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Historicity and Transcendentality: Foucault, Cavaills, and the Phenomenology of the Concept Author(s): Kevin Thompson Source: History and Theory, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Feb., 2008), pp. 1-18 Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478720 . Accessed: 12/06/2013 19:33
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History and Theory 47 (February 2008),

1-18

? Wesleyan

University 2008 ISSN: 0018-2656

AND TRANSCENDENTALITY: HISTORICITY

FOUCAULT, CAVAILLES, AND THE

OF THE CONCEPT PHENOMENOLOGY

KEVIN THOMPSON

ABSTRACT

This

It argues that the coher with Foucault's historical is concerned paper methodology. the historical of a set of tools for unearthing of his project lies in its development in the epochs that have shaped the present that govern age. thought and practice principles Accord transcendental and historical. claimed that these principles Foucault are, at once, ence

on his having soundness of Foucault's developed project depends ingly, the philosophical a satisfactory and the of the transcendental the absolutist between way of passage purism The paper shows that the key to seeing how Fou of the historical. mundane contingency and largely unexplored lies in a surprising this desideratum cault achieved methodological taken up, modified, as it was Husserlian phenomenology acknowledged: explicitly in the thought of the philosopher of logic and mathemat and practiced of the concept. I call the phenomenology ics, Jean Cavailles?what the two most lines of interpreta The essay has four parts. The first sketches prominent are not and that both least because tion of Foucault's argues they inadequate, methodology tradition that he himself dismiss

both

ments

The second Foucault's part lays out the rudi heritage. phenomenological strand of the phenomenological tradition of the neