a pour corrélatif l'impossibilité de le

dépasser et l'impérieuse nécessité d'accepter ses

frontières comme limites. Ainsi le monde, repris dans sa

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signification de «Inbegriff des Daseins» apparaît selon une

triple structure, conforme au Begriff der Inbegriffs, de

source, de domaine, et de limite. Tel est donc selon

l'Opus postum ce monde où l'homme s'apparaît à lui-

même.

Or, reprenons le texte de la Logique, là où nous l'avoions

laissé : c'est à dire au moment où les trois questions

étaient référées à celui-ci : qu'est-ce que l'homme? Cette

question, à son tour, ne reste pas stable et fermée sur le

vide qu'elle dessine et interroge. Aussitôt qu'est formulé

le «was ist der Mensch», trois autres questions naissent;

ou plutôt trois impératifs du savoir se formulent qui

donnent à la question anthropologique son caractère de

prescription concrète : «Der Philosoph muß also

bestimmen können :

1 — Die Quellen des menschlichen Wissens

2 — Der Umfang des möglichen und natürlichen Gebraches

alles Wissens

3 — Und endlich die Grenzen der Vernunft»

Que veulent dire, et à quoi se rapportent ces trois

prescriptions entre lesquelles se répartit l'intérrogation

sur l'homme? Il est facile de reconnaître, au filigrane de

ces trois thèmes, à la fois la reprise des trois premières

questions, et l'esquisse de ce qui sera dans l'Opus

postumum la structure fondamentale de l'«Imbegriff des

Daseins». D'un côté, en effet, la détermination «des

sources du savoir humain» donne contenu à la question :

que puis-je savoir?; la détermination du «domaine de

l'usage possible et naturel du savoir» indique ce que peut

être la réponse à la question : «que dois-je faire?»; et la

détermination des «limites de la raison» donne son sens à

ce «qu'il est permis d'espérer».

Le contenu, une fois spécifié, de la quatrième question

n'est donc pas fondamentalement différent du sens

qu'avaient les trois premières; et la référence de celles-ci

à la dernière ne signifie ni qu'elles disparaissent en elle ni

qu'elles renvoient à une nouvelle interrogation qui les

dépasse: mais tout simplement que la question

anthropologique pose en les reprenant les questions qui se

rapportent à elle. Nous sommes là au niveau du

fondement structural de la répétition anthropologico-

critique. L'Anthropologie ne dit rien d'autre que ce que dit

la Critique; et il suffit de parcourir le texte de 1798 pour

constater qu'il recouvre exactement le domaine de

l'entreprise critique.

Cependant le sens de cette répétition fondamentale ne

doit être demandé ni à la parole répétée ni au langage qui

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répète: mais à ce vers quoi va cette répétition. C'est à

dire à la mise à jour de cette structure ternaire dont il est

question dans l'Opus postum et qui caractérise l'Inbegriff

des Daseins : source, domaine, limite. Ces concepts sont

communs aux thèmes qui spécifient, dans le Logique, la

quatrième question, et à ceux qui donnent sens dans les

derniers textes kantiens, à la notion du monde comme

tout. Ce sont eux qui déterminent l'appartenance

structurale de l'interrogation sur l'homme à la mise en

question du monde. Et ceci dans la reprise rigoureuse des

trois questions qui ont commandé les trois critiques. En

d'autres termes, ces trois notions, Quellen, Umfang et

Grenzen, déjà présentes dans la trame de la pensée

critique, ont par leur persévérence et leur poids propre,

atteint le niveau fondamental où est interrogé l'Inbegriff

de l'existence, et où elles apparaissent enfin pour elles-

mêmes. Au niveau le plus superficiel, elles se donnent

comme formes communes de l'interrogation sur l'homme

et de la signification du monde. Mais, sans doute, au

niveau de cette philosophie transcendantale où enfin elles

se formulent, ont-elles une tout autre portée.

«Was notwenidig (ursprünglich) das Dasein der Dingen

ausmacht gehört zur Transc. Philosophie» . Or ce qui

appartient nécessairement (originairement) à l'existence

des choses, c'est cette structure fondamentale de son

Inbegriff que nous connaissons déjà. La richesse de la

source, la solidité du domaine, la rigueur de la frontière

appartiennent indissociablement à ce qu'il y a de

nécessaire (c'est-à-dire d'originaire) au tout de l'existence

pensé comme Ganz et non pas comme All. Et par là vient

à jour dans sa forme fondamentale le rapport de l'homme

et du monde, — ce rapport qui paraissait pris dans la

répétition indéfinie de la circularité, puisque le monde

était unifié par l'homme, qui n'était qu'un habitant du

monde. Un texte de l'Opus Postumum ne dit-il pas «Der

Mensch in der Welt gehört mit zur Kenntniss der Welt» ?

Mais ce ne sont là que paradoxes au niveau de la

connaissance naturelle. Au niveau d'une philosophie

transcendantale, ils se dissipent aussitôt pour laisser venir

à jour une corrélation où le tout de l'existence definit ce

qui lui appartient nécessairement et originairement.

1 — Le monde, comme source du savoir, s'offre sous les

espèces du multiple qui désigne la passivité originaire de

la sensibilité; mais il est précisément la source

inépuisable du savoir dans la mesure où cette originaire

passivité est indissociable des formes de la Vereinigung et

de la spontanéité de l'esprit. Si le monde est source, c'est

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qu'il y a une correlation fondamentale, et au-delà de

laquelle il n'est pas possible de remonter entre la

passivité et la spontanéité.

2 — Le monde, come domaine de tous les prédicats

possibles, s'offre dans la solidarité serrée d'un

déterminisme qui renvoie aux synthèses a priori d'un sujet

jugeant («eines urteienden Subjekt»). Et par là même, le

monde n'est domaine que par rapport à une activité

fondatrice qui s'ouvre sur la liberté; et par conséquent

«der Mensch gehört zwar mit zur Welt, aber nicht der

seiner Pflicht Angemessene» .

3 — Le monde, comme limite de l'expérience possible,

exclut tout usage transcendantal de l'idée. Mais il n'est

limite que parce qu'il existe une certaine «nature» de la

raison dont le travail est d'anticiper sur la totalité, et de

la pensée précisément comme limite, puisqu'il est de

l'ambiguïté même de cette notion de désigner la frontière

trop facile à franchir, et le terme inaccessible dont on

s'approche toujours réellement mais en vain. Ambiguïté

qu'exprime bien ce fragment : «Gott über mir, die Welt

außer mir, der Menschliche Geist in mir in einem System

das All der Dinge befassend…»

On voit l'ampleur du champ de réflexion que couvrent ces

trois notions : source, domaine, limite. En un sens, elles

recoupent la trilogie, interne à la première critique, de la

sensibilité, de l'entendement et de la raison. Plus loin,

elles reprennent et resserrent en un mot le travail de

chaque critique: raison pure, raison pratique, et faculté

de juger. Elles répètent les trois questions fondamentales

qui, selon Kant, animent tout le Philosophieren. Elles

donnent un triple contenu enfin à l'interrogation sur

l'homme auxquelles se rapportent toutes les autres. Mais

en reprenant ainsi chacune de ces tripartitions, elles leur

font atteindre, par leur répétition même, le niveau du

fondamental, et substituent à ces divisions systématiques,

l'organisation des corrélats transcendantaux. On s'aperçoit

ainsi que le monde n'est simplement source pour une

«faculté» sensible, mais sur le fond d'une corrélation

transcendantale passivité-spontanéité; que le monde n'est

pas domaine simplement pour un entendement

synthétique, mais sur fond d'une corrélation

transcendantale nécessité-liberté; que le monde n'est pas

limite simplement pour l'usage des Idées, mais sur fond

d'une corrélation transcendantale raisonesprit (Vernunft-

Geist). Et par là, dans ce système de corrélations se fonde

la transcendance réciproque de la vérité et de la liberté.

On voit quelle est la place de la quatrième question dans

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l'économie de la dernière pensée kantienne, c'est-à-dire

dans le passage d'une réflexion critique — donc

nécessairement propédeutique — à l'accomplissement

d'une philosophie transcendantale. La question

anthropologique n'a pas de contenu indépendant;

explicitée, elle répète les trois pre- mières questions,

mais elle les répète en substituant à une tripartition plus

ou moins directement empuntée à la distinction des

facultés (Vermögen), le jeu de trois notions qui couvrent

les rapports de l'homme et du monde : non pas rapports

empiriques et circulaires des immanences au niveau d'une

connaissance naturelle, mais corrélation nécessaire, c'est

à dire originaire — notwendig (ursprünglich) — où se

développent dès la racine de l'existence des choses,

d'inséparables transcendances.

La question : Qu'est-ce que l'homme? a pour sens et

fonction de porter les divisions de la Critique au niveau

d'une cohésion fondamentale : celle d'une structure qui

s'offre, en ce qu'elle a de plus radical que toute «faculté»

possible, à la parole enfin libérée d'une philosophie

transcendantale.

Et pourtant, nous ne sommes pas au bout de la route. Ou

plutôt, nous voici déjà trop loin sur le chemin qui devait

nous conduire à l'exacte situation de l'Anthropologie, — à

son lieu de naissance et d'insertion dans la pensée

critique. Comme si une Anthropologie ne devenait

possible (d'une possibilité fondamentale et non pas

seulement programmatique) que du point de vue d'une

Critique achevée et conduite déjà à l'accomplissement

d'une philosophie transcendantale. Mais il y a plus

encore : la question «Qu'est-ce que l'homme» se donne

dans la Logique comme l'interrogation anthropologique

par excellence; et pourtant dans l'Opus postumum, elle

est liée, dès le principe, à une interrogation sur Dieu et

sur le monde; elle se développe tout entière à ce niveau

comme si elle n'avait jamais relevé de ce domaine

singulier qu'est l'Anthropologie. La référence de la

Logique à une Anthropologie qui ramènerait à soi toute

interrogation philosophique semble n'être, dans la pensée

kantienne, qu'un épisode. Episode entre une

anthropologie qui ne prétend point à une telle

universalité de sens, et une philosophie transcendantale

qui porte l'interrogation sur l'homme à un niveau bien plus

radical. Cet épisode était structuralement nécessaire :

son caractère passager était lié au passage qu'il assurait.

Le rapport du texte de 1798 à la Critique est donc

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paradoxal. D'un côté la Critique l'annonce et lui fait place

à l'intérieur d'une philosophie empirique; et pourtant

l'Anthropologie, elle, ne renvoie ni à la Critique, ni aux

principes organisateurs aménagés par celle-ci. D'un autre

côté, l'Anthropologie reprend, comme allant de soi, les

grandes articulations de la Critique, et la division,

devenue traditionnelle des facultés; et pourtant, malgré

cette référence implicite et constante, la Critique n'a pas

valeur de fondement par rapport à l'Anthropologie; celle-

ci repose sur son travail mais ne s'enracine pas en elle.

Elle se divise d'elle-même vers ce qui doit la fonder et qui

n'est plus la critique, mais la philosophie transcendantale

elle-même. C'est là la fonction, et la trame de son

empiricité.

Cette empiricité, il faut la suivre maintenant pour elle-

même. Ce que, par anticipation, nous avons pu

déterminer de son cheminement permettra sans doute de

mieux comprendre comment l'Anthropologie a pu être à la

fois marginale par rapport à la Critique, et décisive pour

les formes de réflexion qui se donnaient pour tâche de

l'achever.

L'Anthropologie dit d'elle-même qu'elle est à la fois

«systématique et populaire»; et c'est dans

l'approfondissement de ces deux mots qu'on peut

déchiffrer le sens qui lui appartient en propre : en

répétant la Critique au niveau populaire du conseil, du

récit et de l'exemple, acheminer secrètement la pensée

kantienne vers une réflexion fondatrice.

1 — L'Anthropologie est systématique : ce qui ne veut pas

dire qu'elle énonce sur l'homme tout ce qui peut être

connu, mais qu'elle forme, en tant que connaissance, un

tout cohérent : non pas Alles, mais Ganze. Or le principe

de cette totalité n'est pas l'homme lui-même, comme

objet déjà cohérent, puisqu'il est lié au monde, et que,

seuls, le labeur indéfini de l'enquête, l'usure de la

fréquentation (Umgang) peuvent rechercher ce qu'il est.

Si l'Anthropologie est systématique, c'est dans la mesure

où elle emprunte sa cohérence au tout de la pensée

critique, — chacun des trois livres de la Didactique

répétant les trois Critiques, et la Caractéristique

reprenant les textes sur l'histoire, le devenir de

l'humanité et son acheminement vers d'inaccessibles fins.

Là, et là seulement, réside le principe organisateur de

l'Anthropologie.

Un exemple pour déterminer au juste comment se fait

cette répétition. Le texte intitulé Apologie de la

sensibilité reprend les rapports de l'intuition et de

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l'entendement . Mais cette répétition n'est pas retour au

même. Le rapport décrit par l'Anthropologie a sa

dimension propre dans le travail lent, précaire, toujours

douteux de la succession : le multiple tel qu'il s'offre aux

sens n'est pas encore (noch nicht) ordonné; l'entendement

doit venir s'ajouter (hizukonsmen), et insérer un ordre

qu'il apporte lui-même (hineinbringen). Un jugement qui

se produit avant cette mise en ordre (zuvor) risque d'être

faux. En revanche, ce rapport de succession ne supporte

pas d'être impunément distendu; si, dans l'ordre du

temps, intervient le ressassement rétrospectif du

raisonnement (Nachgrübeln) et le repli indéfini de la

réflexion (Überlegung), l'erreur peut également se glisser.

Le donné n'est donc jamais trompeur, non parce qu'il juge

bien, mais parce qu'il ne juge pas du tout, et que le

jugement s'insère dans le temps, formant vérité selon la

mesure même de ce temps.

Le temps de la Critique, forme de l'intuition et du sens

interne, n'offrait la multiplicité du donné qu'à travers une

activité constructrice déjà à l'œuvre; il n'offrait le divers

que déjà dominé dans l'unité du Je pense. En revanche, le

temps de l'Anthropologie est garanti d'une dispersion qui

n'est pas surmontable; car ce n'est plus celle du donné et

de la passivité sensible; c'est la dispersion de l'activité

synthètique par rapport à elle-même — dispersion qui lui

donne comme du «Jeu». Elle n'est pas contemporaine

d'elle-même dans l'organisation du divers; elle se succède

immanquablement, donnant ainsi prise à l'erreur, et à

tous les glissements qui faussent (verkünsteln, verdichten,

verruüchen). Alors que le temps de la Critique assurait

l'unité de l'originaire (depuis l'originairement donné

jusqu'à la synthèse originaire), se déployant ainsi dans la

dimension du Ur…, celui de l'Anthropologie reste voué au

domaine du Ver…, parce qu'il maintient la dispersion des

synthèses et la possibilité toujours renouvelée de les voir

s'échapper les uns aux autres. Le temps n'est pas ce en

quoi, et à travers quoi, et par quoi se fait la synthèse; il

est ce qui ronge l'activité synthètique ellemême. Il

l'affecte, toutefois, non pas à la manière d'un donné

indiquant une passivité première, mais à la manière d'une

possibilité intrinsèque, qui lève l'hypothèse et

l'hypothèque d'une exhaustive détermination : c'est que la

possibilité de l'erreur est liée au devoir, et à la liberté, de

l'éviter. Ce qui affecte l'activité synthètique, l'ouvre à la

liberté; ce qui la limite, la place, par le fait même, dans

un champ indéfini. Dans la Critique, le temps se faisait

transparent à une activité synthètique qui n'était pas elle-

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même temporelle, puisqu'elle était constituante; dans

l'Anthropologie, le temps, impitoyablement dispersé

obscurcit, rend impénétrable les actes synthètiques, et

substitue à la souveraineté de la Bestimmmung,

l'incertitude patiente, friable, copromise d'un exercice qui

s'appelle le Kunst.

Le mot «Kunst», avec ses dérivés (verkunsteln,

erkunsteln, gekunstelt) est un des termes qui reviennent

souvent dans l'Anthropologie , — et l'un de ceux qui

demeurent le plus inaccessible à la traduction. Aucun art,

aucune technique ne sont par là visés; mais bien ce fait

que rien n'est jamais donné sans être en même temps

offert au péril d'une entreprise qui tout à la fois le fonde

dans la construction, et l'esquive dans l'arbitraire. Le

Kunst est en un sens la négation de la passivité originaire;

mais cette négation peut et doit se comprendre aussi bien

comme spontanéité (par rapport aux déterminations du

divers) que comme artifice (par rapport à la solidité de

donné); et son rôle est tout aussi bien de bâtir au-dessus,

et à l'encontre du phénomène (Erscheinung), une

apparence (Schein), que de donner à l'apparence la

plénitude et le sens du phénomène : c'est à dire que le

Kunst détient, — mais dans la forme de la liberté, — le

pouvoir de négation réciproque du Schein et de

l'Erscheinung. Et même les couches les plus profondément

enfouies dans la passivité originaire, même ce qu'il y a de

plus donné dans le donné sensible est ouvert à ce jeu de

la liberté : le contenu de l'intuition sensible peut être

utilisé artificieusement comme Schein, et ce Schein peut

être utilisé intentionnellement, comme Erscheinung :

ainsi dans l'échange des signes de la moralité, le contenu

sensible peut n'être qu'un masque et se mettre au service

des ruses du mensonge; ou encore il peut être ruse de la

ruse et forme raffinée qui transmet la valeur, et sous la

simple apparence, le sérieux du phénomène . Le Kunst

qui, au ras du sensible, habite déjà tout le domaine du

donné, exerce donc de trois manières sa souveraineté : il

est la puissance du négatif, il est la décision de

l'intentionnel, il est le langage de l'échange. Ainsi le

temps qui ronge et effrite l'unité de l'acte synthétique, et

le voue à un divers, où il ne peut jamais se rejoindre lui-

même dans une intemporelle souveraineté, l'ouvre par le

fait même à une liberté qui est négation à exercer, sens à

donner, communication à établir, liberté périlleuse qui lie

au travail de la vérité la possibilité de l'erreur, mais fait

échapper ainsi à la sphère des déterminations le rapport à

la vérité.

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Au rapport du temps et du sujet, qui était fondamental

dans la Critique, répond dans l'Anthropologie, le rapport

du temps au Kunst. Dans la Critique, le sujet avait

conscience du soi comme «déterminé dans le temps», et

cette détermination insurmontable renvoyait à l'existence

d'un monde extérieur par rapport auquel une expérience

interne du changement était possible; c'est à dire que le

temps, et la passivité première qu'il indique, était à la

racine de cette «Beziehung auf» qui caractérise

l'ouverture première de toute connaissance.

Dans l'Anthropologie, le temps et la dispersion qu'il

détermine montrent, dans la texture de la «Beziehung

auf» une appartenance réciproque de la vérité et de la

liberté. De la Critique à l'Anthropologie, n'est-ce pas la

même chose qui se répète? Le temps recèle et révèle un

«rapport à…», une ouverture première qui est, tout aussi

bien, et dans le même temps, lien de la vérité et de la

liberté, — lien qui sera, à son tour, le thème privilégié de

la Philosophie transcendantale, et l'interrogation qui

anime l'inlassable question de l'Opus Postumum; «was ist

der Mensch?» Et de même que la Beziehung auf devenait

lisible dans la Critique à travers la structure de la

Vorstellung, de même le lien de la vérité et de la liberté

commence à se déchiffrer dans l'Anthropologie à travers

le labeur et les périls du Kunst.

L'Anthropologie est systématique. Systématique en vertu

d'une structure qui est celle de la Critique, et qu'elle

répète. Mais ce que la Critique énonce comme

détermination, dans le rapport de la passivité et de la

spontanéité, l'Anthropologie le décrit le long d'une

dispersion temporelle, qui ne s'achève jamais et n'a

jamais commencé; ce à quoi l'Anthropologie a affaire est

toujours déjà là, et jamais entièrement donné; ce qui est

premier pour elle est voué à un temps qui de toutes

façons l'enveloppe, de loin et de haut. Ce n'est pas que le

problème de l'origine lui soit étranger : au contraire, elle

lui restitue son vrai sens, qui n'est pas de mettre à jour et

d'isoler, dans l'instant, l'initial; mais de retrouver une

trame temporelle qui, pour avoir déjà commencé, n'en

est pas moins radicale. L'originaire n'est pas le réellement

primitif, c'est le vraiment temporel. C'est à dire qu'il est

là, où, dans le temps, la vérité et la liberté

s'appartiennent. Il y aurait une fausse Anthropologie — et

nous ne la connaissons que trop : c'est celle qui tenterait

de décaler vers un commencement, vers un archaïsme de

fait ou de droit, les structures de l'a priori.

L'Anthropologie de Kant nous donne une autre leçon :

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répéter l'a priori de la Critique dans l'originaire, c'est à

dire dans une dimension vraiment temporelle.

2 — Malgré cet enracinement systématique,

l'Anthropologie est un ouvrage «populaire», où «les

exemples peuvent être trouvés par chaque lecteur» . Que

faut-il entendre par là? Non pas une certaine nature du

contenu (une analyse empirique peut n'être que

populaire), ni une certaine qualité de la forme (une

connaissance non populaire peut recevoir un «vêtement»

qui la rend accessible). Un texte de la Logique donne son

statut à la notion de «Popularität» . Par rapport à la

connaissance, elle n'est pas addition, épithète, ou style

d'expression : elle en est une perfection : … «eine

wahrhaft populäre Vollkommenheit des Erkenntnisses».

Elle se distingue de la perfection technique ou

scolastique: non qu'elle soit incompatible avec elle; au

contraire ; mais elle lui ajoute quelque chose. Car dans le

discours de la connaissance scolastique, on ne peut jamais

être sûr que la preuve n'est pas «einseitig» , il y a, en

revanche dans la connaissance populaire une exigence du

discours qui va vers le tout, vers l'exhaustif; elle dissipe le

péril de la partialité, autorisant ainsi, «eine vollständige

Einsicht» . Son caractère propre n'est donc pas tellement

dans la particularité d'un style, que dans la manière

d'administrer la preuve; ses arguments ne sont pas

meilleurs (ni autres) que ceux du savoir scolastique, — sa

vérité est la même, mais elle donne la certitude que le

tout est donné dans l'inépuisable multiplicité du divers.

Les preuves variées qu'elle donne ne laissent jamais

l'impression d'être partielles. C'est bien ce que voulait

dire l'Anthropologie ellemême : le lecteur se trouve dans

tel climat de totale évidence (vollständige Einsicht) qu'il

peut trouver, indéfiniment, de nouveaux exemples.

Mais la «popularité» n'est pas la forme première, la plus

matinale et la plus naïve, de la vérité.

Pour devenir populaire une connaissance doit reposer sur

«eine Welt und Menschentkenntniss», une connaissance

des concepts, des goûts et des inclinations des hommes» .

Comment, dans cette phrase de la Logique, qui circonscrit

les exigences de la connaissance populaire, ne pas

retrouver la définition même de l'Anthropologie? C'est à

dire que l'Anthropologie, comme ouvrage dans la forme de

la «popularité», repose sur elle-même dans la mesure où

elle est connaissance de l'homme et du monde.

Connaissance «populaire» et connaissance du «populaire»,

elle est ce qu'elle implique elle-même pour pouvoir être.

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Ce cercle n'est pas à dénouer, mais à prendre comme il se

donne, et là où il se donne, — dans le langage. C'est qu'il y

a dans le langage la possibilité à la fois de le parler et de

parler sur lui, et ceci dans un seul et même mouvement;

il est dans son usage courant la source inépuisable de ces

«exemples» par lesquels la lecture prolonge, sans

interruption, et dans la familiarité du reconnu, l'écriture.

Dire qu'un texte est populaire parce que les lecteurs

peuvent trouver eux même des exemples, c'est dire qu'il y

a entre l'auteur et son public, le fond non partagé d'un

langage quotidien, qui continue à parler, sans transition

et sans changement, la page une fois blanche.

L'Anthropologie, connaissance populaire, peut reposer sur

elle-même, puisque parlant un langage commun, elle

parlera de lui, et, de l'intérieur, l'éclairera. Elle sera une

connaissance de l'homme que l'homme lui-même pourra

immédiatement comprendre, reconnaître, et indéfiniment

prolonger, parce qu'elle et lui sont dans l'obédience d'un

même et inépuisable langage.

A la différence des textes non populaires, l'Anthropologie

ne cherche pas à fixer et à justifier son vocabulaire. Elle

accueille au contraire le langage dans la totalité d'une

pratique qui n'est jamais remise en question. La trame du

texte, le fil directeur empirique n'est autre que l'effort

patient pour épuiser les formes verbales d'un thème, et

donner à chacune, avec son sens précis, l'extension réelle

de son domaine. Dans la classification des maladies

mentales au XVIIIe siècle, les termes comme einfältig,

dumm, tor, narr, Geck, unklug, sont récusés comme

mystifiés et vains, ne relevant que d'un usage populaire

sur la seule obscurité d'une douteuse tradition; on les

efface au profit d'une terminologie qui est censée

reproduire une articulation logique du réel dans l'espace

de la nature. Or ce sont ces mots qui, pour Kant, forment

le support et la substance même de l'analyse . Il ne s'agit

pas pour lui d'ordonner au Logos silencieux de la nature,

le langage proliférant des hommes; mais bien de totaliser

ce langage en supposant qu'il n'y a pas en lui de flexion

qui ne s'accompagne d'une modalité particulière de sens.

Les différences que le langage quotidien met entre

dumm, tor, et narr, sont tout aussi valables et pleines de

sens que celles établies par les naturalistes entre les

termes de vesania et d'insania érigés en espèces. Au

niveau anthropologique, il n'y a pas de langage mystifié,

ni même de vocabulaire erroné.

En un sens, l'Anthropologie est une sorte d'idiomatique

générale. Les expressions toutes données y sont pesées

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avec tout leur poids de sérieux. Quelque chose est pensée

dans tout ce qui est dit. Il suffit d'interroger, et de tendre

l'oreille. Pourquoi dit-on régulièrement : «ein richtiger

Verstand, eine geübte Urteilskraft, eine gründliche

Vernunft» ? N'y a-t-il pas là quelque chose qui va jusqu'à

l'essence? Quel jeu sérieux se joue dans l'opposition «eine

langweilige Unterredung, ein kurzeweiliger Mensch» ? Que

dit-on quand on dit : «Geld ist die Losung» ? — Et plus, il y

a tous les «idiotismes moraux», qui sont, dans les mœurs

et les rapports des hommes, ce que sont dans leur langage

les expressions toutes faites : règles de la politesse ,

usages de la mode , convenances et habitudes dans les

réunions . Toutes ont leur justification. Mais elle ne

relève pas d'une cause étrangère à la pratique humaine;

elle ne se cache pas non plus dans un passé lointain : sauf

une note sur le sens et le goût des affaires chez les Juifs,

il n'y a pas d'explication historique dans l'Anthropologie.

Le sens de ces idiotismes leur est toujours actuel. C'est en

suivant le fil du langage et de la pratique, en les

examinant au ralenti, et en les confrontant dans une sorte

de planification empirique, qu'ils diront ce qu'ils veulent

réellement dire. L'Anthropologie, c'est l'élucidation de ce

langage tout fait, — explicite ou silencieux, — par lequel

l'homme étend sur les choses et entre ses semblables un

réseau d'échanges, de réciprocité, de compréhension

sourde, qui ne forme au juste ni la cité des esprits, ni

l'appropriation totale de la nature, mais cette habitation

universelle de l'homme dans le monde.

L'Anthropologie est donc enracinée dans un système

d'expression et d'expérience qui est un système allemand.

Sans doute Kant essaie-t-il de dépasser ce domaine donné

par des analyses de pratiques étrangères, ou par des

références à d'autres ensembles linguistiques . Sans doute

se sert-il de ce qu'il y a de plus particulier dans son

expérience pour en dominer les limites :

Königsberg, capitale administrative, ville d'Université et

de commerce, croisement de routes, proche de la mer, a

une valeur constante d'enseignement pour comprendre

l'homme comme citoyen du monde tout entier . Mais tout

ceci n'empêche pas que l'Anthropologie dans son ensemble

se déroule dans un domaine géographique et linguistique

dont elle n'est, ni en fait, ni en droit, dissociable. C'est

une réflexion sur et dans un système de signes constitués

et enveloppants.

Depuis que le Latin commençait à s'effacer comme langue

de l'universalité savante et philosophique, l'usage des

langues modernes ne contestait pas, pour ceux qui les

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employaient ou les entendaient, le sens universel de la

parole ainsi proférée. Sous la langue effectivement mise

en œuvre, veillait le droit secret d'une latinité non encore

résorbée bien qu'enfouie, et qui assurait à ce qui se disait

une valeur d'échange intrinsèque, et sans résidu. La

méticulosité avec laquelle Kant, dans les Critiques, note à

chaque instant, le mot latin correspondant indique assez

que l'universalité de son propos fait corps avec une

certaine latinité implicite. La référence latine y est

systématique et essentielle. Dans la Critique de la Raison

pure, il éprouve même l'usage de l'allemand comme gêne

et limitation. Et lorsque dans sa propre langue, il se sent

«embarrassé pour trouver une expression qui convienne

exactement», il a recours «à quelque langue morte et

savante», quitte, si ses mots ont été déviés par un trop

long usage, à revenir au sens qui leur est propre» . Il vaut

mieux se servir du latin que d'entraver par des

raffinements sur la langue germanique, «la marche de la

science» La référence au Latin est peut-être aussi

fréquente dans l'Anthropologie, que dans les Critiques.

Mais elle n'est plus essentielle, n'ayant valeur que

d'indication et de repère. Tantôt, elle permet de

distinguer, une ambiguïté de sens : Leicht et schwer

veulent dire aussi bien léger et grave que facile et

difficile ; tantôt, elle replace l'analyse dans une tradition

scientifique : Unsinnigkeit-amentia, Wahnsinnsementia,

Wahnwitz-insania, Aberwitz-vesania ; tantôt enfin elle

sert à fixer le système des correspondances entre le

niveau critique et le domaine anthropologique. Mais le

travail réel, le chemin de la pensée dans l'Anthropologie

ne passent pas par la Latinité; ils suivent les lignes de

force du système allemand d'expression. Le terme de

Melancholia, par exemple, ne touche pas à ce qui

constitue le sens véritable de Tiefsinnigkeit; ce sens, il

faut le demander à toute une dynastie de la langue :

d'une part, la série Scharfsinnigkeit, Leichtsinnigkeit,

etc…; d'autre part l'opposition subtile, difficile à démêler

avec le Tiefdenken . Il y a aussi le domaine verbal du

Sagen : Wahrsagen, Vorhersagen, et Weissagen . Et

surtout, la grande dynastie, si complexe, de Dichten.

En surface, et comme sur la plage des quasi-synonymes, il

jouxte les mots qui désignent les autres formes,

psychologiques ou techniques de l'invention : entdecken,

entfinden, etwas ausfindig machen, ersinnen, ausdenken,

erdichten. Mais en suivant la dimension verticale, et la

filière des pouvoirs de l'esprit, on trouve d'abord, et d'une

façon générale le «Vermögen Ideen zu schaffen», puis le

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pouvoir de leur donner une forme selon les lois de

l'imagination productrice : c'est le Vermögen zu bilden;

lorsque le pouvoir spirituel et le goût dirigent ces

productions, on a affaire au Dichtkunst, au sens large, —

qui peut s'adresser aussi bien aux yeux qu'aux oreilles;

enfin, lorsque cet art prend forme dans la solennité

justifiée des vers, il s'agit de poésie au sens strict. Mais à

chacun de ces niveaux, la Dichtung se trouve prise dans

un couple d'opposition où elle risque de s'aliéner et de se

perdre, si elle n'est pas ramenée à son sens rigoureux :

péril de la Beredsamkeit, en laquelle les rapports de

l'entendement et de la sensibilité sont inversés; péril de

la Naturmalerei qui se borne à l'imitation; péril de la

Versmacherei, privée de pouvoir spirituel. Ainsi s'identifie

et se précise le réseau complexe de la Dichtung grâce à

une totalisation du domaine verbal qui lui est apparenté .

Les facultés, les pouvoirs ainsi mis à jour ne forment pas

dans leur structure, le fil directeur de l'analyse; ils se

dégagent ou s'aperçoivent à travers le filet des mots, tel

qu'il est noué depuis longtemps par l'usage quotidien.

Certes, il arrive à Kant de critiquer telle ou telle

confusion dans la manière de s'exprimer ; mais c'est au

nom même d'une distinction réellement existante qu'on

peut dénoncer ceux qui n'en font pas usage, et la

considèrent, dans la pratique d'une parole hâtive, comme

non avenue. Ce décrochage de la réflexion philosophique

par rapport à une universalité de forme latine a son

importance. Désormais le langage philosophique se

reconnaît la possibilité de trouver son lieu d'origine, et de

définir son champ d'exploration, dans une langue donnée.

Que ce langage soit lié à une langue ne rend pas relatif et

limité le sens qu'il porte, mais situe sa découverte dans un

domaine verbal déterminé. Ce rapport du sens

philosophique aux significations d'une langue, — et qui

sera si décisif dans la pensée allemande — n'est pas

encore réfléchi pour lui-même dans l'Anthropologie: mais

il est à chaque instant utilisé; le sol réel de l'expérience

anthropologique est beaucoup plus linguistique que

psychologique; la langue cependant n'y est pas donné

comme système à interroger, mais plutôt comme un

élément qui va de soi, à l'intérieur duquel on est placé

d'entrée de jeu; instrument d'échanges, véhicule de

dialogues, virtualité d'entente, la langue est le champ

commun à la philosophie et à la non philosophie. C'est en

elle que l'une et l'autre s'affrontent, — ou plutôt

communiquent.

Il y a donc un Banquet kantien — insistance, dans

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l'Anthropologie, sur ces formes minuscules de société que

sont les repas en commun; importance de l'Unterhaltung,

de ce qui s'y échange, et de ce qu'il faut y échanger;

prestige de ce modèle social et moral d'une Gesellschaft

où chacun se trouve à la fois lié et souverain; valeur du

discours qui, de l'un à l'autre, et entre tous, naît et

s'accomplit. Du point de vue de l'Anthropologie, le groupe

qui a valeur de modèle n'est ni la famille ni l'état : c'est la

Tischgesellschaft. N'est-elle pas, en effet, quand elle

obéit fidèlement à ses propres règles, comme l'image

particulière de l'universalité ? Là doit s'établir, par la

transparence d'un langage commun, un rapport de tous à

tous; nul ne doit se sentir privilégié ou isolé, mais chacun,

silencieux ou parlant, doit être présent dans la commune

souveraineté de la parole. Aucune des trois grandes

fonctions du langage ne doit être omise : énoncé du fait

contingent (Erzählen), formulation, échange et

rectification du jugement (Räsonieren), libre jeu du

langage sur lui-même (Scherzen). Tour à tour, il faut que

ces trois fonctions dominent, dans un mouvement qui est

le rythme propre à cette forme de réunion : d'abord la

nouveauté de l'événement, puis le sérieux de l'universel,

enfin l'ironie du jeu. Quant au contenu lui-même de

l'entretien, il doit obéir aux lois d'une structure interne :

celles d'une souple continuité, sans rupture, de telle

manière que la liberté de chacun de formuler son avis, d'y

insister, ou de faire dévier l'entretien ne soit jamais

éprouvée par les autres comme abus ou contrainte. Ainsi

dans l'élément réglé du langage, l'articulation des libertés

et la possibilité, pour les individus, de former un tout,

peuvent s'organiser sans l'intervention d'une force ou

d'une autorité, sans renonciation ni aliénation. En parlant

dans la communauté d'un Convivium, les libertés se

rencontrent et spontanément s'universalisent. Chacun est

libre, mais dans la forme de la totalité.

Ne nous étonnons plus de cette promesse faite au début

de l'Anthropologie, d'étudier l'homme comme «citoyen du

monde», — et que l'ouvrage semblait renoncer à tenir, en

se limitant à une analyse du «Gemüt» . En fait, l'homme

de l'Anthropologie est bien Weltbürger, mais non pas dans

la mesure où il fait partie de tel groupe social ou de telle

institution. Mais purement et simplement parce qu'il

parle. C'est dans l'échange du langage que, tout à la fois,

il atteint et accomplit lui-même l'universel concret. Sa

résidence dans le monde est originairement séjour dans le

langage.

La vérité que met à jour l'Anthropologie n'est donc pas

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une vérité antérieure au langage et qu'il serait chargé de

transmettre. C'est une vérité plus intérieure et plus

complexe, puisqu'elle est dans le mouvement même de

l'échange, et que l'échange accomplit la vérité universelle

de l'homme. De même que tout à l'heure l'originaire

pouvait être défini comme le temporel lui-même, on peut

maintenant dire que l'originaire ne réside pas dans une

signification préalable et secrète, mais dans le trajet le

plus manifeste de l'échange. C'est là que le langage

prend, achève et retrouve sa réalité, c'est là également

que l'homme déploie sa vérité anthropologique.

L'Anthropologie est donc «systématiquement projetée»

par une référence à la Critique qui passe par le temps;

elle a, d'autre part, valeur populaire parce que sa

réflexion se situe à l'intérieur d'un langage donné qu'elle

rend transparent sans le réformer, et dont les

particularités même sont le lieu de naissance légitime des

significations universelles. Dans une perspective

anthropologique, la vérité prend donc figure à travers la

dispersion temporelle des synthèses et dans le

mouvement du langage et de l'échange; là, elle ne trouve

pas sa forme primitive, — ni les moments a priori de sa

constitution, ni le choc pur du donné; elle trouve, dans un

temps déjà écoulé, dans un langage déjà parlé, à

l'intérieur d'un flux temporel et d'un système linguistique

jamais donnés en leur point zéro, quelque chose qui est

comme sa forme originaire : l'universel naissant au milieu

de l'expérience dans le mouvement du vraiment temporel

et du réellement échangé. C'est par là que l'analyse du

Gemüt, dans la forme du sens interne, devient

prescription cosmopolitique, dans la forme de

l'universalité humaine.

Nous avons vu plus haut comment la réflexion

anthropologique pouvait constituer, par la répétition

même de la Critique, le moment du passage à la

philosophie transcendantale. Il est facile de comprendre

comment cette répétition peut avoir structure, fonction

et valeur de passage : c'est que la Critique, bien que

répétée à un niveau simplement empirique, y est répétée

de telle sorte que les synthèses de la vérité (c'est à dire la

constitution du nécessaire dans le domaine de

l'expérience) apparaissent maintenant dans l'élément de

la liberté (dans la reconnaissance du particulier comme

sujet universel). L'Anthropologie répète la Critique de la

Raison pure à un niveau empirique où se trouve déjà

répétée la Critique de la raison pratique : le domaine du

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nécessaire est tout aussi bien le domaine de l'impératif .

L'Anthropologie est donc par essence l'Investigation d'un

champ où la pratique et le théorique se traversent et se

recouvrent entièrement; elle répète, en un même lieu, et

dans un même langage l'a priori de la connaissance et

l'impératif de la morale, — et par là, par le mouvement

de cette parole empirique qui est la sienne, elle

débouche sur ce qu'elle postule : une philosophie

transcendantale où se trouve défini, dès son fondement,

le rapport de la vérité et de la liberté. En d'autres

termes, la répétition anthropologico-critique ne repose ni

sur elle-même, ni sur la Critique : mais bien sur une

réflexion fondamentale, par rapport à laquelle

l'Anthropologie qui n'a ni la consistance du répété, ni la

profondeur de ce qui fonde la répétition, — qui n'est donc

que le moment transitoire mais nécessaire de la

répétition, — ne peut manquer de se liquider, et de

disparaître, paradoxalement, comme l'essentiel.

Ouverte par l'Anthropologie, mais tout aussitôt, et par

cette ouverture même, délivrée d'elle, la philosophie

transcendantale va donc pouvoir déployer à son propre

niveau, le problème que l'insistance de l'Anthropologie l'a

forcée à dévoiler : l'appartenance de la vérité et de la

liberté. C'est bien ce rapport qui est en question dans la

grande tripartition sans cesse répétée sur l'Opus

Postumum : Dieu, le monde, et l'homme. Dieu qui est

«Persönlichkeit», qui est liberté, qui est, par rapport à

l'homme et au monde, source absolue; le monde qui est le

tout, clos sur lui-même, des choses de l'expérience, qui

est vérité, et domaine indépassable; quant à l'homme il

est leur synthèse — ce en quoi Dieu et le monde

réellement s'unifient, — et pourtant il n'est par rapport au

monde qu'un de ses habitants, et par rapport à Dieu qu'un

être limité. Ce qui indique assez que l'appartenance de la

vérité et de la liberté se fait dans la forme même de la

finitude, et nous replace ainsi à la racine même de la

Critique. Nous sommes au niveau de ce qui fonde le refus

d'un intellect intuitif.

Mais ces trois termes, Dieu, le monde et l'homme, dans

leur rapport fondamental, remettent en œuvre ces

notions de source, de domaine et de limites, dont nous

avons déjà vu dans la pensée kantienne, la force et

l'obstination organisatrices. Ce sont elles qui régissaient

obscurément les trois questions essentielles du

Philosophieren et des Critiques; ce sont elles aussi qui

explicitaient le contenu de l'Anthropologie; ce sont elles

maintenant qui donnent leur sens transcendantal aux

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questions sur Dieu considéré comme source ontologique,

sur le monde comme domaine des existences, sur l'homme

comme leur synthèse dans la forme de la finitude. Et peu-

être dans la mesure même où le règne de ces questions

paraît si universel et si polymorphe, si transgressif par

rapport à toute division possible, pourrions-nous

comprendre à partir d'elles le lien d'une Critique à une

Anthropologie, et d'une Anthropologie à une Philosophie

transcendantale. Une Critique en s'interrogeant sur les

rapports de la passivité et de la spontanéité, c'est à dire

sur l'a priori pose un système de questions qui s'ordonne à

la notion de Quellen. Une Anthropologie en s'interrogeant

sur les rapports de la dispersion temporelle et de

l'universalité du langage, c'est à dire sur l'originaire, se

situe dans une problématique qui est celle d'un monde

déjà donné, d'un Umfang. Une philosophie

transcendantale, en cherchant à définir les rapports de la

vérité et de la liberté, c'est à dire en se situant dans la

région du fondamental, ne peut pas échapper à une

problématique de la finitude, des Grenzen.

Dans le retour de ces trois notions jusqu'à leur

enracinement fondamental, il faut voir, sans doute, le

mouvement par lequel se noue le destin conceptuel, c'est

à dire la problématique, de la philosophie

contemporaine : cette dispersion qu'aucun confusion,

dialectique ou phénoménologique, n'aura le droit de

réduire, et qui répartit le champ de toute réflexion

philosophique selon l'a priori, l'originaire, et le

fondamental. Depuis Kant, implicitement, le projet de

toute philosophie sera bien de surmonter cet essentiel

partage, jusqu'à ce que devienne claire l'impossibilité d'un

pareil dépassement en dehors d'une réflexion, qui le

répète, et en le répétant le fonde. L'Anthropologie sera

précisément le lieu où cette confusion, sans cesse,

renaîtra. Désignée sous son propre nom, ou cachée sous

d'autres projets, l'Anthropologie, ou du moins le niveau

anthropologique de réflexion tiendra à aliéner la

philosophie. Le caractère intermédiaire de l'originaire, et

avec lui, de l'analyse anthropologique, entre l'a priori et

le fondamental, l'autorisera à fonctionner comme mixte

impur et non réfléchi dans l'économie interne de la

philosophie : on lui prêtera à la fois les privilèges de l'a

priori et le sens du fondamental, le caractère préalable

de la critique, et la forme achevée de la philosophie

transcendantale; il se déploiera sans différence de la

problématique du nécessaire à celle de l'existence; il

confondra l'analyse des conditions, et l'interrogation sur la

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finitude. Il faudra bien un jour envisager toute l'histoire

de la philosophie postkantienne et contemporaine du

point de vue de cette confusion entretenue, c'est à dire à

partir de cette confusion dénoncée.

Jamais, sans doute, cette «déstructuration» du champ

philosophique n'a été aussi sensible que dans le sillage de

la phénoménologie. Il était, certes, du projet initial de

Husserl, tel qu'en témoignent les Logische Untersuchen,

de libérer les régions de l'a priori des formes où l'avaient

confisqué les réflexions sur l'originaire. Mais parce que

l'originaire ne peut jamais être lui-même le sol de sa

propre libération, c'est finalement à l'originaire conçu

dans l'épaisseur des synthèses passives et du déjà là qu'a

renvoyé l'effort pour échapper à l'originaire conçu comme

subjectivité immédiate. La réduction n'ouvrait que sur un

transcendantal d'illusion, et elle ne parvenait point à

jouer le rôle auquel elle était destinée, — et qui

consistait à tenir la place d'une réflexion critique élidée.

Même la référence à Descartes, se substituant, en un

moment de la pensée de Husserl, à la dominance des

souvenirs kantiens ne pouvait réussir à masquer le

déséquilibre des structures. Dès lors toute ouverture sur

la région du fondamental ne pouvait à partir de là

conduire à ce qui aurait dû être sa justification et son

sens, la problématique de la Welt et de l'In-der-Welt ne

pouvait échapper à l'hypothèque de l'empiricité. Toutes

les psychologies phénoménologiques, et autres variations

sur l'analyse de l'existence en sont le morne témoignage.

De quel aveuglement n'avons-nous pas été favorisés pour

ne pas voir que l'articulation authentique du

Philosophieren était à nouveau présente, et sous une

forme bien plus contraignante, dans une pensée qui

n'avait peut-être pas elle-même remarqué au plus juste

ce qu'elle conservait de filiation et de fidélité à l'égard

des vieux «chinois du Königsberg»? Il faudrait

probablement entendre ce que veut dire «philosopher à

coup de marteaux», voir d'un regard initial ce que c'est

que le «Morgenrot», comprendre ce qui nous revient dans

l'Éternel Retour pour voir là la répétition authentique,

dans un monde qui est le nôtre, de ce qu'était, pour une

culture déjà éloignée, la réflexion sur l'a priori,

l'originaire et la finitude. C'est là, dans cette pensée qui

pensait la fin de la philosophie, que résident la possibilité

de philosopher encore, et l'injonction d'une austérité

neuve.

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Un problème demeure, que le mouvement même de la

pensée kantienne n'aide guère à dénouer : c'est le

problème de l'empiricité dans la répétition anthropologico-

critique. Faut-il considérer la flexion vers l'empiricité

comme essentielle à toute réflexion qui veut s'acheminer

de l'a priori vers le fondamental? Et alors une science de

l'homme, ou plutôt le champ empirique où une science de

l'homme devient possible s'insère de plein droit dans le

trajet de la philosophie vers ellemême.

Ou peut-on concevoir une anthropologie qui ne trouverait

pas dans l'empiricité son contenu et ses lois, mais

s'adresserait aux essences dans une réflexion sur l'homme

à laquelle l'intuition seule donnerait richesse et vie?

L'empirique n'y vaudrait qu'à titre d'exemple, ne

définissant ni ne compromettant la forme même de la

connaissance.

L'Anthropologie de Kant ne donne pas à cela de réponse

claire. Sans doute elle n'est qu'un recueil empirique; mais

précisément, n'étant que recueil et rhapsodie d'exemples,

le mouvement réflexif qui la divise vient d'ailleurs et va

ailleurs, sans que soit défini avec précision le mode

d'appui de cette connaissance sur le domaine empirique

qu'elle recouvre. Il y a, dans l'Anthropologie, un double

système de solidarité : avec la réflexion critique et la

philosophie transcendantale d'une part, mais d'autre part

avec l'immense série des recherches anthropologiques qui

se développent, surtout en Allemagne, dans la seconde

moitié du XVIIIe siècle.

Il est assez difficile d'établir au juste la manière dont

l'ouvrage de Kant s'insère dans la chronologie et le réseau

d'influences des textes anthropologiques. Pour deux

raisons : l'une qui est l'emprise même de la pensée

kantienne sur la science et singulièrement sur la

physiologie et la médecine de son époque, l'autre qui est

le retard apporté à la publication de l'Anthropologie,

retard qui a permis une diffusion de notes d'étudiants, de

cahiers de cours comme ceux utilisés, quelque 40 ans plus

tard, par Starke. Si bien que beaucoup de textes, publiés

bien avant l'Anthropologie, renvoient explicitement ou

implicitement à la pensée kantienne, et devant une

ressemblance il est souvent impossible de se fier aux

dates de publication pour établir l'ordre des influences et

des préséances. Nous n'avons pour nous guider dans ce

réseau complexe que trois sortes de repères :

1 — Les textes qui comportent une référence explicite à

Kant, comme c'est le cas pour Ith : Versuch einer

Anthropologie (Berne 1794), pour Schmid : Empirische

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Psychologie (Iena 1791), pour Hufeland, Makrobiotik. Pour

tous ces textes nous avons déjà signalé les références à

Kant. Il faudrait aussi ajouter la seconde édition de

l'Anthropologie de Platner , ou certains travaux qui se

placent d'emblée dans l'obédience kantienne, comme

Köllner : «Bestimmung der organischen Kräfte nach

Grundsätzen der kritischen Philosophie» .

2 — En revanche l'antériorité de certains textes autorise à

penser que Kant les a effectivement connus et utilisés

dans son Anthropologie. Au premier rang de ceux-ci il faut

mettre sans doute Tetens : Versuch über die menschliche

Natur (1777), l'Anthropologie de Platner (1772), et bien

entendu la Psychologia empirica de Baumgarten (1749).

Cet ouvrage que Kant avait annoté a servi de fil directeur

à l'Anthropologie. L'analogie de place dans les deux textes

est frappante; on pourrait les superposer par paragraphe .

Encore faut-il noter que c'était là une ordonnance

classique des psychologies au XVIIIe siècle, et qu'il

faudrait sans doute en chercher le point d'origine ou du

moins de fixation définitive chez Wolff . Mais il y a plus :

la Psychologie de Baumgarten a fourni des schémas que

l'Anthropologie a repris et élaborés : la distinction de

«perceptio primaria» et de «perceptio adhaerens» devient

dans l'Anthropologie le système dédoublé de «perceptio

primaria et secundavia», et de «perceptio principalis et

adhaerens» . De même l'analyse de Wahrsagen et du

Weissagen chez Baumgarten , se précise chez Kant dans

une distinction du Vorhersagen, du Wahrsagen et du

Weissagen .

3 — Enfin on peut, sans crainte de trop grandes erreurs

relever l'influence de certains textes sur le

développement même de l'œuvre de Kant. Il y a des

modifications ou des nouveautés dans la dernière

rédaction de l'Anthropologie qui ont leur origine dans des

textes récemment publiés. On peut être sûr, par

exemple, que Kant a lu l'Empirische Psychologie de

Schmid, et l'a utilisée. Dans les notes de Nachla, dans les

cours publiés par Starke, on ne trouve nulle part mention

des sources empiriques qui aident et soutiennent la

réflexion anthropologique. C'est seulement dans le texte

de 1798 qu'on voit mentionnés des Hilfsmittel qui sont,

dans l'ordre, l'histoire du monde, les biographies, le

théâtre et les romans . Or en 1791, Schmid consacrait un

paragraphe aux Hilfsmittel de l'étude empirique de l'âme :

livres d'histoires, biographies, observations sur le

caractère, poésie tragique et cosmique, roman . Mais il y

a plus important : le même Schmid distingue trois sortes

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de sciences humaines : celle qui s'adresse à l'intériorité de

l'homme (sein Inneres) et à tout ce qui apparaît au sens

interne : c'est la Psychologie; celle qui s'adresse à

l'extériorité (sein Äusseres), et au corps : c'est

l'Anthropologie médicale; quant à l'Anthropologie

proprement dite, elle doit étudier les rapports mutuels de

l'intérieur et de l'extérieur . Il est difficile de ne pas

penser que là se trouve l'origine des sous titres qu'après

1791 Kant a donnés aux deux parties de l'Anthropologie .

Il y a donc tout un réseau de connaissances empiriques,

qui constituent à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, le domaine de

l'Anthropologie. Entre cet ensemble et le texte de Kant la

parenté est claire, même s'il n'est pas encore possible de

situer exactement l'ordre chronologique des rapports et le

prestige des influences réciproques. Mais dès maintenant

on peut s'interroger sur la signification générale de ce

champ de la connaissance empirique qui vient d'émerger,

à cette époque, avec la prétention de constituer une

science, l'Anthropologie.

Laissons de côté l'archéologie d'un terme dont la forme,

sinon le sort, était déjà fixée au XVIe siècle . Que peut

signifier, par rapport à une science de l'homme du type

cartésien ces nouvelles Anthropologies?

1 / Il semble que le projet initial d'une Anthropologie ait

été lié au début du XVIIIe siècle à un ensemble de

difficultés scientifiques précises : ce qu'on appelle

souvent, et avec trop de hâte, la critique du mécanisme

cartésien n'a été qu'une manière, pour les contemporains,

de formuler dans un vocabulaire théorique, le nouveau

labeur de leur connaissance. D'une manière générale, on

peut dire qu'à cette époque les recherches sur le

fonctionnement du corps humain ont été l'occasion d'un

dédoublement conceptuel capital : dans l'unité de la

Physis, qu'il n'est pas question de mettre en cause, ce qui

est pour le corps le physique commence à décoller de ce

qui est, pour les corps, la physique. Le physique en

l'homme serait de la nature, sans être de la physique.

D'où des croisements notionnels curieux, parfois

contradictoires, mais qui tous renvoient à cette difficulté

d'ordonner les uns aux autres les savoirs de la Physique,

des physiques et de la Physis. Wolff maintient la

«Physica» comme la forme la plus générale de la

connaissance de la nature, et lui ordonne la «physiologie»

comme science du corps . Kant au contraire groupera

dans la «Physiologie» l'ensemble des connaissances

empiriques de la nature, dont la «Physique» ne couvre

qu'un secteur . En fait si une science de la nature paraît

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maintenant décalée par rapport à une science de la

Physique, c'est dans la mesure où celle-ci ne peut plus

couvrir le domaine du corps humain. L'existence d'une

Anthropologie est à la fois la cause et l'effet, en tous cas

la mesure de ce décalage.

2 / Mais pourquoi ce décalage est-il lié à une

Anthropologie, et non pas à une Biologie en général.

Pourquoi Wolff dit-il que la Physiologie est une science

«de corpore animati, praesertim humano» ? Sans doute

parce que la connaissance de l'homme se trouve au point

de croisement de la détermination d'un privilège

métaphysique, qui est l'âme, et de la maîtrise d'une

technique qui est la médecine. L'homme est donc le

premier thème de connaissance qui puisse apparaître dans

le champ laissé libre par le décalage entre Physis et

Physique. «Definitus Physiologia per scientiam corporis

animati; strictius a medius per scientiam corporis sani;

alii tractationem physicam de homine in specie

Anthropologiam vocant» .

C'est dans la mesure où elle est Anthropologie que la

Physiologie acquiert sa spécificité; l'Anthropologie est sa

raison de n'être pas pure et simple Physique.

3 / Cette posture paradoxale de l'Anthropologie (qui est

raison de ce dont elle est partie) est lourde de

conséquences. Elle sera à la fois limite de la science de la

Physis et science de cette limite; elle sera cette limite

rabattue, en deçà d'elle-même, sur le domaine qu'elle

limite, et définira ainsi en termes de rapports ce qui est

le non rapport, en termes de continuité ce qui est

rupture, en termes de positivité ce qui est finitude. «On

peut», disait Platner, «considérer le corps et l'âme dans

leurs relations, limitations et rapports réciproques, et

c'est cela que j'appelle Anthropologie» . Mais Telena avait

bien vu que ce rapport ne pouvait être circonscrit, dans

l'Anthropologie, que du point de vue de la Physis. Et ceci

par opposition à leur méthode philosophique; selon celle-

ci, il faut prendre les modifications de l'âme «wie sie

durch das Selbstgefühl erkannt werden»; dans la

Psychologie analytique, ou Anthropologie, il considère les

modifications de l'âme «von der Seite da sie etwas in dem

Gehirn als dem innern Organ der Seele sind», et on

cherche à les expliquer «als solche

Gehirnsbeschaffenheiten und Veränderungen» .

4 / En raison de ce qu'il y a de plus initial en son projet,

l'Anthropologie ne peut pas manquer d'être à la fois

réductrice et normative. Réductrice, puisqu'elle

n'acceptera pas de l'homme ce qu'il sait de lui-même, par

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le «Selbstgefühl», mais seulement ce qu'il peut en savoir

par le mouvement qui passe par la médiation de la Physis.

L'Anthropologie ne s'adressera qu'au phénomène du

phénomène, au terme d'une flexion qui suppose toujours

l'horizon de la Nature. Mais d'un autre côté, elle sera

toujours la science d'un corps animé, finalisé à l'égard de

lui-même, et se développant selon un juste

fonctionnement. Elle sera connaissance d'une santé qui,

pour l'homme est synonyme d'animation. En quelque sorte

la science du normal par excellence : «Die Lehre von der

Beschaffenheit von dem Nutzen der Teile des

menschlichen Körpers ins gesunden Zustand»

5 / L'Anthropologie se trouve ainsi entourer et envelopper

toute connaissance de l'homme. Elle sert d'horizon

explicite ou implicite à tout ce que l'homme peut savoir

de lui-même. Et chaque domaine des sciences peut

prendre place dans le large champ de l'Anthropologie,

dans la mesure où quelque chose de l'homme est impliqué

en elle : «Le premier objet qui me frappe dans ce vaste

ensemble de nos connaissance est celle qui s'occupe de

l'homme considéré dans des rapports personnels, et des

hommes réunis dans les associations politiques» . Mais en

tant qu'être naturel l'homme ne fonde sa propre

connaissance qu'en la limitant, qu'en l'insérant dans un

jeu de nature qui ne lui donne de possibilité que s'il lui

retire sa valeur. Et une science anthropologiquement

fondée sera une science réduite, mesurée à l'homme,

déchue de sa propre vérité, mais par là même restitué à

la vérité de l'homme. C'est ainsi que l'Anthropologie, en

tant qu'elle est à la fois fondement et règle réductrice,

prend l'allure d'une connaissance normative, prescrivant

par avance à chaque science qui met l'homme en cause,

son cours, ses possibilités et ses limites. Ith prévoyait de

cette manière une anthropologie qui serait physiologique,

une seconde qui serait psychologique, une troisième

historique, une dernière morale ou téléologique . En

fondant le savoir, ou du moins en constituant la science

de ce qui fonde le savoir, l'Anthropologie, d'un seul

mouvement le limite et le finalise.

Quel que soit son contenu empirique, l'Anthropologie a

donc une structure épistémologique qui lui est propre.

Elle porte un sens qui n'est superposable ni aux «Traités

de l'Homme» dont le style, au moins, demeure encore

dans l'obédience cartésienne, ni aux empirismes que

surplombe toujours la pensée de Locke. Sans doute,

comme les premiers, est-elle un savoir dans le langage de

la nature, et comme les autres, une assignation de

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l'originaire. Mais ce ne sont là que des moments dans sa

structure épistémologique totale. Celle-ci en effet

s'équilibre autour de quelque chose qui n'est ni l'animal

humain, ni la conscience de soi, mais le Menschenwesen,

c'est à dire à la fois l'être naturel de l'homme, la loi de ses

possibilités, et la limite a priori de sa connaissance.

L'Anthropologie sera donc non seulement science de

l'homme, et science et horizon de toutes les sciences de

l'homme, mais science de ce qui fonde et limite pour

l'homme sa connaissance. C'est là que se cache

l'ambiguïté de cette Menschen-Kenntniss par laquelle on

caractérise l'Anthropologie : elle est connaissance de

l'homme, dans un mouvement qui objective celui-ci, au

niveau de son être naturel et dans le contenu de ses

déterminations animales; mais elle est connaissance de la

connaissance de l'homme, dans un mouvement qui

interroge le sujet lui-même, sur ses limites, et sur ce qu'il

autorise dans le savoir qu'on prend de lui.

L'Anthropologie croyait mettre en question un secteur de

la nature; elle posait en fait une question qui allait

reporter sur la philosophie de notre époque toute l'ombre

d'une philosophie classique désormais privée de Dieu :

peut-il y avoir une connaissance empirique de la finitude?

La pensée cartésienne, bien qu'elle eût fort tôt, et dès

l'expérience de l'erreur, rencontré cette finitude, n'y avait

été renvoyée définitivement qu'à partir d'une ontologie de

l'infini. Quant à l'empirisme, il pratiquait cette finitude, y

renvoyait sans cesse, mais comme limite de lui-même

tout autant que comme frontière de la connaissance.

L'interrogation anthropologique est de sens différent; il

s'agit pour elle de savoir si, au niveau de l'homme, il peut

exister une connaissance de la finitude, suffisamment

libérée et fondée, pour penser cette finitude en elle-

même, c'est à dire dans la forme de la positivité.

C'est là qu'intervient la grande remise en place opérée par

Kant. En effet la structure interne de l'Anthropologie et la

question qui, secrètement, l'anime ont la même forme

que l'interrogation critique elle-même; il y a en elle une

prétention à connaître les possibilités et les limites de la

connaissance; elle mime de l'extérieur et dans les gestes

de l'empiricité le mouvement d'une Critique; et ce qu'il y

a de donné en elle semble pouvoir fonctionner comme un

a priori. Longtemps, les «anthropologues» ont cru pouvoir

accueillir sans difficulté, ni retournement de pensée, la

leçon kantienne : Schmid, Hufeland, Ith ne sont que les

premiers témoins d'une liste qui pourrait être longue et

ne s'arrêterait pas au XVIIIe siècle. Il faut même la

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résistible naïveté de nos contemporains pour célébrer

dans l'Anthropologie le dépassement enfin assuré des

dissociations où se serait perdue la sécheresse du

rationalisme, — âme et corps, sujet et objet. Alors que

dans la merveille de cette réconciliation, ils ne

rencontrent que le miracle, peu étonnant de leur surdité

à l'équivoque grammaticale de la Menschenkenntniss.

En fait, au moment où on croit faire valoir la pensée

critique au niveau d'une connaissance positive, on oublie

ce qu'il y avait d'essentiel dans la leçon laissée par Kant.

La difficulté à situer l'Anthropologie par rapport à

l'ensemble critique, aurait dû suffire à indiquer que cette

leçon n'est pas simple. Elle dit, en tous cas, cette leçon,

que l'empiricité de l'Anthropologie ne peut pas se fonder

sur elle-même; qu'elle est possible seulement à titre de

répétition de la Critique; qu'elle ne peut donc envelopper

la Critique; mais qu'elle ne saurait manquer de s'y référer;

et que si elle en figure comme l'analogon empirique et

extérieur c'est dans la mesure où elle repose sur des

structures de l'a priori déjà nommées et mises à jour. La

finitude, dans l'organisation générale de la pensée

kantienne, ne peut donc jamais se réfléchir au niveau

d'elle-même; elle ne s'offre à la connaissance et au

discours que d'une manière seconde; mais ce à quoi elle

est contrainte de se référer n'est pas une ontologie de

l'infini; c'est, dans leur organisation d'ensemble, les

conditions a priori de la connaissance. C'est à dire que

l'Anthropologie se trouvera doublement soumise à la

Critique : en tant que connaissance, aux conditions qu'elle

fixe et au domaine d'expérience qu'elle détermine; en

tant qu'exploration de la finitude, aux formes premières

et non dépassables que la Critique en manifeste. Ainsi

comprise la situation de l'Anthropologie n'est pas sans

quelque ressemblance avec celle des Anfangsgründe der

Natur : mettre à jour le système d'articulation entre la

Critique et les formes a priori de la connaissance d'une

part, et d'autre part les principes d'un savoir

empiriquement constitué, et historiquement développé

dans la Critique. Mais sous cette symétrie de surface

règne une profonde dissymétrie : dans les Anfangsgründe,

il est question de la Physique, et d'une science ainsi

constituée dans sa plénitude et sa vérité; dans

l'Anthropologie, il s'agit de la Physis, c'est à dire de cette

couche de connaissance où il est question d'imperfections,

de frontières, et de défaillances : bref, de la négativité

au niveau de la nature. En d'autres termes, de la Critique

aux Anfangsgründe, la continuité est assurée par les

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formes de l'activité symétrique et le champ de vérité

qu'elle fonde et structure; de la Critique à

l'Anthropologie, la continuité est établie par l'insistance

commune des limites, et la rigueur de la finitude qu'elles

indiquent. Les Principes de la Nature se passent de Dieu

et rendent inutile l'hypothèse d'un infini actuel, dont la

Critique a montré la contradiction interne; l'Anthropologie

montre du doigt l'absence de Dieu, et se déploie dans le

vide laissé par cet infini. Là où la nature des corps

physiques dit synthèse, la nature empirique de l'homme

dit limite. Ce caractère réciproque et inverse, cette

symétrie dissymétrique de la synthèse et de la limite sont

sans doute au cœur de la pensée kantienne : c'est d'eux

que la Critique tient ses privilèges à l'égard de toute

connaissance possible.

Il est temps, maintenant, de revenir à notre problème de

départ — cet accompagnement de la Critique par un

enseignement anthropologique, ce monotone contre point

par lequel Kant a doublé l'effort d'une réflexion

transcendantale par une constante accumulation de

connaissances empiriques sur l'homme. Que, durant 25

ans, Kant ait enseigné l'Anthropologie, tient à autre chose

sans doute qu'aux exigences de sa vie universitaire; cette

obstination est liée à la structure même du problème

kantien : comment penser, analyser, justifier et fonder la

finitude, dans une réflexion qui ne passe pas par une

ontologie de l'infini, et ne s'excuse pas sur une philosophie

de l'absolu? Question qui est effectivement à l'œuvre dans

l'Anthropologie, mais qui ne peut pas prendre en elle ses

dimensions véritables, puisqu'elle ne peut être réfléchie

pour elle-même dans une pensée empirique. Là réside le

caractère marginal de l'Anthropologie par rapport à

l'entreprise kantienne : elle est à la fois l'essentiel et

l'inessentiel, — cette bordure constante par rapport à

laquelle le centre est toujours décalé, mais qui sans cesse

renvoie à lui et l'interroge. On peut dire que le

mouvement critique s'est dégagé de la structure

anthropologique : à la fois parce que celle-ci le dessinait

de l'extérieur, et parce qu'il ne prendrait sa valeur qu'en

se libérant d'elle, en se retournant contre elle, et, par là,

en la fondant. La configuration épistémologique propre à

l'Anthropologie mimait la Critique; mais il s'agissait de

n'être pas pris par ce prestige, et de restituer à cette

ressemblance un ordre rationnel. Cet ordre consistait à

faire graviter l'Anthropologie autour de la Critique. Et cet

ordre rétabli était pour l'Anthropologie la forme

authentique de sa libération, la mise à jour de son

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véritable sens: elle pouvait apparaître alors comme ce en

quoi s'annonçait le passage de l'a priori au fondamental,

de la pensée critique à la philosophie transcendantale.

On voit dans quel réseau de contre sens et d'illusions

l'Anthropologie et la philosophie contemporaine se sont

engagées l'une à l'égard de l'autre. On a voulu faire valoir

l'Anthropologie comme Critique, comme une critique

libérée des préjugés et du poids inerte de l'a priori; alors

qu'elle ne peut donner accès à la région du fondamental

que si elle demeure dans l'obédience d'une Critique. On a

voulu en faire (ce qui n'est qu'une autre modalité du

même oubli de la Critique) le champ de positivité où

toutes les sciences humaines trouvent leur fondement, et

leur possibilité; alors qu'en fait, elle ne peut parler que le

langage de la limite et de la négativité : elle ne doit avoir

pour sens que de transmettre de la vigueur critique à la

fondation transcendantale la préséance de la finitude. Au

nom de ce qu'est, c'est à dire de ce que doit être selon

son essence l'Anthropologie dans le tout du champ

philosophique, il faut récuser toutes ces «anthropologies

philosophiques» qui se donnent comme accès naturel au

fondamental; et toutes ces philosophies dont le point de

départ et l'horizon concret sont définis par une certaine

réflexion anthropologique sur l'homme. Ici et là joue une

«illusion» qui est propre à la philosophie occidentale

depuis Kant. Elle fait équilibre, dans sa forme

anthropologique, à l'illusion transcendantale que recelait

la métaphysique prékantienne. C'est par symétrie et en s'y

référant comme un fil directeur qu'on peut comprendre

en quoi consiste cette illusion anthropologique.

C'est qu'en effet l'une dérive historiquement de l'autre, ou

plutôt c'est par un glissement de sens dans la critique

kantienne de l'illusion transcendantale que l'illusion

anthropologique a pu naître. Le caractère nécessaire de

l'apparence transcendantale a été de plus en plus souvent

interprété non pas comme une structure de la vérité, du

phénomène et de l'expérience, mais comme un des

stigmates concrets de la finitude. Ce que Kant désignait

en elle, d'une manière bien ambiguë, comme «naturel», a

été oublié comme forme fondamentale du rapport à

l'objet et récupéré comme «nature» de la nature

humaine. L'illusion, par conséquent, au lieu d'être définie

par le mouvement qui la critiquait dans une réflexion sur

la connaissance, était référée à un niveau antérieur où

elle apparaissait à la fois dédoublée et fondée : elle

devenait vérité de la vérité, — ce à partir de quoi la

vérité est toujours là et jamais donnée; elle devenait

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ainsi la raison d'être et la source de la critique, le point

d'origine de ce mouvement par lequel l'homme perd la

vérité et sans cesse se trouve rappelé par elle. Cette

illusion définie maintenant comme finitude devenait par

excellence la retraite de la vérité : ce en quoi elle se

cache et ce en quoi, toujours on peut la retrouver.

C'est en ceci que l'illusion anthropologique est, d'un point

de vue structural, comme l'envers, l'image en miroir de

l'illusion transcendantale. Celle-ci consistait à appliquer

les principes de l'entendement hors des limites de

l'expérience, et donc à admettre un infini actuel dans le

champ de la connaissance possible, par une sorte de

transgression spontanée. Or l'illusion anthropologique

réside dans une régression réflexive qui doit rendre

compte de cette transgression. La finitude n'est jamais

dépassée que dans la mesure où elle est autre chose

qu'elle même et où elle repose sur un en deçà où elle

trouve sa source; cet en deçà, c'est elle-même, mais

repliée du champ de l'expérience où elle s'éprouve sur la

région de l'originaire où elle se fonde. Le problème de la

finitude est passé d'une interrogation sur la limite et la

transgression à une interrogation sur le retour à soi; d'une

problématique de la vérité à une problématique du même

et de l'autre. Elle est entrée dans le domaine de

l'aliénation.

Et le paradoxe est en ceci : en s'affranchissant d'une

critique préalable de la connaissance et d'une question

première sur le rapport à l'objet, la philosophie ne s'est

pas libérée de la subjectivité comme thèse fondamentale

et point de départ de sa réflexion. Elle s'y est au contraire

enfermée en se la donnant épaissie, hypostasiée close

dans l'indépassable structure du «menschliches Wesen»,

en quoi veille et se recueille silencieusement cette vérité

exténuée qu'est la vérité de la vérité. On peut alors

comprendre pourquoi en un seul mouvement

caractéristique de la réflexion à notre époque, toute

connaissance de l'homme se donne comme dialectisée

d'entrée de jeu ou dialectisable de plein droit, — portant

en tous cas un sens où il est question du retour à

l'originaire, à l'authentique, à l'activité fondatrice, à ce

par quoi il y a au monde des significations; et toute

philosophie se donne comme pouvant communiquer avec

les sciences de l'homme ou les réflexions empiriques sur

l'homme sans détour par une critique, une épistémologie

ou une théorie de la connaissance. L'Anthropologie est ce

chemin secret, qui, vers les fondations de notre savoir,

relie par une médiation non réfléchie l'expérience de

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l'homme et la philosophie. Les valeurs insidieuses de la

question : Was ist der Mensch? sont responsables de ce

champ homogène, déstructuré, indéfiniment réversible où

l'homme donne sa vérité comme âme de la vérité. Les

notions polymorphes de «sens», de «structure», de

«genèse», — quelle que soit la valeur qu'elles pourraient

avoir et qu'il serait juste de leur restituer dans une

pensée rigoureuse, — n'indiquent pour l'instant que la

confusion du domaine où elles prennent leur rôle de

communication. Qu'elles circulent indifféremment dans

toutes les sciences humaines et dans la philosophie ne

fonde pas un droit à penser comme d'un seul tenant celle-

ci et celle-là, mais signale seulement l'incapacité où nous

sommes d'exercer contre cette illusion anthropologique

une vraie critique.

Et pourtant de cette critique nous avons reçu le modèle

depuis plus d'un demi-siècle.

L'entreprise nietzschéenne pourrait être entendue comme

point d'arrêt enfin donné à la prolifération de

l'interrogation sur l'homme. La mort de Dieu n'est-elle pas

en effet manifestée dans un geste doublement meurtrier

qui, en mettant un terme à l'absolu, est en même temps

assassin de l'homme lui-même. Car l'homme, dans sa

finitude, n'est pas séparable de l'infini dont il est à la fois

la négation et le héraut; c'est dans la mort de l'homme

que s'accomplit la mort de Dieu. N'est-il pas possible de

concevoir une critique de la finitude qui serait libératrice

aussi bien par rapport à l'homme que par rapport à l'infini,

et qui montrerait que la finitude n'est pas terme, mais

cette courbure et ce nœud du temps où la fin est

commencement?

La trajectoire de la question : Was ist der Mensch? dans le

champ de la philosophie s'achève dans la réponse qui la

récuse et la désarme : der Übermensch.

(fin)

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*This unpublished text by Foucault on Kant was published

and translated for generation-online and as part of the

translator's PhD thesis

A critical ontology of the present

. Here

is the

English

translation and some

notes

on the text.

Thanks

to Marcio Miotto for first making the original available

on his

website

and to Colin Gordon for checking the

transcript.

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Foucault's Commentaire of Kant's Anthropology

¦¦

¦¦

¦¦

¦¦

Introduction to Kant's Anthropology from a

pragmatic point of view

Michel Foucault

Translated by Arianna Bove

Translator's Note

The following text is my translation of Michel Foucault’s

Complementary Dissertation on Kant’s Anthropology from

a pragmatic point of view, presented as his doctoral

research in 1961. The original version in French can be

found

here.

Foucault translated Kant’s text into French

for Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin (Paris: 1964), but this

Introduction/Commentary was never published. It is now

held at the Foucault Archive in Paris at the at the Institut

de mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC {D60/

D61}). A much shorter version of this text, which merely

presents the intellectual context in which Kant elaborated

his views on anthropology, appeared as the Introduction

to Foucault's published translation in the Vrin edition of

Kant's Anthropology. In my view, the importance of the
text that follows has been largely

underestimated. It is

not only important as a scholarly appreciation of Kant’s

oeuvre as a whole, but also because it outlines an explicit

relation between what would later become Foucault's own

main concerns and the history of philosophy as innovated

by Kant. The notion of technology, the role of language in

an anthropological study of subjectivity, and the warnings

against the dangers of a metaphysical treatment of

epistemology are here taken up by Foucault through an

exegesis and critical interpretation of Kant’s text. Of

great interest is Foucault's view on the problematic

relation between inner perception - Gemut- (as an

empirical mode of knowledge) and being in the world,

especially where this relation results into a philosophy of

consciousness. Kant had asked: how can psychology help

our pragmatic knowledge of man as world citizen and

‘free handler of being’? In reiterating the question,

Foucault goes to the heart of the debate on structuralist

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anthropology and the status of the human sciences in

relation to finitude, which he will further develop in The

Order of Things, but also engages with the fallacy of

epistemology as metaphysics. Following Kant’s concern as

expressed in the Critique of Pure Reason, Foucault

questions whether psychology has come to supplant

metaphysics in man-centred reasoning. Furthermore,

through this text he raises the question of what the

relation between psychology and anthropology is, and

how they are affected by Time. Foucault compares the

Critique and the Anthropology to find that whilst the

former relates time to the subject, the latter relates time

to Kunst as usage, art, we would say technology. Clearly,

in The Order of Things Foucault will further use the

former relation to question how the identity of self-

consciousness is conceivable in the presence of time, to

conclude that ‘the original is not the truly primitive, but

the truly temporal’, where - in time - truth and freedom

belong to one another. But in my view, the analysis of the

second relation, that of time to Kunst, represents an

equally central import to philosophical reflection, which

Foucault kept developing throughout his oeuvre, with a

rigour and depth that Kant’s Anthropology could not

equal, for, as Foucault argues, that would have

endangered his foundation of metaphysics in the

Critiques.

Foucault also takes further a suggestion he finds in the

Anthropology concerning how an empirical knowledge of

man is tied up with language. The conclusion he draws

from Kant’s text is that man is a world citizen in so far as

he speaks. For Foucault and Kant, anthropology is

therefore concerned neither with the human animal nor

with self-consciousness, but with Menschenwesen, the

questioning of man’s limits in knowledge and concrete

existence. [

]

This translation is incomplete and based on a manuscript

which at times resulted unclear. Only the first few pages

of the original text are missing, where Foucault

historically contextualises Kant's text. They will be

uploaded eventually, but I have given priority to what was

missing from the published introduction, and what was of

more philosophical relevance. The paragraph headings are

mine, as are the translations of German terms. The

French original version of the Commentaire can be found

here

(thanks to Marcio Miotto who made it available and

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Colin Gordon who checked the text). I am currently

working on improving the translation and would welcome

any comments or suggestions (simply write to ari at kein.

org)

Introduction to Kant's Anthropology from a

pragmatic point of view

[…]

This text took shape over a period of twenty five years,

and the only stage available to us, transformed in line

with Kant’s thought as it brings out new formulations, is

the last one. […] Would the archaeology of the text, if it

were possible, allow us to see the birth of ‘homo

criticus’, whose structure would essentially differ from

the man who preceded him? The Critique, with its own

propaedeutic character in philosophy, will play a

constitutive role in the birth and becoming of concrete

forms of human existence.

Comparing what can be apprehended through the texts of

the Anthropology with those of the Critique, one can

hopefully see how Kant’s later works are engaged with

the series of pre-critical researches, with the whole

enterprise of the Critique itself and also with the group of

works which, in the same period, attempted to define a

knowledge specific to man. Paradoxically this triple

engagement makes the Anthropology contemporary to

what precedes the Critique, to what carries it out and

also to what would soon eliminate it.

For this reason, in the analysis of the work it is impossible

to separate the genetic perspective from the structural

method: in its own space, in its final presence and in the

equilibrium of its elements we are dealing here with a

text that is contemporaneous to all of the movement that

encloses it.

The structure of the relations of the Anthropology to the

Critique alone will allow us, if correctly defined, to

decipher the genesis that moves towards this last

equilibrium- or last but one - if it is true that the Opus

Postumum already walks the first steps on the finally

rejoined soil of transcendental philosophy.

In 1797, Kant was working on The Conflict of the

Faculties. One can see similarities in the analysis of

temperament between the Observations on Beauty and

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the Sublime, dated 1764, and the Anthropology, dated

1798. The perspective in the two works is without doubt

entirely different. In the Observations it is organised

around moral sentiments –their classification being seen

then as a given, a matter of fact - whilst the description

in the Anthropology is ordered by a sort of deduction of

the temperaments, starting with the tension and the

release [détente] of activity and of feeling. However the

content is amazingly similar when it comes to expressions

and choice of words.

Beilegung [insertion/settlement]

Beck regards Beilegung – the imputation of a

representation – as the determination of the subject to an

object which differs from it and for which it becomes the

element of knowledge [connaissance]. Kant remarks that

representation is not reserved to an object, rather a

relation to something other is devolved to representation

and through the latter this relation becomes

communicable to others.

He also points out that the apprehension of the multiple

and its subsumption under the unity of consciousness is

one and the same thing as the representation of what is

only made possible through this combination. Only from

the perspective of this combination can we communicate

with one another: in other words, the relation to the

object renders representation valid for each and

therefore communicable; this does not prevent the fact

that we have to operate the combination ourselves. The

main themes of the Critique –the relation to the object,

the synthesis of the multiple, the universal validity of

representation- are here strongly grouped around the

problem of communication.

There the subject is not found as determined by the

manner in which it is affected, but rather as determined

within the constitution of the representation ‘wir können

aber nur das verstehen und anderen mitteilen, was wir

selbst machen können’ [we can only understand and

communicate with others, what we ourselves can do].

Inner sense.(1) The apperception on the one hand is

defined, in a sense closer to the Critique, by the

consciousness of the understanding alone. It is not related

to any given object or to any intuitive content: it

concerns nothing but an act of the determining subject

and to this extent it is to be accounted for neither by

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psychology nor by anthropology, but by Logic. Hence

there emerges the great danger evoked by Fichte of the

division of the subject into two forms of subjectivity that

can only communicate with one another within the

disequilibria of the subject-object relation. This is, as

Kant recognises, the ‘great difficulty’: but one must be

careful that the spirit is not a ‘dopplettes Ich’, but a

‘dopplettes Bewusstsein dieses Ich’ [a double

consciousness of these I].

This debate allows one to define the space within which

anthropology in general is possible: that would not be the

region within which the observation of the self arrives to

a subject in itself, nor to the pure ‘I’ of synthesis, but to

a ‘me’ that is object and present solely in its single

phenomenal truth. But this me/object, given to sense in

the form of Time, is not foreign to the determining

subject since it ultimately is nothing but the subject as it

is affected by itself, as an analysis of the concrete forms

of observation of the self. Put together, the unpublished

and the published texts constitute, at two different

levels, the unity of one course that simultaneously

responds to Beck, conjures up the Fichtean danger and

denotes an exteriority, an empty space, as the possible

place for Anthropology. [creux]

The discussions regarding the metaphysics of right. [Kant

and Schutz]

Since the 16th century juridical thought has primarily

been concerned with the definition of the relation of the

individual to the general form of the State, or of the

individual to things within the abstract form of property.

In the second half of the 18th century, the relationship of

belonging amongst individuals themselves in the concrete

and particular form of the couple, the family group, the

household and the home come under question: how can

civil society, which the bourgeoisie presupposes as its own

foundation and justification, particularise itself in these

restricted unities, which do not follow the feudal model,

yet need not dissolve themselves at the moment of its

permanent disappearance?

C. G. Schutz was concerned when seeing that in Kant’s

‘Metaphysics of right’ these relationships were too

faithfully modelled on the major forms of right [droit]

over things. Kant doesn’t give them a place in the section

entitled: ‘Von dem auf dingliche Art persönlichen Recht’,

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which is divided into three domains, following the three

essential forms of acquisition - Erwirbt [to have gained]:

namely man acquires woman, couple acquires children,

family acquires domestics.

Schutz refuses to believe that in the matrimonial relation

‘the woman becomes a man’s thing’. The form of

satisfaction that, in the order of marriage, a man can get

out of a woman does not reduce a woman to a state also

primitively simple; the reification of another has no truth

outside of cannibalism: marriage and rights that are given

do not turn people into ‘res fungibiles’.

In brief, the problem that Schutz poses is brought back to

the constitution of this concrete islet of bourgeois society

for which neither the right of the peoples nor the right of

things can account for: a spontaneous synthesis that is not

exhaustible by contract theory, nor by the analysis of

appropriation, fringes on the law where domination is

neither sovereignty nor property.

In his protestation Schutz confuses the moral with the

juridical point of view, the human being with the subject

of the law: a distinction that is re-established, in its

rigour, in Kant’s response. But Schutz’s objection goes to

the very heart of the anthropological preoccupation; that

is a certain point of convergence and of divergence of the

law and morality. The Anthropology is pragmatic in the

sense that it does not envisage man as belonging to the

moral city of spirits (that would be named practical), nor

to the civil society of the subjects of law (that would be

named juridical); he is considered as a ‘citizen of the

world’, which means as a member of the concrete

universal within which the subject of law, determined by

judicial rules and subjected to them, and is at the same

time a human being who in his freedom carries his

universal moral law. To be a citizen of the world is to

belong to a certain region that is as concrete as an

ensemble of precise judicial rules that are as universal as

the moral law. To say that an anthropology is pragmatic

and to say that it envisages man as a citizen of the world

amounts to saying the same thing. Within these conditions

it will be the task of the Anthropology to show how a legal

relation that is of the order of possession, that is to say a

jus rerum, can preserve the moral nucleus of the person

taken as subject of freedom without compromising it at

the same time.

…paradox…

The right to be jealous up to the point of murdering is a

recognition of the moral freedom of the woman; the first

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revendication of this freedom is to escape from jealousy,

and to feel that one is more than a thing in provoking a

jealousy that will remain impotent before the

irrepressible exercise of this freedom; then there emerges

the right to monogamy, gallantry, as the point of

equilibrium between the jus rerum that makes the woman

her husband’s thing and of his morality that recognises in

each person a subject of freedom.

Moreover, a point of equilibrium does not mean a point of

arrival nor an equitable sharing, for gallantry is nothing

but an entangling of pretentiousness: the man’s

pretension to reduce the freedom of the woman in the

marriage that he hopes for; the woman’s pretension to

exercise, in spite of marriage, her sovereignty over man.

Thus, a whole network is created where neither right nor

morality are ever given in their pure state; a network

where they, intertwined, offer to human action its space

of playing; its concrete latitude.

This is neither the level of foundational freedom nor the

level of the rules of right. It is the appearance of a

certain pragmatic freedom, where it is a question of

pretension of cunnings, of fishy intentions, of

dissimulations, of undisclosed efforts to influence, of

compromises and waiting.

Without doubt, there is a whole host of things that Kant

makes allusions to within the preface of the

Anthropology. Here his declared objective is to determine

what makes man, -or what he can and should do of

himself as ‘freihandelndes Wesen’ [free handling of

being]: an exchange of freedom with itself and the

manipulation of the compromises of exchange can never

be exhausted within the clarity of recognition pure and

simple. By treating man as a ‘freihandelndes Wesen’ the

Anthropology brings out a whole area of ‘free-exchange’

where man lets his freedoms circulate as if from one hand

to another: man socialises with others for a deaf and

uninterrupted commerce that provides him with a

residence on the whole surface of the world.

World Citizen.

Dietetics.

See the third part of the Conflict of the Faculties: the

research done by Hufeland helps Kant solve one of the

difficulties that had not ceased to weigh on the

Anthropology: how to articulate an analysis of what Homo

Natura is on the basis of a definition of man as subject of

liberty.

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1. Anthropological thought will not claim to provide the

definition of a human Wesen in naturalistic terms: Wir

untersuchen hier den Menschen nicht nach dem was er

natürlicher Weise IST’, [here we will examine man not as

a natural being] as the Kollegenwurfe of 1770-80 had

already stated. But the Anthropology of 1798 turns this

decision into a constant method: in a resolute desire to

follow a path where man is never expected to find himself

absolutely within a truth of nature.

The original meaning of the Anthropology is to be

Erforschung [tr.: examination/enquiry]: an exploration,

an ensemble never offered in its totality, never in peace

with itself because given within a movement where

freedom and nature are entangled within Gebrauch, of

which our word of usage covers some of the senses.

2. Hence, not to study memory, but the way one makes

use of it. Not to describe what man is, but what he can

make of himself. This theme has been without a doubt, at

the origin, the very nucleus of anthropological reflection

and the indication of its singularity. Such was the

programme defined by the Kollegenwurfe. In 1798, it

appears modified twice. The Anthropology will not try to

know ‘how one can use man’ but ‘what one can expect

from him’. On the other hand, it will determine what man

‘can and should’ do with himself. This means that the

usage is taken out of the level of technical actuality and

placed within a double system: of obligation affirmed

towards oneself and of respectful distance towards the

others. It is placed within the text of a freedom that one

posits at once as singular and universal.

3. This defines the ‘pragmatic’ character of the

Anthropology: ‘Pragmitisch’, the Kollegentwurfe said, ‘ist

die Erkenntnis von der sich ein allgemeiner Gebrauch in

der Gesellschaft machen lässt’ [is the discovery from the

self of a general usage society]. Then the pragmatic was

not understood as the useful given to the universal. In the

1798 text, it becomes a certain mode of relation between

the Können and the Sollen [can and must/ought]. A

relation that Practical Reason had assured a priori in the

imperative and that the anthropological reflection had

guaranteed in the concrete movement of the daily

exercise: in the Spielen [playing]. This motion of the

Spielen is singularly important: man is the game of

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nature, but he plays this game, and he plays with himself:

and if he comes to be played, like in the illusions of the

senses, it means that he himself has played to be a victim

of the game; whilst it is in his duty [appartient d’être] to

be master of the game, of taking back unto himself the

devises of intention (2). The game then becomes a

‘künstlicher Spiel’ and the appearance in which the game

receives its moral justification. The Anthropology is then

deployed according to this dimension of the human

exercise that feeds on the ambiguity of the Spiel (tr.:

game=toy) and the ambiguity of the Kunst (tr.:

art=artifice).

4. Book of the daily exercise, not of theory and of

‘school’. This opposition is irreducibly organised and

within its lessons of the Anthropology, that are, after all,

a school teaching, form a fundamental tension: the

progress of culture, in which the history of the world is

summed up, constitutes a school that leads itself to the

knowledge of and the practice of the world. The world is

its own school; the anthropological reflection will have

for meaning the placing of man in this constitutive

element. Therefore [anthropological reflection] will be,

together: an analysis of the way in which man acquires

the world (its usage, its knowledge [connaissance]), that

means, how he can constitute himself in it and enter the

game: Kittspielen; and synthesis of the prescriptions and

rules that the world imposes upon man, through which he

is formed and that he puts into play to dominate the

game: das Sollverstehen.

The Anthropology will not be then a history of the

culture, or an analysis of its forms in succession; but a

practice at once immediate and imperative of a fully

given culture. It teaches man to recognise in his own

culture the school of the world. It is not the case that, in

certain ways like a parent with his hilheim Meister, it

reveals, also, that the world is a school. But what

Goethe’s text and all the Bildungsromane say for the

course of history, the Anthropology repeats ad infinitum

within the present form, imperious, always restarting

from the daily usage. Time there reigns, but within the

synthesis of the present.

Here are some elements, at the same level as the

Anthropology, that are suggestive of the line of slope that

is appropriate to it. At the beginning, as the

Kollegenwurfe testify, the Anthropology deploys itself in

the accepted division of nature and man, of freedom and

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utility and of school and world. Its equilibrium is at the

moment found in their admitted limits, without them

being ever posed into a question, even less so at the

anthropological level.

It explores a region where freedom and utility are already

tied within the reciprocity of usage; where the ability and

the duty belong to the unity of a game that measures one

against the other; and where the world becomes school

within the prescriptions of a culture. We touch upon the

essential: Man, in the Anthropology, is neither homo

natura nor the subject of freedom; he is given within the

already operating syntheses of his relation with the world.

But if the discourse of the Anthropology has remained

foreign to the work and the word of the Critique, will the

1798 text be able to say what was not said in the

Kollegenwurfe?

Something of the knowledge of the world is then wrapped

with this knowledge of man that is Anthropology. The

preface to the text of 1798 assigns itself as its object man

as resident in the world, the Weltbürger. The

Anthropology, at least until the last page, hardly ever

seems to take as privileged theme the examining of man

as inhabitant of the world: of man establishing, through

the cosmos, the laws and the duties, the reciprocities and

the limits and exchanges of citizenship. And this lacuna is

even more perceptible in the edited/published text than

in the fragments of the Nachlass. The greater part of the

analyses, and approximately all those of the first part, is

developed, not in the cosmo-political dimension of the

Welt, but in that interior of the Gemüt. In that,

moreover, the Anthropology remains within the same

perspective where Kant has placed it in order to make

emerge, according to an encyclopaedic organisation, the

link to the three Critiques. If it is true that the Gemüt is

the question of the Anthropology or the primary element

of its exploration, one has grounds to pose a certain

number of questions:

How a study of Gemüt allows knowledge of man as citizen

of the world.

If it is true that the Anthropology analyses, on one side,

the Gemüt, whose irreducible and fundamental faculties

determine the organisation of the three Critiques, what

then is the relationship of anthropological knowledge to

the critical reflection?

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In what does the investigation of Gemüt and of its

faculties differ from a psychology, be it rational or

empirical?

To this last question, the texts of the Anthropology and of

the Critique of Pure Reason seem to answer directly, even

though they do not provide a complete reply. One knows

the distinction established by the Architectonic between

Rational Psychology and Empirical Psychology. The first

belongs to pure philosophy, hence to metaphysics, and is

thus opposed to rational physics as the object of the inner

senses is to the object of external senses.

With respect to Empirical Psychology, a long tradition has

made it necessary for it to be placed within metaphysics,

and furthermore, the recent failures of metaphysics have

been able to make one believe that the solution of the

insolvable problems is concealed in the psychological

phenomena that pertain to an empirical study of the soul;

and thus psychology has confiscated a discouraged

metaphysics within which it had already taken an

improper place.

An empirical knowledge cannot, in any case, provide the

principles or clarify the fundaments of a knowledge

derived from pure reason and consequently entirely a

priori. Empirical Psychology will then have to be detached

from metaphysics, to which it is foreign. And if such

displacement cannot be made within the immediate, and

given that it is necessary to prepare psychology for its

stay in an empirical science of man within an

Anthropology that will balance the empirical science of

nature, all seems clear in this abstract organisation.

Therefore, the Anthropology, as we can read it, has no

place for any psychology, whatever that would be. It is

given explicitly as a refusal of psychology, in the

exploration of the Gemüt, which does not intend to nor

claim to be knowledge of the Seële [soul]. In what does

this difference consist?

a) From a formal point of view, psychology postulates an

equivalence of inner sense and apperception, without

knowing their fundamental difference, given that

apperception is one of the forms of pure knowledge, -

hence without content, and solely defined by the ‘I

think’ (cogito), whilst the inner sense designates an

empirical mode of knowledge, that we make appear to

ourselves in the ensemble of the phenomena tied to their

subjective condition of time.

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b) From the point of view of the content, psychology

cannot avoid being trapped in the interrogation of change

and identity: does the soul remain itself within the

incessant modification of time? Do the conditions of

experience that it makes of itself, and the necessarily

temporal progress of phenomena need to be considered

themselves as affectations of the soul that exhausts itself

in the phenomenal dispersion, or does the soul retire on

the contrary in the non-empirical solidity of the

substance? All these questions show, in different light, the

confusion between the soul, metaphysical notion of a

simple and immaterial substance, the I think, that is the

pure form, and the ensemble of phenomena that appear

to the inner sense.

These texts of the Anthropology are situated in the direct

obedience to the Transcendental Dialectic. What they

denounce is precisely the ‘inevitable illusion’ that the

paralogisms account for: we make use of simple

representation of the I, that is devoid of any content, in

order to define this particular object that is the soul.

However, it is necessary to point out that the paralogisms

are neither concerned with rational psychology, nor with

empirical, and that they leave open the possibility of a

‘sort of psychology of inner sense’ the contents of which

are dependent on the conditions of all possible

experience. On the other hand, rational psychology can

and should subsist as a discipline, allowing escaping both

materialism and spiritualism, and marking an avoidance of

this speculation ‘zum fruchtbaren praktischen

Gebrauch’ [faisant sign de nous détourner de cette

spéculation]. Consequently, and despite the fact that it

seems to be excluding all forms of possible psychology,

the Anthropology does not put out of the way what had

already been denounced in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Without saying it, it is towards rational psychology that it

takes its distance.

In so far as it leaves two options open, one empirical

psychology and one discipline gone back towards the

practical usage – what are its relations to the

Anthropology?

…

Firstly, nothing in the text of the Anthropology makes one

suppose that an empirical psychology or a rational

psychology as a discipline can be founded elsewhere, at

the outer margins or in the proximity of the Anthropology

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itself: there is no indication of a close exteriority.

But inversely, no element, no section, no chapter of the

Anthropology is given as a discipline planned by the

Dialectic or as this empirical psychology perceived on top

of the Methodology.

Does this lead to the conclusion that the Anthropology,

for a sliding of perspectives, has become itself, at once

this transcendental discipline and this empirical

knowledge? Or on the contrary has it rendered/made

them forever impracticable at the outset?

Is it the Gemüt itself that needs to be interrogated now,

whether it is or not in the order of psychology?

It is not Seële, but on the other hand, it is and it is not

Geist. To be discrete, the presence of Geist in the

Anthropology is no less decisive. This definition is truly

brief and does not seem to promise much: ‘Geist ist das

belebende Prinzip im Neuschen’, a banal sentence, and

one that maintains in its triviality this example of daily

language.

We are dealing with a Prinzip [principle]. Neither with a

Vermogen [faculty] such as memory, attention or

knowledge (connaissance) in general nor with one of the

forces (Krafte) mentioned in the Introduction to the

Critique of Judgement. Not even, finally, with a simple

representation such as the ‘pure I’ of the first Critique.

Therefore, a principle: but is it determining or regulative?

Neither one nor the other, if one has to take seriously this

‘invigoration’ (vivification) that he partakes in.

In the Gemüt, in the course in which it [tr.: the principle]

is given to experience or within its virtual totality- does

one have something that relates it to life and that

pertains to the presence of the Geist? And here a new

dimension opens up: Gemüt is not merely organised and

equipped with powers and faculties that share in its

domain; the great tripartite structure in which the

Introduction to the Critique of judgement seems to

provide the definitive formulation, cannot be but what, of

the Gemüt, can appear within experience. Like all living

beings, its duration does not scatter within an indifferent

dispersion; it has an oriented course, something in it that

projects it, without stopping it, towards a virtual totality.

Nothing is clearly indicated to us as to what this principle

itself is. But what we can take hold of, is the reason why

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this invigoration takes place, the movement through

which the Geist gives to the spirit the figure of life.

“Durch Ideen” [through ideas], the text says. What does

this mean? In what can “a necessary concept of reason, to

which no object of correspondence is given in

sensibility” (Cassirer) give life to the spirit?

Here one must avoid a counter-sense (paradox). One

could believe that Gemüt, within this temporal dispersion

that is originary to it, proceeds towards a totalisation that

is actualised through and by the Geist. The Gemüt would

owe its life to this distant, to this inaccessible, but

efficacious presence. But if this had been the case, the

Geist would be defined to enter the game as a regulative

principle, and not as an invigorating one. On the other

hand, all the curve of the Anthropology is not oriented

towards the theme of man as inhabitant and resident of

the world, with his duties and rights, in this cosmopolitan

city; but towards the theme of a Geist that little by little

invests man, and the world with him, of an imperious

spiritual sovereignty. Then one cannot say that it is the

idea of Geist to ensure the regulation of the empirical

diversity of Gemüt, to promise, without respite to its

duration, an impossible achievement.

Hence the “durch Ideen” that we inhabit has a different

meaning. The important paragraph of the Critique

entitled: “Of the ultimate end of the pure use of reason”

allows one to apperceive the organising role of ideas

within the concrete life of the spirit (3). The fact is that

the Idea liberated of its transcendental usage and of the

illusions that it cannot help originating, has its meaning

within the plenitude of experience: it [the idea]

anticipates a scheme that is not constitutive, but opens

the possibility of objects.

1) It doesn’t have to reveal the nature of things in an

ostensive movement, but it indicates in advance how to

research such nature.

2) In indicating finally that the access to the end of the

universe lies beyond the horizon of knowledge

(connaissance), it engages empirical reason within the

task of an infinite labour.

3) In other words, since ideas receive from experience

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itself their own domain of application, they make the

spirit enter the mobility of the infinite, give themselves

continuously to ‘the movement in order to go further’

without however losing themselves in the insurmountable

horizon of this dispersion. Then the empirical reason

never dozes off on the given, and the idea, in the

sociability/sociable to the infinite refused to it, can live

within the element of the possible.

Such is the function of the Geist: not to organise the inner

sense Gemüt in order to make it a living being, or the

analogous of organic life, or even the life of the Absolute

itself; but to vivify it, to give birth within the passivity of

the Gemüt, which is that of empirical determination, to

the swarming movement of ideas, these multiple

structures of a totality in becoming, that are made and

remade like as many particles that live and die in the

spirit. In this way the Gemüt is not simply “that which is”,

but “that which it makes of itself”. And is this not

precisely the field that the Anthropology ascribes to its

investigation? To which it suffices to add that what Gemüt

has to make of itself is “the biggest possible empirical

usage of reason”, a use that will only be the greatest

possible, through (durch) the Idea.

The movement that, in the Critique, gives rise to the

transcendental mirage is that which in the Anthropology

makes pursue the empirical and concrete path of the

inner sense (Gemüt).

Consequences:

A. An Anthropology is only possible in so far as the Gemüt

is not fixed to the passivity of its phenomenal

(phenomenic) determinations, but rather it (the Gemüt) is

animated by the labour of ideas at the level of the field

of experience. The Geist then will be the principle, within

the Gemüt, of dialectics de-dialecticised, non–

transcendental, turned towards the domain of experience

and being one with the very game of phenomena. It is the

Geist that opens to the Gemüt the freedom of the

possible, the uprooting (arrache) of its determinations

and gives it a future that it does not owe to anything but

itself.

B. One understands that, basically, the Anthropology has

rendered impossible an empirical psychology and a

knowledge of the spirit completely developed at the level

of nature. It will always only be able to return to a drowsy

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spirit, inert, dead and without its ‘belebendes Prinzip’.

This will be a ‘psychology’ minus life. Witness the preface

to the text of 1798. The possibility of a non-pragmatic

anthropology is recognised in theory and within a general

system of the knowledge of man. But indicated on

grounds of symmetry in the structures, it is challenged as

content of knowledge: the study of memory as a simple

natural fact is not only useless, but also impossible: ‘all

theoretical reasoning on this subject is in vain.' (4)

The presence of the Geist, and with it, of this dimension

of the liberty and of the totality that transcends the

Gemüt, is such that there can be no truthful anthropology

that is not pragmatic, each fact is then taken within the

open system of Können and of Sollen. And Kant finds no

reason to write of any other [system].

C. Within these conditions, doesn’t the Geist deal with

this enigmatic ‘nature of our reason’ and then with the

question of the Dialectics and of the Methodology of Pure

Reason?

This is the disconcerting notion that seems to suddenly

refer the Critique, once reached its apex, towards an

empirical region, towards a domain of facts where man

will be doomed to a very original passivity [longe]; will be

given all of a sudden to the transcendental; and the

conditions of experience will be related finally to the

primary inertia of a Nature. But does this ‘nature of

reason’ here play the same role as the nature of human

understanding in Hume: of primary explication and final

reduction? For the moment let us just point out an

analogy of structure between this ‘nature’ that pushes

reason to leave ‘an empirical usage’ in favour of ‘ a pure

usage’, without however containing in itself (is it not pure

and simple nature?), ‘illusions of originary prestige’, and

the concrete life of the spirit such as it is described in the

Anthropology: this too is animated by a spontaneous

movement that exposes it ceaselessly to the danger of

being played within its own game, but that deploys itself

always within an initial innocence. One and the other are

always ready to lose themselves, to escape from

themselves, but for all that, in their very movement,

[they also are] ‘the supreme tribunal of all rights and of

all pretensions’.

D. If this analogy is founded, one could ask whether the

Geist, which is designated at the margins of the

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anthropological reflection, is not an element secretly

indispensable to the structure of Kantian thought:

something that will be the nucleus of pure reason, the un-

rootable origin of its transcendental illusions, the

infallible judge of its return to its legitimate patria, the

principle of its movement within the field of the

empirical, where the faces of truth arise tirelessly. The

Geist will be this original fact that, in its transcendental

version, entails that the infinite is never there, but

always in an essential withdrawal, and in its empirical

version, that the infinite animates therefore the

movement towards truth and the inexhaustible succession

of its forms.

The Geist is the root of the possibility of knowledge.

And, for knowledge itself, it is the inextricable presence

and absence of the figures of knowledge: it is this

withdrawal, this invisible and ‘visible réserve’ within the

inaccessible distance of which knowing and takes place

and acquires positivity. [The nature of] its being is of a

not being there, designating, in itself, the locus of truth.

This original fact hangs over its structure unique and

sovereign, the necessity of the Critique and the possibility

of the Anthropology.

What relations authorize within these two forms of

reflection this radical element that seems their common

being? To be honest the difference of level between the

Critique and the Anthropology is such that it discourages,

at the beginning, the undertaking of the establishment of

a structural comparison of one with the other. As a

collection of empirical observations, the Anthropology has

no “contact” with a reflection on the conditions of

experience. And therefore, this essential difference is not

of the kind/order of a non-relation. A certain crossing

analogy lets one half-see in the Anthropology like a

(photo) negative of the Critique.

a) The relations of the synthesis and of the given are

presented in the Anthropology alongside the universal

image of what they are within the Critique. Take

subjectivity, for instance. On this point, the

anthropological analysis has hesitated for a long time. The

texts of the period between 1770 and 1780 link the

expression of the ‘I’ to the possibility of being an object

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for itself. But it is not clearly decided whether the root of

this possibility is the ‘I’ itself, or the objectifying it

allows. The Critique will take that decision: The ‘I’ can

never be object, but only form of the synthesis. Or in the

text of 1798, the ‘I’ is not considered in its fundamental

synthetic function, without for all that finding again a

simple object status. It appears and it suddenly fixes

itself in a figure that will remain unchanging in the field

experience. This incidence of the spoken ‘I’ marks the

passage of feeling to thought -from Fuhlen [feeling] to

Denken [thinking]- without being either the real agent or

the simple coming to consciousness of this passage, it is

the empirical and manifest form within which the

synthetic activity of the ‘I’ appears as a figure already

synthesized, as structure inextricably primary and

secondary: it is not given to man to enter the game, in a

sort of a priori of existence (elle n’est pas donneé

d’entrée de jeu á l’homme, dans une sorte d’a priori

d’existence); but when [the I] appears, it inserts itself in

the multiplicity of a temporal sensibility, it offers itself as

already there, as the irreducible foundation/bottom of a

thought that cannot operate but this figure of already

constituted experience: it is within this ‘I’ that the

subject will come to recognize its own passage and the

synthesis of its identity. In other words, what is an a

priori of knowledge from the point of view of the Critique

is not immediately transposed in the anthropological

reflection as an a priori of existence, but appears within

the density of a becoming where its sudden emergence

takes infallibly, in retrospect, the meaning of the already-

there. The structure is inverted by the original dispersion

of the given. According to the anthropological

perspective, the given is not in fact ever offered

according to an inert multiplicity indicative in an absolute

fashion of an originary passivity and calling on its diverse

forms the synthetic activity of conscience. The dispersion

of the given is always already reduced in the

anthropology, secretly dominated by a whole series of

syntheses carried out apart from the visible workings of

conscience: it is the unconscious synthesis of the

elements of perception and of obscure representations

that even the light of understanding always to dissociate,

that are the schema of exploration that trace, within

space, the kind of insular syntheses; that are in sensitivity

the reorganisations that allow for the relation of one

sense to another; that are finally the reinforcements and

the weakening in the sensible effects that anticipate, as

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spontaneously on the voluntary synthesis of attention.

Thus what the Critique welcomes as the infinitely thin

surface of a multiple that has nothing in common with it

apart from being originally given is lightened, for the

Anthropology, by an unexpected depth: already grouped

and organised, having received the provisional or solid

figures of the synthesis. What is for knowledge the merely

given, is not offered as such in concrete existence. For an

Anthropology, passivity that is absolutely originary is

never there [does not exist]. Thus the relation between

the given and the a priori takes on, in the Anthropology,

an inverted structure with respect to that which has been

employed in the Critique. The a priori in the order of

knowledge, becomes, in the order of concrete existence,

an originary that is not chronologically primary, but

which, as soon as it appears in the succession of figures of

the synthesis, reveals itself as already there; on the other

hand, what is given is lightened, in the reflection on

concrete existence, by soft lights that give the depth of

the already operated.

b) The Anthropology follows the division of the faculties –

Vermogen- that the Critique admits too. However, the

domain that it privileges is not that of where the faculties

and powers positively manifest what they have. On the

contrary, it is the domain where they manifest their

weakness – or at least the dangers/perils where they risk

of losing themselves. What is indicated, more than their

nature or plain forms of their activity, is the movement

for which, to move away from their centre and

justification, they want to alienate themselves in the

illegitimacy. Without doubts the Critique, in its

fundamental project of propaedeutics, intended to

denounce and dismantle the transcendental usage of

reason but with a constant reference to the domain of

positivity of each Vermogen [faculty]. In the

anthropological research each faculty follows a line/track

that is also the path of all possible deviations. Self-

consciousness, for example, is not defined as a form of

experience and condition of limited but founded

knowledge; it appears rather as the always re-emerging

temptation of a polymorphous egoism: the possibility of

saying ‘I’ gives rise, in consciousness, to the prestige of a

‘me good-soul’ (moi bien-aime) that fascinates it, to the

extent that, in a paradoxical return, consciousness will

renounce the language of this first person –as decisive as

to what has been (aussi décisive cependant qu’il ait été) –

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to decline itself in the fiction of a We. The study of

sensibility, whilst reworking the great critical opposition

of Schein [appearance] and Erscheinung [phenomenon],

does not explore what can be held as well-founded in the

phenomenon, but what has something at once fascinating

and precarious within the fragment of appearance, since

the latter veils what it makes shimmer (dangle), and also

comes to transmit what she steals.

The long analysis of deficiencies and diseases of the spirit

follows a brief paragraph on reason; and the increasing

importance given to the considerations on mental

pathology in the notes and projects - up to the developed

text of 1798 – attests to the fact that these reflections on

negativity have been in the line of force of the

anthropological research. [In relation] to the Critique, [an

investigation of what is conditioning in foundational

activity] it represents the investigation of the

unconditioned within the conditioned. In the

anthropological region, there is no synthesis that is not

threatened: the domain of experience is almost emptied

of content by dangers that are not of the order of

arbitrary supersession, but of the collapsing on itself.

Possible experience defines equally well, in its limited

circle, the field of truth and the field of the loss of truth.

c) One detail finally has its importance. All the

Kollegentwurfe and the text published by Starke, however

late, presents two parts as general plan to the

Anthropology: one Elementarlehre and one

Methoderlehre. The text of 1798 offers likewise two

sections; but one is a Didactic, the other a

Characterisation. This change, which occurred without

date in the last years, is all the more surprising since the

content and the ordering seem not to have been modified

at all, the distinction between one doctrine of elements

and one doctrine of method goes hand-in-hand with the

critical research: on the one hand, that which constitutes

the faculty of understanding, and on the other, that

which governs its exercise in the domain of possible

experience.

Apparently, the Anthropology is cased according to the

same model: at the beginning, the different faculties in

the organisation form the totality of the Gemüt:

Elementarlehre; then, the rules of their exercise in the

individual, within a family, inside a people or a race,

internal to humanity: Methoderlehre. But this is no doubt

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a false opening: an adjustment to the norms of the

Critique that would not correspond to the vocation of the

text.

The terms of the Didactic and the Characteristic that

appear in the last stage of reflection, and that substitute

the traditional distinction, are curiously accompanied by

subtitles of which one can hardly see the relation they

have with the title. For the Didactic, [the subtitle] is “on

the art of knowing the interior as well as the exterior of

man”; for the Characteristic, “on how to know the

interior of man [starting] from his exterior”. Is this

change a reorganisation of the whole, a distancing in

relation to the Critique? No, without doubt.

[Rather, it must be] the discovery of what has already

been, obscurely, and prior to all explications, the

thematic of the Anthropology: to know, the immediate

coordination that permits that research in the dimension

of Gemüt does not only open on the interior knowledge of

the self, but also extends beyond itself, and

spontaneously, without passing the limit of extrapolation,

[it also extends] on knowledge of man in the exterior

forms the manifest it.

So much the term Elementarlehre has been imposed by

the symmetry of the Critique, that the analysis of Gemüt

can only be conscious of itself in the space of a research

of “powers”, in the virtuality of Vermogen and at the root

of the possible. Disengaged in its veritable signification,

this exploration knows that in dealing with the interior, it

announces at the same time the exterior: that man does

not dispose of his possibilities without being engaged, at

the same time, in their manifestations.

What the Critique distinguishes as the possible within the

order of conditions (Vermogen [faculty]) and the real

within the order of the constituted (Erscheinung

[phenomenon]) is given by the Anthropology in one

inextricable (insecable) continuity: the secret of Power is

revealed in the luminosity of the Phenomenon, where it

finds at once its truth and the truth of its perversion

(since the use becomes abuse, as in the language in the

first person), and is denounced in its perversion by the

Phenomenon, power is imperially recalled to this radical

truth that binds it to itself in the mode of obligation. This

is what gives each paragraph of the first part this

obscurely tertiary rhythm: Power at the root of its

possibility, Power found and lost, made possible and

betrayed in its Phenomenon, Power imperatively tied to

itself.(5)

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For instance, self-consciousness, egoism, effective

consciousness of representations; or more, the

imagination as power of original ‘invention’, imagination

in the fantastic shipwreck of dreaming, imagination in the

poetry tied to the sign. Or again: the power to desire with

one’s emotions; the false truth of passions; the place of

the supreme good. From Vermogen [faculty as ability/

wealth/potential] to Erscheinung [Phenomenon], the

relation is at once of the order of manifestation, of the

adventure of perdition, and of the ethical connection. It

is precisely where this articulation of Können [be able to]

and Sollen [ought to] resides, as we have seen, that what

is essential to anthropological thought [is found]. The art

of knowing the interior as well as the exterior of man, is

then, in full right, not a theory of elements, but a

Didactic: it does not discover without teaching.

With regards to the Characteristic, it reveals that the

groups of phenomena –the bodies, the couple, race, the

species- are not given once and for all and […] on

themselves, but rather they come back from the

apparently static truth of phenomena to the radical

possibilities that give them meaning and movement;

allowing to go back from the sign to power, ‘das Innere

des Menschen aus dem Ausseren zu erkennen’ [to

recognise the inner of man from its outside].

To the model of the Critique, that has imposed itself for a

long time, follows an articulation that repeats it as a

negation: the theory of the elements becomes

prescription with regard to all the possible phenomena

(what has been properly speaking the end of the

Methodenlehre); and inversely the theory of method

becomes regressive analysis towards the primitive nucleus

of powers (that was the meaning of the Elementarlehre):

a mirroring reproduction.

So simultaneously close and distant are the regions where

the a-priori of knowledge is defined and where the a-

priori of existence is determined. What is enunciated in

the order of conditions appears, in the form of the

original, like same and other.

The relation between the Critique and the

Anthropology: the structure

In so far as this far proximity appears more clearly, the

question becomes more insisting of knowing what relation

is established between the Critique and the Anthropology.

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Two texts are of singular importance: a passage regarding

psychology in the transcendental Methodologie to which

we have already referred; and one very enigmatic

indication that appears in the Logic. (6)

The architectonics of pure reason.(7)

From the point of view of pure philosophy (that wraps the

Critique within the Propaedeutics), no place is made for

the Anthropology. The ‘rational Physiology’ that considers

Nature as Inbegriff aller Gegenstande der sinne knows

nothing but Physics and Rational Psychology. On the other

hand in the vast field of empirical psychology, two

domains balance each other out: that of a Physics and

that of an anthropology that will have to accommodate

(welcome) the more restrained edifice of an empirical

psychology. (8)

With regard to the first, [there is] not the rigorous

symmetry between pure philosophy and empirical

philosophy. The correspondence that goes immediately

for the Physics is not carried out in details.

The Anthropology, unlike Psychology, only appears on the

empirical side; it cannot therefore be regimented or

controlled by the Critique, in so far as the latter concerns

itself with pure knowledge. But more than Newtonian

physics it has no need for a critical reflection in order to

identify and verify itself: the Anthropology, in order to

constitute itself and occupy the place that he had granted

to the Architectonic, will not have resorted to a prior

Critique.

There is not then a possible critical influence on the form

or content of an Anthropology. The contact between one

and the other form of reflection is null. Isn’t all this

negatively further confirmed by the Anthropology itself?

Nowhere is the prior Critique invoked: and if the

correspondence of the two texts is easily visible, it is

never given nor reflected upon as such. It is buried in the

text of the Anthropology where it forms the framework;

and one has to envisage it as a fact, like a structural

given, not as the manifestation of a prior and intentional

ordering.

The Logic.

We know the three fundamental interrogations accounted

for in the transcendental Methodology:

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What can I know? – a speculative question to which the

Critique answers ‘where reason has to limit itself’; what

must I do? – a question that is practical; what can one

hope for? – an interrogation at once theoretical and

practical.

These three questions that hang over and, to a certain

extent, command the organisation of critical thought, can

be found at the beginning of the Logic, but affected by a

decisive modification. A fourth question appears: what is

man? –which only follows on from the first three in order

to take hold of them again in a reference that wraps them

all: because they all have to relate themselves to that

one; as they should all be accounted for by the

Anthropology, the Metaphysics, the Ethics and the

Religion.

Doesn’t this sudden movement that knocks off balance

the three interrogations towards the anthropological

theme betray a rupture in thought?

Philosophieren seems to be able to deploy itself

exhaustively at the level of a knowledge of man; the

largely empirical status that the first Critique assigns to

the Anthropology is, by this very fact, challenged: it is no

longer the last empirical stage of a knowledge organised

philosophically, but the point where philosophical

reflection comes to culminate into an interrogation of the

interrogations themselves.

However, one needs to be careful not to hurry this point,

neither in the denunciation of a so-called rupture

affecting this transcendental resolution of criticism, or in

the discovery of a hypothetical new dimension along

which Kant would approach at last that to which he had

originally been the closest.

And first, what does their ‘relation to the fourth question’

mean for the three? (sich bezeihen auf)

Are we to understand this relation as that of knowledge to

its object, or as that of this same knowledge to the

subject -if it is true as a text of the Logic claims that

knowledge has ‘eine zwiefache Beziehung: erstlich, eine

Beziehung auf das Objekt, zweitens eine Beziehung auf

das Subjekt’? [a twofold relationship: to the object and to

the subject]

In other words, are we to comprehend that in these three

questions, man was obscurely the ‘Gegenstand’ (sensible

concrete object)? That towards whom they would disclose

themselves and who stands opposite them, ready to give

the unexpected answer that they solicit in another

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language?

Or rather are we to think on the contrary that these three

questions ought to be in their turn interrogated,

surrounded in their power by questioning and reinstalled,

by a new Copernican revolution, in their original

gravitation around man, who naturally believes himself

questioned in them, at the moment when it is him who

asks them and who is concerned with asking them in

relation to himself (to dissipate all philodoxia)?

Let us just note, to begin this examination, that the

Anthropology as we know it does not lend itself at any

moment to answer the fourth question, not even as the

empirical exploitation of the question in its broadest

sense; but that the question is only posed much later,

outside of the Anthropology, and within a perspective

that does not belong to it properly, the moment when in

Kantian thought the organisation of Philosopheren

totalises itself, that is to say in the Logic and in the Opus

postumum.

It is in the light of the answers provided, in these texts,

to: Was ist der Mensch? that we would try to understand,

on the path of retour, that which the Anthropology wants

to say.

What is man? The Opus Postumum

The texts of the Opus Postumum that are dated in the

period of 1800-1801 tenaciously repose, with regards to

the division of transcendental philosophy, the definition

of the relation between God, the world and man. What

might seem to us a rupture or discovery in the text of the

Logic, reveals itself then as the fundamental interrogation

of philosophical reflection, regains scope both in the

rigour of its limits and in its greater extension.

A fragment attests to this: ‘System der transcendental

Philosophie in drei Abschnitten: Gott, die Welt,

universum, und Ich selbst der Mensch als moralisches

Wesen’. However, these three notions are not given as

the three elements of a planned system that juxtaposes

them along a homogeneous surface. The third term is not

there as a complement: it plays the central role of

‘medius terminus’; it is the concrete and active unity in

which and for which God and the world find their unity:

‘Gott, die Welt, und der Mensch als Person, d.i. als Wesen

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das diese Begriffe vereinigt as beings which unites this

concepts’. One must leave to the fragments of the Opus

Postumum their tentative character, and through the

haunting repetition of the themes, take ear to this

divergence that makes a body with the originary unity of

the effort.

What is the correct meaning of this unification of God and

the world in man and for man? What synthesis or what

operation confronts it? Can it be situated at the level of

the empirical or of the transcendental, of the originary or

of the fundamental?

a) Certain texts point to it as the very act of thought. If

man gives unity to the world and God, it is in so far as he

exercises his sovereignty as a thinking subject- thinking

the world and thinking God: ‘Der medius terminus…ist

hier das urteilende Subjekt (das denkende Welt-Wesen,

der Mensch…)

b) This unifying act is then the synthesis itself of thought.

But it can be defined exactly in this sense starting from

the power where it takes its origin: ‘Gott und die Welt,

und der Geist des Menschen der beide denkt’ [God and

the World, and the spirit of man thinks the two of them];

where everything is thus well considered in its sole form,

as if with God, the world and man, in their coexistence

and their fundamental relations, the structure itself of

judgement is brought back onto the regime of traditional

logic; the trilogy Subjekt, Praedikat, Copula define the

figure of the relation between God, the world and man.

[Man is then] that which is then the copula, the link- like

the verb ‘to be’ of the judgement of the universe.

c) Finally man appears as the universal synthesis, forming

the real unity where the personality of God and the

objectivity of the world, the sensible and supra-sensible

principle, come to rejoin; and man becomes the mediator

starting from which ‘ein absoluter Ganze’ [an absolute

totality] is designated. Starting from man, the absolute

can be thought.

Answers or solutions? These texts should not be regarded

as either. Rather, they are possible paths and tests for a

thought that advances on the ground of a finally attained

transcendental philosophy. And at each instant, every

time the geography of these new territories needs to be

located, the interrogation on man emerges as the

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question to which the entire problematic of the world and

God cannot avoid to be related to.

But this relation to the question on man does not have the

value of an absolute reference, thus freeing a serenely

fundamental thought from the content itself of the

question: Was ist Mensch? It cannot be deployed within an

originary autonomy: because of the entry to the game,

man is defined as the inhabitant of the world, as

‘Weltbewohner’ [world inhabitant]; ‘Der Mensch gehort

zwar mit zur Welt’ [man really belongs to the world]. And

all reflection on man is brought up again circularly into a

reflection on the world. Therefore, it is not about

pointing to a naturalist perspective whereby a science of

man entails a knowledge of nature. Rather than to the

determinations in which the human beast is taken and

defined at the level of phenomena, what this pertains to

is the development of self-consciousness and of the I am:

the subject is affected in the movement through which it

becomes object of itself: ‘Ich bin. –Es ist eine Welt ausser

mir (praeter me) im Raume und der Zeit, und ich bin selbt

ein veltresen; bin mir jenes ver haltnisses beurisst und

der bevengenden Krafte zu Empfindungen

(Wahrnehmungen). – Ich der Mensch bin mir selbst ein

ausseres Sinnenobjekt, ein Teil der Welt.’ The world is

discovered in the implications of the ‘I am’, as a figure of

this movement for which the me, in becoming object,

takes place in the field of experience and finds there a

concrete system of belonging. Then this world thus

disclosed is neither the Physis, nor the universe of validity

of the law. And to be honest what is disclosed to it is

anticipated and made possible by the transcendental

Analytics and the Refutation of Idealism, but it is not

exactly the same world, or rather the world in the same

sense, that is in question in the fragment of the Opus

Postumum. The ‘exterior things’ of the Refutation of

Idealism have been the conditions of the determination of

Time as a form of inner experience; the world of the Opus

postumum is concomitant to the determination of me as

objective content of experience in general. And in place

of it being defined by the ‘perseverance’, and

‘obstinacy’ (Beharrliches) of a spatial coexistence, [the

world] is sketched out in the bending of a tout that

permits it to be, for the experience of a me, more wrap

(envelopment) than landmark. It is no longer correlative

of a Zeit-bestimmung (9), but the precondition (le

presuppose) of a Sinnenbestimmung of me. It is not given

at the opening of the whole; it is present in the flexion on

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the (me) self of Ganz .

It is no longer easy to talk of this world. The

accomplishment of the closure of this folding seems to

entail the exclusion of language, and of its primary form

that is predication: a text of the Opus postumum talks

about ‘personality’ as a predicate of God; but it makes

illegible (achoppe) what the predicate of the world ought

to be by way of symmetry. And this predicate remains

unfilled (en blanc), on this side of language, because the

world, as a whole (Ganz) is beyond (au-delà) all the

predications and maybe at the root of all the predicates.

However, this world is not without structure and

signification. Its opposition to the universe allows one to

fix its meaning in a transcendental philosophy.

The world and the universe in the Opus Postumum.

Differently from the universe, the world is given within a

system of actuality that envelops all real existence. It

envelops existence because as well as being the concept

of its totality, starting from the world, existence develops

its concrete reality: a double meaning enclosed in the

very world Inbegriff [epitome]. ‘Der Begriff der Welt ist

der Inbegriff des Dasein’ [the concept of the world is the

complex of existence]. The world is the root of existence,

the source that, by containing it, simultaneously retains

and frees it.

2) One can only have – by definition – one universe. The

world, on the other hand, could be given in numerous

examples (‘es mag viele Welte sein’). The universe is the

unity of the possible, whilst the world is a system of real

relations. This system is given once, and it is not possible

for the relations to be other [than what they are]; but

absolutely nothing impedes to conceive an other system

or other relations to be defined differently. This is to say

that the world is not the open space of the necessary, but

a domain where a system of necessity is possible.

3) But however lawful this supposition is (‘es mag…’), one

cannot avoid recognising that there cannot be but one

world: ‘Es mag nur Eine Welt sein’. Because the possible

is only thought starting from a system given by actualité;

and the plurality of worlds is only delineated starting

from an existing world and from what can be offered to

experience: the world is ‘das Ganza aller moglichen

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Sinnen Gegenstander’. The correlative of the possibility of

conceiving of other worlds, -whereby the world is nothing

but, de facto, a domain- consists in the impossibility of

surpassing it and the imperious necessity of accepting its

frontiers as limits. Thus the world, taken back in its

signification as ‘Inbegriff des Daseins’ appears according

to a triple structure, conforming to Begriff der Inbegriff,

of source, of domain, and limit.

This is then in the Opus postumum the world where man

appears to himself. Or, going back to the Logic, the place

where we had left him: this is to say, the time when the

three questions had been referred to the one: what is

man? This question, in its turn, does not remain stable

and fixed on the vacuum that it designates and

interrogates. Straight from when the ‘was ist der Mensch’

is formulated, three other questions emerge; or rather

three imperatives of knowledge are formulated that give

to the anthropological question its character of concrete

prescription: ‘Der Philosoph muss also bestimmen Können:

Die Quellen des menschlichen wissens

Der Umfang des moglischen und naturlichen Gebrauches

alles wissens

Und endlich die Grenzen der Vernunft.’

[The philosopher must be able to determine: the source

of human knowledge, the extension of possible and useful

use of human knowledge, the limits of reason.]

What do they mean, and what are these three

prescriptions in which the interrogation on man is

distributed related to? It is easy to recognise, at the

watermark of these three themes, both the

reconsideration of the first three questions, and the

sketch of what will be in the Opus postumum the

fundamental structure of the ‘Inbegriff des Daseins’.

On the one hand, in fact, the determination ‘the sources

of human knowledge’ give (contenu) meaning to the

question: what can I know?; the determination of the

‘domain of the possible and natural usage of knowledge’

indicates what could be the reply to the question: ‘what

shall I do?’; and the determination of the ‘limits of

reason’ give its meaning to that ‘what is possible to

hope’. The content, once specified, of the fourth

question is then not fundamentally different from the

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meaning that the first three questions had; and the

reference to them in the end does not entail either that

the former disappear in the latter, nor that they point

towards a new interrogation that has surpassed them: but

simply that the anthropological question poses – by taking

them back - the questions that relate to itself. We are

here at the level of the structural foundation of the

anthropological-critical repetition. The Anthropology does

not say anything more than what the Critique says; it is

sufficient to go through the text of 1798 to see that it

overlaps exactly the domain of the critical undertaking.

A paradoxical repetition: source, domain and limit.

However, the meaning of this fundamental repetition

does not have to be asked either to the repeated word or

to the language that it repeats: but to that towards which

this repetition goes. This is to say, towards the disclosure

of this ternary structure in which the question in the Opus

postumum and that characterises the Inbegriff of Daseins

is: source, domain and limit. These concepts are common

to the themes they specify, in the Logic, in the fourth

question, and to which they give meaning in the last

Kantian texts, to the notion of world as whole (tout).

They determine the structural belonging of the

interrogation on man to the questioning of the world. And

here we find it in the rigorous undertaking (reprise) of the

three questions that dominate the three Critiques. In

other words, these three notions, Quellen (source),

Umfang (domain), and Grenzen (Limit), already present in

the web of critical thought, for their own perseverance

and weight, have reached the fundamental level where

the Inbegriff of existence is interrogated, and where they

appear finally to themselves (pour elles-mêmes). At the

more superficial level, they are given as common forms of

the interrogation on man and the meaning (signification)

of the world. But, without doubt, at the level of

transcendental philosophy where finally they are

formulated, they have a whole different import. “Was

notwendig (ursprunglich) das Dasein der Dingen ausmacht

gehort zur Transcendental Philosophie”. [What necessarily

makes up the existence of things belongs to

Transcendental Philosophy]. Or what necessarily

(originally) belongs to the existence of things, is this

fundamental structure of its Inbegriff that we already

know. The wealth of the source, the solidity of the

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domain and the rigour of the frontier are inseparably

linked to what it has as a necessity (this is to say

originary). The totality of existence thinks as Ganz

(entirety) and not as Alles (tout).

And through this is disclosed, in its fundamental

character, the relationship of man and the world, -this

relation that seemed locked within the indefinite

repetition of its circularity, since the world had been

unified by man, who hadn’t been but an inhabitant of the

world. Doesn’t a text of the Opus postumum say: ‘Der

Mensch in der Welt gehort mit zur Kenntnis der Welt [Man

in the world belongs with knowledge of the world]?

But these paradoxes are at the level of natural

knowledge. At the level of a transcendental philosophy

they dissipate immediately to let a correlation emerge

where the whole of existence defines what belongs to it

necessarily and originally.

The world, as source of knowledge, offers itself on the

space of the manifold that designates the originary

passivity of sensibility; but this source of knowledge is

inexhaustible precisely because this originary passivity is

indissociable from the forms of Vereinigung [merging] of

spontaneity and of the spirit. If the world is source, it

means that it has a fundamental correlation, beyond

which it is impossible to go back into passivity and

spontaneity [on the background of a transcendental

correlation between passivity and spontaneity].

The world, as domain of all the possible predicates, offers

itself in the gripped solidarity of a determinism that sends

back to a priori syntheses of a judging subject (eines

urteilenden Subjekt). And by the same token, the world is

only domain in relation to a founding (fondatrice) activity

that opens itself on/to freedom; and consequently ‘der

Mensch gehort zwar mit zur Welt, aber nicht der seiner

Pflicht Angermessene’ [on the background of a

transcendental correlation between necessity and

freedom ](10).

The world, as limit of possible experience, excludes all

transcendental usage of the Idea. But it is only limit

because there exists a certain ‘nature’ of reason whereby

the labour is one of anticipation on the totality, and of

thought precisely as limit, in so far as it is proper to the

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ambiguity itself of this notion to designate the frontier

too easy to cross, and the inaccessible term where one is

always approached really but in vain. The ambiguity is

well expressed in this fragment: ‘Gottuber mir, die Welt

ausser mir, der menschliche Geist in mir in einem system

das All der Dinge befassend…’.

One sees the scope of the field of reflection that covers

these three notions: source, domain and limit. In a sense,

they match the trilogy internal to the first Critique, of

sensitivity, understanding and reason.

Later, they resume and strengthen in one word the work

of each Critique: pure reason, practical reason and

faculty of judgement. They repeat the three fundamental

questions which, according to Kant, animate all

philosophy. Finally, they provide a triple content to the

interrogation on man to which they relate all others. But

by resuming each of these tri-partitions, they put on hold,

by their very repetition, the level of the fundamental,

and substitute to these systematic divisions the

organisation of the transcendental correlatives. Thus one

notices that the world is not simply source for a faculty of

sensation, but the foundation of a transcendental

correlation between passivity and spontaneity; that the

world is not simply the domain for a synthetic

understanding, but the basis of a transcendental

correlation between necessity and freedom; that the

world is not just limit for the use of Ideas, but the basis of

a transcendental correlation between reason and spirit

(Vernunft-Geist). And here, within this system of

correlation the reciprocal transcendence of truth (vérité)

and freedom is founded. One sees what the place of the

fourth question is within the economy of Kant’s later

work, in other words, within the passage from a critical

reflection –hence necessarily propaedeutic- to the

accomplishment of a transcendental philosophy. The

anthropological question is not of independent content;

to be explicit, it repeats the first three questions, but it

repeats them by substituting to a tri-partition that more

or less directly follows the distinction of the faculties

(Vermogen), the play of the three notions that account

for the relations of man and of the world: no longer

empirical and circular relations of immanence at the level

of a natural knowledge (connaissance), but necessary

correlation, in other words, originary- necessity

(notwendig, ursprunglich)- that develop at the root of the

existence of things, of inseparable transcendences.

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The meaning and function of the question: what is man?

consists in the bringing of the divisions of the Critique to

a level of fundamental cohesion, that of a structure which

– in its most radical aspect than that of all possible

faculties- offers itself to the word (parole) and is finally

liberated from transcendental philosophy.

Therefore, we are not at the end of our path. Or rather,

at this stage we are already too far on the path that

should have taken us to the exact situation of the

Anthropology – to the place of its birth and insertion in

critical thought. As if the Anthropology became

impossible (at the level of a fundamental rather than

merely programmatic possibility) unless taken from the

point of view of a Critique completed and already lead to

accomplishment by a transcendental philosophy.

But we also find: the question ‘what is man?’ is given in

the Logic as the anthropological interrogation par

excellence; and therefore in the Opus postumum it is

linked, from the beginning, to an interrogation on God

and on the world; the question is developed entirely at

this level as if it had never pertained to this singular

domain that is the Anthropology. The reference of the

Logic to an anthropology that reduces to itself all

philosophical interrogation seems to be nothing more, in

Kantian thought, than an episode. An episode within an

anthropology that does not have any claim to such

universality of meaning and a transcendental philosophy

that takes the interrogation on man at a much more

radical level. This episode has been structurally

necessary: its passing character was linked to a passage

that reassures it.

The relation of the 1798 text to the Critique is thus

paradoxical. On the one hand, the Critique announces it

and makes it pace inside of an empirical philosophy;

hence the Anthropology does not refer back to the

Critique, or to the principal organising elements laid out

by it. On the other hand, the Anthropology refers back to,

as its own drive, the great articulations of the Critique,

and the division, become traditional, of the faculties;

hence, despite this implicit and constant reference, the

Critique only has foundational value in relation to the

Anthropology, which in turn rests on its work but does not

root itself in it. It is divided of itself towards what it

ought to bring together (fonder) that is no longer the

Critique, but transcendental philosophy itself. It is the

function and the web of its empirical status.

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This empiricity must now be attended to /followed in

itself. What, for anticipation, we have been able to

determine of its path will allow without doubt to better

understand how the Anthropology was able to be at once

marginal in relation to the Critique, and decisive to the

forms of reflection that offer themselves as goals to

achieve it. The Anthropology itself asserts that it is at

once ‘systematic and popular’; and it is by dwelling on

these two words that we can decipher its own proper

meaning: in repeating the Critique at a popular level of

advice, of story and of example secretly heading Kantian

thought towards a founding reflection.

Empiricity and Time

1. The Anthropology is systematic: which is not to say that

it enunciates all that can be known of man, but that it

forms, as a knowledge, a coherent whole: no longer Alles,

but Ganze. The Principe of this totality is not man

himself, as an already coherent object, because he is

linked to the world, and only the indefinite labour of

enquiry, the wear (usure) of the frequentation (Umgang)

[of the world] will be able to research find out what he is.

If the Anthropology is systematic it is in so far as it

borrows its coherence from all of the thought of the

Critique, -each of the three books of the Didactic repeat

the three Critiques, and the Caracteristique refers back to

the texts on history, the becoming of humanity and its

path towards inaccessible goals. There, and only there,

resides the organising principle of the Anthropology.

[There is] one example to determine how exactly this

repetition occurs: the text entitled ‘Apology of

sensitivity’’ refers to the relation between intuition and

understanding. This repetition is not a going back to the

same. The relation described by the Anthropology has its

own dimension within the slow, precarious and always

doubtful labour of the succession: the manifold as it

offers itself to the senses is not yet (noch nicht) ordered;

the understanding must come to add itself

(hinzukonsmen) and insert an order that it supplies itself

(hineinbringen). A judgement that is produced before this

ordering activity [putting into order (zuvor)] risks being

false. On the other hand, this relation of succession does

not put up with/withstand being extended with impunity;

if, in the order of time, the retrospective reassessment of

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reasoning (Nachgrubeln) and the indefinite folding (repli)

of reflection (Uberlegung) intervened, the error could

equally slip. The given is therefore never deceptive, not

because it judges well, but because it doesn’t judge at

all, and what judgement inserts within time, forms truth

according to the measure of this time itself. The time of

the Critique, form of the intuition and of the inner sense,

only provides the multiplicity of the given through an

activity already constructive at the outset; it only offers

the diverse already dominated within the unity of the I

think. On the other hand, the time of the Anthropology is

guarantor of an insurmountable dispersion; because here

the dispersion is no longer that of the given and sensible

passivity; it is the dispersion of synthetic activity in

relation to itself – dispersion that offers itself as a ‘jeu’.

Its (dispersion) is not contemporaneous to itself in the

organisation of the manifold; it inevitably succeeds/

follows itself, thus giving rise to error (donnant ainsi prise

á l’erreur), and to all the slippings that have been made

(Ver Kunstein, Verdichten, Ver ruchen). Given that the

time of the Critique had reassured the unity of the

originary (from the originally given until the originary

synthesis), thus deploying itself at the level of the Ur…,

the Time of the Anthropology remains doomed to the

domain of the Ver…, because it maintains the dispersion

of the syntheses and the always renewed possibility of

seeing them escaping from one another. Time is not that

in which, and through which, and because of which the

synthesis is made. It is that which gnaws at the synthetic

activity itself.

However, it affects it not in the manner of a given that

indicates a primary passivity, but in the way of an

intrinsic possibility that raises the hypothesis and the

threat of an exhaustive determination: that the possibility

of error is linked to the duty, and to the freedom, of

avoiding it.

What affects the synthetic activity -the opening to this

freedom- is what limits it –placing it, for the same fact, in

an indefinite domain. In the Critique, time becomes

transparent to a synthetic activity that was not temporal

itself, since it was constituent; in the Anthropology,

dispersed time mercilessly obscures and renders

impenetrable the synthetic acts, and substitutes to the

sovereignty of the Bestimmung [determination], the

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patient, friable and compromised incertitude of an

exercise that is called Kunst .

The word ‘Kunst’, with its derivatives (verkunstein,

erkunstein, gekunstelt), is one of the terms that

frequently recur in the Anthropology – and one of those

that remains the most inaccessible to translation. Neither

art nor technique are concerned there; but rather the

fact that nothing is ever given without being at the same

time offered to the danger of an undertaking that is

simultaneously the ground in the construction, and the

dodging in the arbitrary.

Kunst is in a sense the negation of originary passivity; but

this negation can and must be comprehended also as

spontaneity (in relation to the determinations of the

diverse) as well as artifice (in relation to the validity of

the given); moreover, its role is that of building - above

and counter to/against the phenomenon (Erscheinung)- an

appearance (Schein), as well as giving to appearance the

plenitude and meaning of the phenomenon: this is to say

that the Kunst retains (détient), -more in the form of

freedom-, the power of reciprocal negation of Schein and

Erscheinung.

Equally, the deeper the layers are buried in originary

passivity, the more there is in the sensible given that is

open to this game of freedom: the content of sensible

intuition can be utilised artificially as Schein; and this

Schein can be used intentionally, as Erscheinung: thus in

the exchange of signs of morality, the sensible content

can be nothing but a mask and it is in the service of the

cunnings of a lie; or also it can be cunning of the cunning

and refined form that transmits the value, and as simple

appearance, the seriousness of the phenomenon. Then,

the Kunst that, in proximity of the sensible (au ras du

sensible) already inhabits the whole domain of the given,

exercises its sovereignty in three ways: it is the puissance/

power of the negative, it is the decision of the

intentional, it is the language of exchange.

Time, Kunst and the Subject: a relation between truth

and freedom.

Thus the time that eats into and crumbles the unity of the

synthetic act, and dooms it to a diverse, where it can

never rejoin/meet itself in an a-temporal sovereignty,

opens it by the very fact, to a liberty that is negation to

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exercise, without offering itself, communication, to

establish, dangerous freedom that links the work of truth

with the possibility of error, but makes thus escape from

the sphere of determinations the relation to truth. To the

relation of time and the subject, that has been

fundamental in the Critique, corresponds in the

Anthropology the relation of time to Kunst.

In the Critique, the subject had self-consciousness

(conscience de soi) as ‘determined in time’, and this

insurmountable determination refers back to the

existence of an external world in relation to which an

inner experience of change had been possible; this is to

say that time, and the primary passivity that it indicates,

had been the root of this ‘Beziehung auf’ [relation to]

that characterises the first opening of all knowledge. In

the Anthropology, time and the dispersion it determines,

show in the texture of the ‘Beziehung auf’ a reciprocal

belonging (appartenance) of truth and freedom. From the

Critique to the Anthropology, is it not the same thing that

is repeated? Time receives and reveals a ‘relation to…’ a

primary opening that is, consequently and simultaneously,

a connection between truth and freedom. This link will

be, in its turn, the privileged theme of transcendental

philosophy, and the interrogation that animates the

relentless question of the Opus Postumum; ‘Was ist der

Mensch?’.

As the Beziehung auf [relation to] becomes visible in the

Critique through the structure of Vorstellung

[imagination], so the connection of truth and freedom

starts to be deciphered in the Anthropology, through the

labour and the dangers of Kunst.

The Anthropology is systematic. Systematic by virtue of a

structure that is that of the Critique, and that the

Anthropology repeats. But what the Critique states as

determination, in the relationship between passivity and

spontaneity, the Anthropology describes along a temporal

dispersion that is never ended and never starts, what the

Anthropology deals with is always already there, and

never entirely given; what is primary for the Anthropology

is doomed to a time that completely envelops it, from far

and high. This is not because the problem of origins is

foreign to it: on the contrary, time gives it back its true

meaning, that it is not of disclosing and isolating, in the

instant, the originary; but of finding again a temporal web

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that, having already begun, is not less rooted [radical].

The originary is not the really primitive. It is the truly

(vraiment) temporal. This is to say that the originary is

where, in time, truth and freedom belong to each other.

One can have a false/ wrong Anthropology – and we know

it too well: it is that which attempts to shift towards a

beginning, towards an archaism of fact and of right, the

structures of the a priori. Kant’s Anthropology offers us

another lesson: to repeat the a priori of the Critique in

the originary, i.e. in a truly temporal dimension.

2. Despite this systematic deep-rootedness

(enracinement), the Anthropology is a ‘popular work:

where examples can be found by each reader’. What is

meant by this? Neither a certain nature of the content (an

empirical analysis can only be popular), nor a certain

quality of the form (a non popular knowledge can receive

a ‘garment’ that makes it accessible). A text of the Logic

offers a definition of the notion of Popularitaät. In

relation to knowledge, it is not an addition, epithet, or

style of expression: it is perfection … ‘eine populare

Vollkommenbeit des Erkenntnisses’. It distinguishes itself

from technical and scholastic perfection: not that it is not

compatible with them, on the contrary, but they add

something to it because in the discourse of scholastic

knowledge one can never be sure that the proof is not

‘einseitig’[biased/one-sided], there is, on the other hand,

in popular knowledge an exigency of discourse that goes

towards the whole, towards the exhaustive and dissipates

the danger of particularity, thus authorising, ‘eine

Vollstandige Einsicht’ [a complete view]. Its own

character lies not so much in the particularity of a style,

but in the manner of administering the evidence; its

arguments are no better (nor other) than those of

scholastic savoir, - its truth is the same, but it offers the

certitude that the whole is given in the inexhaustible

multiplicity of the diverse. The various proofs offered

never give the impression of being particular. Which is

what the Anthropology wants to say itself: the reader

finds himself in such environment of total evidence

(Vollstandige Einsicht) that he can indefinitely find new

examples. But the popularity is not the primary, earliest

and the most naïve form of truth.

In order to become popular a knowledge must rely on

‘eine Welt-und Menschentkenntniss’, a knowledge of

concepts, of tastes and of inclinations of men.’ How

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come, in this sentence of the Logic that circumscribes the

requirements of popular knowledge, the definition of

anthropology is not found? This is to say that the

Anthropology, as oeuvre of popular form, relies on itself

in so far as it is knowledge of man and the world.

As popular knowledge and knowledge of the ‘popular’, it

is what implicates itself in order to exist.

This circle is not about unravelling, but taking as it is

given and where it is given, -in language- what resides in

language: the possibility at once to speak it and to speak

about it, and to do so in one and the same movement; in

the current usage lies the inexhaustible source of these

‘examples’, through which the writing extends towards

the reader, without interrogation and in the familiarity of

the recognised.

To say that a text is popular because the readers can find

examples for themselves, is to say that one finds between

the author and its public the undivided basis of daily

language that continues to speak, without transition and

without changes, the page that once was blank.

The Anthropology, popular knowledge, can rely on itself,

since it speaks a common language, it will speak of him

and, of the interior, will clarify it. It will be a knowledge

of man that man himself will be able to immediately

comprehend, recognise, and indefinitely extend, because

man and that knowledge are within the obedience of one

inexhaustible language.

Differently from the non popular texts, the Anthropology

does not try to fix and justify its vocabulary. On the

contrary, it welcomes language in the totality of a

practice that is never put back into question. In the web

of the texts, the empirical guiding thread is different

from the patient effort to exhaust the verbal forms of a

theme, and to give to each, in its precise meaning, the

real extension of its domain. Within the classification of

mental illnesses in the 18th century, terms such as

einfaltig, dumm [stupid], tor, narr [fool], Geck [fop], and

unklug [idiot] are challenged as mystifying and vain, only

relevant to a popular usage founded solely on the

obscurity of a dubious tradition; one erases them for the

sake of a terminology that is supposed to reproduce a

logical articulation of the real within the space of nature.

But these are words that, for Kant, form the support and

the substance itself of analysis. It is not at all a matter of

providing a silent Logos of nature with a prolific language

of men; but rather of totalising this language on the

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supposition that there is no folding in it that is not

accompanied by a particular modality of meaning. The

differences that daily language gives to dumm, tor, and

narr are all as valid and full of meaning as those

established by the naturalists amongst the terms of

vesania and insanity established in the species. At the

anthropological level, there is neither mystified language

nor erroneous vocabulary.

In a sense, the Anthropology is a sort of general idiomatic.

All the expressions given there are thought with all their

weight of seriousness. Something is thought within the

whole that is said. It is sufficient to interrogate and to

give a hearing to it. Why does one regularly say: ‘ein

richtiger Verstand, eine geubte Urteilskraft, eine

grundliche Vernunft?’

Isn’t there something that goes right to the essence?

Which serious game is played in the opposition ‘eine

langweilige Unterredung, ein kunrzweiliger Mensch’? What

does one say when saying: ‘Geld ist die Losug?’.

Furthermore, there are all the ‘moral idioms’ that exist in

the customs and relations between men and in their

language they are known expressions: rules of politeness,

uses in fashion, conventions and habits in meetings. They

all have their justification. But they do not derive from a

cause foreign to human practice; they are no longer

hidden in a distant past: apart from a note on the

meaning and taste for business amongst the Jews, there is

no historical explanation in the Anthropology. The

meaning of these idioms is always actual to them. It is in

following the thread of language and of practice in

examining them at a slower pace, and in comparing them

in a sort of empirical plane, that they will reveal/say

what they really want to say. The Anthropology is the

elucidation of this language tout fait – explicit or silent –

by which man spreads on things and amongst his kind a

network of exchanges, of reciprocity, of solid

comprehension, that does not form either the city of

spirits, nor the total appropriation of nature, but this

universal inhabiting of man within the world.

Popularity and Language

The Anthropology is therefore not rooted in a system of

expression and of experience that is a German one.

Without a doubt Kant would surpass (essaie-t-il) this

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domain given by the analysis of foreign practices, or by

the references to other linguistic ensembles. No doubt it

is this that is the most particular in his experience to

dominate limits: Konigsberg, administrative capital,

University city and commercial centre, crossroad, near

the sea, has a constant educative value in the

comprehension of man as citizen of the entire world. But

all this does not prevent the Anthropology from unwinding

itself in its entirety within a geographical and linguistic

domain from where it is not, neither by fact nor by right,

dissociable. This is a reflection upon and in a system of

constituted and enveloping signs. Since Latin starts

emerging as language of savant and philosophical

universality, the usage of modern languages does not

contest, for those who employ them or understand them,

the universal meaning of the preferred word (parole). The

secret right of a Latinity - that is not yet absorbed even if

buried, and that grants what is said with an intrinsic value

of exchange, without residue - watches over the language

effectively used (mise en oeuvre).

The meticulousness, with which Kant, in the Critiques,

annotates all the time the corresponding Latin word,

sufficiently indicates that the universality of his purpose

is one and the same as a certain implicit Latinity. The

Latin reference there is systematic and essential. In the

Critique of Pure Reason, he experiences even German

language as an embarrassment and limitation. And when

in his own language he feels ‘embarrassed to find an

expression that is exactly appropriate’, he recurs to

‘some dead and savant language’, even if its words have

been deviated by an excessively long usage, to arrive at

the meaning that is proper to them’. He thinks it is better

to use Latin than to hinder, through refinements of the

Germanic language, ‘the march of science’.

The reference to Latin is maybe more frequent in the

Anthropology than in the Critiques. But it is not more

essential, nor does it have value beyond indication and

landmark. Sometimes, it allows distinguishing an

ambiguity of meaning: Leicht and schwer mean light and

heavy as well as easy and difficult; sometimes, it replaces

the analysis in a scientific tradition: Unsinninngkeit –

amenita, Wahnsinn – sementia; Wahnwitz – insana;

Aberwitz –vesania; sometimes it fixes a system of

correspondences between the critical level and the

anthropological domain. But the real labour, the path of

thought in the Anthropology, does not go though Latinity;

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it follows the lines of force of the German system of

expression. The term of Melancholia, for example, does

not concern what constitutes the veritable meaning of the

tiefsinnigkeit; this meaning, must be asked to a whole

dynasty of language (de la langue): on the one hand, the

series Scharfsinnigkeit, Leichtsinnigkeit etc.; on the other

hand the subtle opposition, difficult to untangle, with the

tiefdenken. There is also the verbal domain of Sagen:

Wahrsagen, vorhersagen, and weissagen. And moreover,

the great dynasty, so complex, of Dichten [writing

poetry]. On the surface, and almost at the level of quasi-

synonymes, it plays with words that designate other

forms, psychological or technical of invention: entdecken,

entfinden, and was ausfinding machen er sinnen,

ausdenken, erdichten, but in following the vertical

dimension, and the web of powers of the spirit, one finds

firstly, and of a general manner, the ‘vermognen Idem zu

schaffen’, plus the power of their giving form according

to the laws of productive imagination: it is the vermogen

zu bilden; when the spiritual power and the taste lead

these productions, one has to do with Dichtkunst

[literature], in the broad sense, -that can address itself

also to the eyes and the ears; finally, when this art takes

form in the justified solemnity of verses, it is about

poetry in the strict sense. But to each of those levels, the

Dichtung [literary work] finds itself embroiled in a couple

of oppositions where it risks alienating itself and losing

itself, and it is not taken back to its rigorous meaning:

danger of the Beredskeit in which the relations of

understanding and of sensibility are inversed; danger of

the Naturmalerei, that limits itself to imitation; danger of

the Versmacherei, deprived of spiritual power. Also what

is identified and defined is the complex network of the

Dichtung thanks to a totalisation of the verbal domain

related to it. The faculties, the powers also put into

action, do not form in their structure the guiding thread

of the analysis; they are disengaged or seen through the

net of words, as they have for a long time been tied up

with daily usage. Surely, one sees Kant criticise this or

that confusion in the manner of expression; but it is not in

the name of a really existing distinction that one can

denounce those who do not make use of it and do not

consider it, in the practice of a native word, as having

occurred. This abandonment of the philosophical

reflection in relation to a universality of the Latin form

has its importance. From now on, philosophical language

recognises the possibility to find its locus of origin and

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define its field of exploration in a given language. The

fact that this language is linked to a language does not

make it relative nor limits the meaning that it provides,

but situates this disclosure in a determined verbal domain.

This relation of philosophical meaning to significations of

a langue –which will be so decisive in German thought- is

not yet reflected on in itself in the Anthropology: but it is

used at every moment; the real ground of anthropological

experience is much more linguistic than psychological; the

langue accordingly is not given as system to be

interrogated, but rather as an element that goes by itself,

at the interior in which one is placed within a game; as

instrument of exchanges, vehicle of dialogues and

virtuality of intent, langue is the field common to

philosophy and non-philosophy. It is in language that they

confront themselves, -or rather communicate.

The banquet. (11)

There is then a Kantian Banquet –an insistence, in the

Anthropology, on these minuscule forms of society that

are the common meal; the importance of the

Unterhaltung, of what there is to exchange, and what

must be exchanged; a prestige of this social and moral

model of a Gesellschaft where each finds himself at once

sovereign and friendly (close to). The value of a discourse

that from one to the other and amongst everyone is born

and ends. From the point of view of the Anthropology, the

group that has the value of model is neither the family

nor the state: it is the Tischgesellschaft [dinner society].

Isn’t this a peculiar image of universality? There must be

established, by the transparency of a common language, a

relation of all to all; nothing must be felt privileged or

isolated, but each, whether silent or speaking, must be

present in the common sovereignty of the parole. None of

the three great functions of language must be omitted:

enunciation of contingent fact (Erzahlen), formulation,

exchange and rectification of judgement (Raisonieren),

free play of language on itself (Scherzen). Round and

round, there must be these three dominant functions, in a

movement that is the rhythm proper to this form of

meeting: initially the novelty of the event, then the

seriousness of the universal, finally the irony of the game.

As far as the content itself of the discussion is concerned,

one must obey the laws of an internal structure: those of

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the supple continuity, without rupture, of the manner in

which each person’s freedom to formulate his opinion, to

insist upon it, or to make the discussion deviate are never

experienced by others as abuse or constraint. Also in the

regulated element of language, the articulation of

liberties and the possibility, for individuals, of forming a

whole, can be self-organised without the intervention of a

force or an authority, without renunciation nor alienation.

In speaking in the community of convivium, liberties meet

each other and are spontaneously universalised. Everyone

is free, but in the form of totality.

We are no longer surprised by these promises made at the

opening of the Anthropology, of studying man as ‘citizen

of the world’, - and that the work seems to give up on

delivering, in limiting itself to an analysis of the Gemüt.

In fact, the man of the Anthropology is Weltburger, but

not in so far as he must belong to such social group or

such institution: purely and simply because he speaks. It

is in the exchange of language that, all at once, he

attends to and accomplishes himself the concrete

universal. His residence in the world is originally an

inhabiting of language. The truth that the Anthropology

exposes is then not a truth anterior to language and that

it will see to transmit. It is a truth more interior and more

complex, since it is in the movement itself of exchange,

and that exchange accomplishes the universal truth of

man. Similarly whilst at any time the originary could have

been defined as the temporal itself, one can now say that

the originary does not reside in a preliminary and secret

signification, but in the more manifest route of the

exchange. It is there that language assumes, achieves and

finds again its reality; it is there also that man deploys its

anthropological truth. The Anthropology is then

‘systematically projected’ by a reference to the Critique

that passes through Time; it has, on the other hand,

popular value because its reflection is situated at the

interior of a given language that makes it transparent

without reforming it, and whereby the particularities

themselves are the legitimate birthplace for universal

significations. In an anthropological perspective, truth

takes then shape through the temporal dispersion of

syntheses and in the movement of language and of

exchange; there, it doesn’t find its primitive form, nor

the a priori moments of its constitution, nor the pure

impact of the given; it finds, in a time already sold, in a

language already spoken, inside a temporal flux and a

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linguistic system never given in their point zero,

something that is like its originary form: the universal

emerging (naissant) in the middle of the experience in the

movement of the truly temporal and of the really

exchanged. It is by this that the analysis of the Gemüt, in

the form of internal sense, becomes cosmo-political

prescription, in the form of human universality. We have

noted above how the anthropological reflection can

constitute, by the repetition itself of the Critique, the

moment of passage to transcendental philosophy. It is

easy to understand how this repetition can have

structure, function and value of passage: it is because the

Critique, instead of being simply repeated at the level of

the empirical, is repeated in such a manner that the

syntheses of truth (i.e. the constitution of the necessary

within the domain of experience), now appear in the

element of freedom (in the recognition of the particular

as universal subject). The Anthropology repeats the

Critique of Pure reason at an empirical level where one

finds it already repeated the Critique of Practical reason:

the domain of the necessary is all the same the domain of

the imperative. The Anthropology is therefore by essence

the investigation of a field where practice and theory are

mutually traversed and resorted/appealed to entirely.

Addition: the Anthropology will move indifferently from

the problematic of necessity to that of existence; it will

conflate the analysis of conditions and the interrogation

of finitude. (on prêtera à l’Anthropologie á la fois les

privilèges de l’a priori et le sens du fondamental, le

caractère préalable de la Critique et la forme achevée de

la philosophie transcendantale; elle se déploiera sans

différence de la problématique du nécessaire á celle de

l’existence; elle confondra l’analyse des conditions et

l’interrogation sur la finitude.)

Post Kantian confusions.

It will be useful one day to envisage all the history of post-

Kantian and contemporary philosophy from the point of

view of this confusion, starting from the outlined

confusion. Without doubt, this ‘de-structuration’ of the

philosophical field has never been as perceivable as in the

wake of phenomenology. It has surely been of the initial

project of Husserl, as one witnesses in the Logische

Unversuchungen, to free the regions of the a priori, of the

forms where the reflections on the originary had

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confiscated it. But because the originary can never be

itself the ground of its own liberation, the effort to

escape the originary conceived as immediate subjectivity

has finally referred to the originary conceived within the

density of the passive syntheses and of the already there.

The reduction would only open on a transcendental of

illusion, and it would manage to play the role to which it

had been destined, -and that consists in keeping the place

of a critical reflection elided. Even the reference to

Descartes, substituting, in a moment of Husserl’s thought,

the domination of Kantian memories, could not manage to

hide the structural disequilibria. During the whole opening

on the region of the fundamental it will not be able to,

starting from there, lead to what will have to be its

justification and meaning, the problematic of the Welt

and the In-der-Welt will not be able to escape the

‘threat’ of empiricity. All phenomenological psychologies

and other variations on the analysis of existence are the

dismal evidence of this. What have we blindly renounced

to by failing to see that the authentic articulation of

Philosophieren was at the level of the present much more

restrictive, in a thought that maybe has not noticed that

it keeps some filiations and fidelity to the ‘Chinese views

of Kuningsberg’?

One probably needs to understand what to ‘philosophise

with the hammer’ means, see at first glance what the

‘kurgenrot’ is and understand what we return to in the

Eternal Return, in order to see there the authentic

repetition - in a world that is ours - of what has been - for

an already distant culture - distant, the reflection on the

a priori, the origin and finitude. There, in this thought

that thinks the end of philosophy is where the possibility

of still philosophising and the injunction to a new

austerity reside.

A problem remains that even the movement of Kantian

thought has not at all helped to solve: it is the problem of

empiricity in the anthropologic-critical repetition. Must

one consider the bending towards empiricity as essential

to all reflection which aims to move from the a priori

towards the fundamental? And when a science of man

becomes possible it is included with all rights in the

trajectory of philosophy towards itself. Can one conceive

of an anthropology that will take the empirical as its

content and its laws, but that is addressed to essences in

a reflection on man to which only intuition provides

richness and life? The empirical would only be applied as

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an example, neither defining nor compromising the very

form of knowledge. Kant’s Anthropology does not provide

a clear answer to this. Without doubt it is only an

empirical collection; but precisely, it is nothing but

collection and rhapsody of examples, the reflexive

movement that divides it comes from somewhere else and

goes somewhere else, without a precise definition of the

manner in which this knowledge relies on the empirical

domain that it covers. In the Anthropology one finds a

double system of solidarity: on the one hand with the

critical reflection and transcendental philosophy, but on

the other hand with the immense series of

anthropological researches that developed, especially in

Germany, in the second half of the 18th century.

It is very difficult to properly establish the way in which

Kant’s work is inserted in the chronology and the network

of influences of these anthropological texts. This is for

two reasons: one is the very ascendancy of Kantian

thought on science and singularly on psychology and

medicine of his epoch, the other reason is the delay of

the publication of the Anthropology, a delay which has

given cause to the distribution of students; notes, of

course notebooks as those used, some year later, by

Starke. Despite the fact that many texts published well

before the Anthropology explicitly or implicitly refer to

Kantian thought and present a resemblance to it, it is

often impossible to trust the dates of publication in order

to establish the order of influences and of presences.

As guidance, we only have in this complex network three

kinds of landmarks: the texts that contain an explicit

reference to Kant, as for instance Ith: Versuch einer

Anthropologie (Berne: 1794), or Schmid: Empirische

Psychologie (Iena: 1791), or Hufeland: Macrobiotik. In all

these texts we already find references to Kant. One must

also add the second edition of the Anthropologie by

Platner, and certain works that immediately place

themselves within the Kantian obedience, like Kollner:

Bestimmung der organischen Krafte nach Grundsatzen der

Kritischen Philosophie.

On the other hand the anteriority of certain texts gives

one ground to believe that Kant has really known and

used them in his Anthropology. First of all one ought to

include without doubt: Tetens: Versuch über die

Menschliche Natur (1777), the Anthropologie by Platner

(1772), and obviously the Psychologia empirica by

Baumgarten (1749). This work which Kant had noticed

served as a guiding thread for the Anthropology. The

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analogy of place in the two texts is striking; one could

compare them by the paragraph. Still one must add that

there had been a classical reordering of psychologies in

the 18th century, and that one should see the point of

origin or the means of their definite accomplishment in

Wolff. But there is more: the Psychologie of Baumgarten

has provided schemas that the Anthropology had used and

elaborated on: the distinction between ‘perceptio

primaria et secundaria’, and of ‘perceptio principalis et

adharens’. Similarly the analysis of Wahrsagen and of

Weissagen in Baumgarten, is identified in Kant in a

distinction between Vorhersagen, Wahrsagen and

Weissagen.

Finally, one can without making too big a mistake find the

influence of certain texts on the development itself of

Kant’s work. There are modifications or novelties in the

last edition of the Anthropology that have their origin in

these recently published texts. One can be sure, for

instance, that Kant has read Empirische Psychologie by

Schmid and has used it. In Nachla’s notes, in the courses

published by Starke, one cannot find any mention of

empirical sources that help or sustain the anthropological

reflection. It is only in the text of 1798 that one finds a

mention of Hilfsmittel, which are, in this order, history,

the world, biographies, theatre and novels. Or in 1791,

Schmid dedicated a paragraph to Hilfsmittel of the

empirical study of the soul: history books, biographies,

observations on character, tragic and comic poetry,

novels. But more importantly: Schmid himself

distinguishes three kinds of human sciences: that which

addresses man’s interiority (sein Inneres) and all that

appears to the inner sense: this is psychology; that which

address exteriority (sein Ausseres) and the body: that is

medical anthropology; whilst so called Anthropology must

study the mutual relations of interior and exterior. It is

difficult not to think that there one finds the origin of the

titles that after 1791 Kant will give to the two parts of

the Anthropology.

Thus there’s a whole network of empirical knowledge that

constitute, at the end of the 18th century, the domain of

Anthropology. The link between this network and Kant’s

text is evident, even if it is not possible to situate exactly

the chronological order of their reciprocal relations and

the prestige of influences yet. But for now one can

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question the general significance of the field of empirical

knowledge that comes into being, in this period, under

the pretext of constituting a science: the Anthropology.

Leaving aside the archaeology of a term the form of

which, if not the fate, had already been fixed at the 16th

century. What can these new anthropologies mean in

relation to a science of man of the Cartesian type?

It seems that the initial project of anthropology was

linked at the beginning of the 18th century to a host of

precise scientific difficulties: what is often too hastily

called the Critique of the Cartesian mechanicism was for

the contemporaries a mode of formulating within a

theoretical vocabulary the new labour of their knowledge

(connaissance). In a general manner, one could say that in

this period the researches on the functioning of the

human body were the occasion (provided the opportunity)

of a capital conceptual de-doubling: in the unity of the

Physis, that one would not put under challenge, what is

by the body the physique starts to be detached from what

is, for the bodies, the physics (dans l’unité de la Physis,

qu’il n’est pas question de mettre en cause, ce qui est par

le corps le physique commence á decoller de ce qui est,

pour les corps, la physique). The physique in man will be

of the order of nature, without being of physics. How to

explain such curious notional crossings, sometimes

contradictory, but that refers to this difficulty of ordering

together the savoirs of physics [la Physique], the

physiques and the Physis?

Wolff maintains the Physica as the most general form of

knowledge of nature, and he prescribes ‘physiology’ as

the science of bodies. On the contrary, Kant will group

together in the ‘Physiology’ all the empirical knowledges

of nature, of which ‘Physics’ only covers one sector. In

fact, if a science of nature seems to shift away from a

science of Physics, it is in so far it can no longer cover the

domain of the human body. The existence of anthropology

is at once the cause and effect, in any case the measure

of this gap.

-2- But why is this gap linked to anthropology rather than

to biology in general? Why does Wolff say that Physiology

is a science ‘de corpore animati, praesertim humano’?

Surely because the knowledge of man finds itself at the

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crossing point where the determination of a metaphysical

privilege, that is the soul, and the mastery of a technique

that is medicine, meet. Man is then the first theme of

knowledge that could appear in the field left free by the

decoupling of Physis and Physics [Physis et Physique].

“Definitus Physiologia per scientiam corporis animati;

strictius a medius per scientiam corporis sani; alii

tractationem physicam de homine in specie

Anthropologiam vocant”. {Wolff, Logica} It is in so far as

it is an anthropology that Physiology acquires its

specificity; anthropology is the reason for its not being

pure and simple Physics.

-3- This paradoxical posture of anthropology (that is the

reason of what it is part of-party to-) is full of

consequences. It will be at once limit of the science of

Physis and science of this limit; it will be this limit pulled

down, on this side of herself, on the domain that she

limits, and will define also in terms of relations what is

not related to her, in terms of continuity what is rupture

and in terms of positivity what is finitude.

Platner says: ‘One could regard the body and the soul in

their reciprocal relations and limitations, and that is what

I call Anthropology’. But Telena had clearly seen that the

relation cannot be circumscribed, in the Anthropology,

unless one takes the standpoint of Physis. This is by

opposition to their philosophical methods; according to

his, one must take the modifications of the soul ‘wie sie

durch das Selbstgefuhl erkannt werden’; in the analytical

Psychology of the Anthropology, he regards the

modifications of the soul ‘von der Seite da sie etwas in

dem Gehirn als dem innern Organ der Seële sind’, and one

tries to explain ‘als Solche Gehirnsbeschaffen heiten und

Veranderungen’.

-4- Due to what is most initial in its project, the

Anthropology cannot avoid being at once reductive and

normative. Reductive, because it will not accept anything

of what man knows of himself, by the ‘Selbstgefuhl’, but

only what he can know by the movement that goes

through the mediation of the Physis. The Anthropology

will only be addressed to a phenomenon of phenomenon,

to the terms of a bending that always presupposes the

horizon of Nature. But on the other hand, it will always

be the science of an animated body, finalised towards

itself, and developing according to a right functioning.

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The Anthropology will be knowledge of a health that to

man is synonymous to animation. In some way the science

of the normal par excellence: ‘Die Lehre von der

Beschaffenheit von dem Nutzen der Teile des

menschlichen korpers in gesunden Zustand’.

-5- The Anthropology thus finds itself enveloping and

surrounding all knowledge of man. It functions as explicit

or implicit horizon to all that man can know about

himself. And each domain of the sciences can take place

within the large field of the Anthropology, in so far as

something of man is implicit in it: ‘the first object that

strikes me in this vast groups of our knowledges is that

which is concerned with man considered in his personal

relations, and of men united in political associations’.

[Lacratelle: ‘Of the establishment of human knowledges’,

‘De l’ établissement des connaissances humaines’. 1792]

But as a natural being man grounds his knowledge by

limiting it, and by inserting it in a little of nature that

does not provide him with the possibility unless he

retracts its value (mais entant qu’etre naturel l’homme

ne fonde sa propre connaissance qu’en la limitant, qu’en

l’inserant dans un peu de nature qui ne lui donne de

possibilite que s’il retire sa valeur). And an

anthropologically founded science will be a reduced

science, measured on man, deposed of its own truth, but

for this given back to the truth of man. It is thus that the

Anthropology, as it is simultaneously foundation and

reductive rule, takes the form of a normative knowledge,

prescribing in advance to each science that calls man into

question its course, its possibilities and its limits. Ith

predicted in this manner an Anthropology that would be

physiological, a second one that will be psychological, and

a third historical, a last one moral or teleological. In

founding knowledge (savoir), where less than constituting

the science that founds knowledge (savoir), the

Anthropology, by a single movement limits and finalises it

(ou du moins en constituant la science de ce qui fonde le

savoir…). Whatever its empirical contents, the

Anthropology then has an epistemological structure that is

proper to itself. It conveys a meaning that cannot be

superposed to the ‘traites de l’homme’ in the style, nor

less, even less in the Cartesian obedience, nor to the

empiricisms that always hang over Locke’s thought.

Surely, as the basis, it is a savoir in the language of

nature, and like the others, an assignation of the

originary. But these are only moments in its total

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epistemological structure. In fact, they are balanced

around something that is not the human animal, nor self

consciousness, but the Menschenvesen, which is to say at

once the natural being of man, the law of its possibilities

and the a priori limit of knowledge.

The Anthropology will then not only be science of man

and horizon of all sciences of man, but also science of

what grounds and limits for man his knowledge. It is there

that lies the ambiguity of this Menschen-kenntniss by

which the Anthropology is characterised: it is knowledge

of man, in a movement that objectifies him at the level

of his natural being and in the content of his animal

determinations; but it is knowledge of the knowledge of

man, in a movement that interrogates the subject on

itself, on its limits, and on what he authorises within the

savoir that one gains on him. The Anthropology was

believed to put in question a sector of nature; it poses in

fact a question that would transfer on the philosophy of

our epoch all the shadow of a classical philosophy now

deprived of God: can one have empirical knowledge of

finitude? Cartesian thought, even though it struggled well

early, and from the experience of error, reencounters this

finitude, only has been definitely expelled/referred back

to starting from an ontology of the infinite. And

empiricism practices this finitude and refers to it without

pause, but as limit of itself as much as frontier of

knowledge. The anthropological interrogation has a

different meaning; it is about knowing – savoir – if, at the

level of man, a knowledge of finitude can exist, so

liberated and grounded that one can think such finitude in

itself, i.e. in the form of positivity.

It is here that the great reordering operated by Kant

intervenes. In fact, the internal structure of the

Anthropology and the question that secretly animates it

take the same form as the interrogation of the Critique;

there is an ambition to know the possibilities and the

limits of knowledge; it imitates of the exterior and in the

gestures of empiricity the movement of a Critique; and

what is given in it seems to be able to function as an a

priori. For a long time the anthropologies have thought

they could welcome the Kantian lesson without

difficulties or thinking twice: Schmid, Heifeland, Ith are

only the first proofs of a list that could be long and not

stop at the 18th century. We need even the resistible

naivety of our contemporaries to celebrate in the

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Anthropology the passage of finally secured associations

or we would lose the austerity of rationalism; soul and

body, subject and object. The moment in the wonder of

this reconciliation they only reencounter the miracle; few

of them are surprised of their deafness to the

grammatical misunderstanding of Menschenkenntniss.

In fact, the moment one believes to assert critical

thought at the level of a positive knowledge, one forgets

what was essential in the lesson left by Kant: the

difficulty of situating the Anthropology in relation to the

critical ensemble, one would only have to indicate that

this lesson is not at all simple. Anyway, this lesson says

that the empiricity of the Anthropology cannot be

founded on itself; that it is possible only as a repetition of

the Critique; but that is will not stop referring to it and

that if it figures as the empirical and exterior analogon it

is in so far as it is supported by structures of the a priori

already named and displaced. Finitude, in the general

organisation of Kantian thought, can never reflect itself

at the level of itself; it only offers itself to knowledge and

discourse in a secondary manner; but what it is

constrained to refer to is not an ontology of the infinite,

it is, in their total organisation, the a priori conditions of

knowledge. This is to say that the Anthropology will find

itself doubly subdued to the Critique: as knowledge, to

the conditions that the Critique fixes and to the domain

of experience that determines it; as exploration of

finitude, to the primary and unsurpassable forms that the

Critique manifests. Thus understood, the situation of the

Anthropology bears some resemblance to that of

Aufangsgrunde der Natur: to put forward the system of

articulation between the Critique and the a priori forms

of knowledge on the one hand, and on the other hand the

principles of an empirically constituted savoir, historically

developed without the Critique. But on this symmetry of

surface reigns a deep dissymmetry: in the Anfangsgrunde

it is a question of Physics and of a science thus

constituted in its plenitude and its truth: in the

Anthropology it is about the Physis, that layer of

knowledge where it is a question of imperfection, of

boundaries, of failures: shortly, of the negativity at the

level of nature.

In other words, from the Critique to Anfangsgrunde the

continuity is assured by the forms of synthetic activity

and the field of truth that it founds and structures; from

the Critique to the Anthropology, the continuity is

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established by the common insistence on limits and the

rigour of the finitude that they indicate.

The Principles of Nature go by God and render superfluous

the hypothesis of an actual infinite, whence the Critique

has showed the internal contradiction; the Anthropology

points a finger to [montre du doigt] the absence of God

and it deploys itself in the gap left by this infinite. Where

the nature of physical bodies says synthesis, the empirical

nature of man says limit. This reciprocal and inverse

character and this dissymmetric symmetry of the

synthesis and of the limit surely lie at the core of Kantian

thought: it is to them that the Critique retains its

privileges with respect to all possible knowledge.

Now it is time to come back to our starting problem. This

accompanying of the Critique by an anthropological

teaching, this monotone counter point through which Kant

doubled the effort of transcendental reflection by a

constant accumulation of empirical knowledge on man.

The fact that for twenty-five years Kant has taught

Anthropology has to do with things other than the

exigencies of his university life; this obstinacy…of linking

to the structure itself of the Kantian problem: how to

think, analyse, justify and ground finitude, within a

reflection that does not go through an ontology of infinite

and does not find justification in a philosophy of the

absolute? A question that is effectively at the outset in

the Anthropology, but which cannot assume in it its

veritable dimensions since it cannot be reflected upon, by

itself, within empirical thought. The marginal character

of the Anthropology resides there: it is at once the

essential and the inessential, -this constant border in

relation to which the centre is always shifted, but that

keeps referring to it and interrogating it. One could say

that the critical movement is disengaged (degage) from

the anthropological structure: at once because it only

takes its value from liberating itself from it, from going

against it, and by that, founding it. The epistemological

configuration proper to the Anthropology mimics the

Critique; but we must not be taken in by this prestige,

and give back to this resemblance a rational order. This

order consists in making the Anthropology gravitate

around the Critique. And this re-established order has

been for the Anthropology the authentic form of its

liberation, the putting into place of its veritable meaning:

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it can appear then as that in which the passage from the a

priori to the fundamental is announced, from critical

thought to transcendental philosophy. One would see in

what network of counter-senses and illusions the

Anthropology and contemporary philosophy have engaged

one another. One wants to value the Anthropology as

Critique, as a Critique liberated from prejudices and of

the inert dead weight of the a priori; once it cannot give

access to the region of the fundamental that if it remains

in obedience of a Critique. One has wanted to make (what

is nothing but another modality of the same forgetting of

the Critique) the field of positivity where all human

sciences find their foundation, and their possibility; once

in fact it cannot speak but the language of the limit and

of negativity: it cannot but have the meaning of

transmitting of the critical vigour to the transcendental

foundation the presence of finitude. In the name of what

is, i.e. of what must be according to its essence the

Anthropology within the entire philosophical field, one

must challenge all these ‘philosophical anthropologies’

that present themselves as natural access to the

fundamental; and all these philosophies where the point

of departure and the concrete horizon are defined by a

certain anthropological reflection upon man.

Here and there an illusion is at play: what is proper to

western philosophy since Kant. This illusion balances, in

its anthropological form, the transcendental illusion that

concealed pre- Kantian metaphysics. It is by symmetry

and by referring to this as guiding thread that one can

understand in what this anthropological illusion consists

of. In fact one historically derives from the other, or

rather it is by a slipping/sliding of meaning in Kantian

Critique of the transcendental illusion that the

anthropological illusion could be born. The necessary

character of the transcendental appearance has been

more and more often interpreted not as a structure of

truth, of phenomenon and experience, but as one of the

concrete stigmata of finitude. What Kant designated in it,

in a very ambiguous manner, as ‘natural’ has been

forgotten as fundamental form in relation to the object

and recuperated as ‘nature’ of human nature. The

illusion, consequently, instead of being defined by the

movement that would criticise it in a reflection upon

knowledge, has been referred to an anterior level where

it appears at once de-doubled and founded: it becomes

truth of truth, -this starting from which the truth is

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always there and never given; it becomes thus the raison

d’ être and the source of the Critique, the point of origin

of this movement for which man loses truth and

incessantly finds himself called back by it. This illusion

currently defined as finitude becomes par excellence the

withdrawal of truth: that in which it hides and in which

always one can find it again. In this the anthropological

illusion resides, from a structural point of view, as the

inverse, the mirror image of the transcendental illusion.

What consists in applying the principle of understanding

out of the limits of experience, and then in admitting an

actual infinite in the field of possible knowledge, by a

sort of spontaneous transgression or anthropological

illusion resides in a reflexive regression that must account

for this transgression. Finitude is only superseded if it is

something other than itself and where it rests on a in-this

side of where it finds its source; this in-this side of (en-

deca) is finitude itself, but replicated in the field of

experience where it proves/tests itself on the region of

the originary where it is founded. The problem of finitude

is shifted from an interrogation on the limit and

transgression onto an interrogation on the return to the

self; from a problematic of truth to a problematic of the

same and the other. It enters the domain of alienation.

The paradox consists in this: in freeing itself from a

preliminary Critique of knowledge and from a primary

question on the relation to the object, philosophy is not

liberated from subjectivity as fundamental theses and

point of departure of its reflection. It is on the contrary

locked up/shut up in giving itself thickness, hypostasised

and closed in the insurmountable structure of

‘menschliches Wesen’, in which this extenuated truth

that is the truth of truth sits and silently takes it in.

One can then understand why in one single movement

characteristic of the reflection of our epoch, all

knowledge of man is either presented dialectically at the

outset (dialectics of origin) to enter the game or it is

rendered dialect in full right, - i.e. a meaning where it is

a question of return to the originary, to the authentic, to

the founding activity, to that by which there is in the

world signification; and all philosophy is given as being

able to communicate with the human sciences or the

empirical reflections on man without going through a

Critique (detour), an epistemology or a theory of

knowledge.

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Foucault's Commentaire of Kant's Anthropology

The Anthropology is this secret path that, towards the

foundations of our savoir, links by an un-reflexive

meditation the experience of man and philosophy, the

insidious values of the question: ‘was ist der Mensch?’ are

responsible for this homogeneous field, de-structured and

indefinitely reversible where man gives his truth as the

soul of truth. The polymorphic notions of ‘meaning’, of

‘structure’, of ‘genesis’, -those which would be the value

that they could have and that would be right to give back

to them in a rigorous thought- only indicate for the

instant the confusion of the domain where they take their

role of communication. The fact that they circulate

indifferently in all the human sciences and in philosophy

does not found a right to think as of a single holder these

and those, but only signals the incapacity we are in to

exercise against this anthropological illusion a real

Critique. And then of this Critique we have received the

model since more than half a century.

The Nietzschean enterprise could be understood as end

point finally given to the proliferation of the interrogation

on man. The death of God is a manifest effect in a

gesture doubly deadly that, by ending the absolute, is at

the same time assassin of man himself. Because man, in

his finitude, is not separable from the infinite of which he

is at once negation and herald; it is in the death of man

that the death of God is accomplished. It is impossible to

conceive of a Critique of finitude that would be liberatory

then in relation to man as well as in relation to the

infinite, and that would show that finitude is not end, but

this bending is the knot of time where the end is

beginning?

The trajectory of the question: was ist Mensch in the

philosophical field is completed in the answer that

challenges it and disarms it: der Ubermensch.

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Foucault's Commentaire of Kant's Anthropology

Translator's footnotes:

(1) see I. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of

View, [Victor Dowdell trans.] Carbondale: Southern Illinois

University Press, 19961996, p. 29-30.

(2) I. Kant, Anthropology, 1996, p. 49 on mental illness:

‘Mental illness lies in the inclination to accept the play of

ideas of the inner sense as empirical knowledge, although

it is only fiction, or to deceive ourselves by intuitions

which are formed in accordance with such fictions (day

dreaming).’

(3) On this issue, Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, (trans. by

Norman Kemp Smith) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,

2003, p. 630 B826

(4) I. Kant, Anthropology, Preface, p. 2

(5) On this, see Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, p. 239-

240 B266: ‘That which agrees with the formal conditions

of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and

concepts, is possible. That which is bound up with the

material conditions of experience, that is, with sensation,

is actual. That which in its connection with the actual is

determined in accordance with universal conditions of

experience is (that is, exists as) necessary.’

(6) Here Foucault is likely to be referring to Kant,

Critique of Pure Reason, section $24, B150, p. 164-165:

Of the application of the categories to objects of the

senses in general, where Kant asserts that: ‘In so far as

imagination is spontaneity, I sometimes also entitle it the

productive imagination, to distinguish it from the

reproductive imagination, whose synthesis is entirely

subject to empirical laws, the laws, mainly, of

association, and which therefore contributes nothing to

the explanation of the possibility of a priori knowledge.

The reproductive synthesis falls within the domain, not of

transcendental philosophy, but of psychology.’

(7) see I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 653 B860

(8) Kant writes: ‘[Empirical psychology] is a stranger who

has long been accepted as a member of the household,

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Foucault's Commentaire of Kant's Anthropology

and we allow it to stay for some time longer, until it is in

a position to set up an establishment of its own in a

complete anthropology, the pendant of the empirical

doctrine of nature.’ Critique of Pure Reason, p. 664, B877

(9) Temporal determination as form of intuition

(10) see Kant on the ‘Third Antinomy’ in the Critique of

Pure Reason, p. 464 B560

(11) see Anthropology, 1996, $88, p. 185.

Back to

Foucault

Kant

http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpfoucault1.htm (59 of 59)30-03-2007 19:07:42

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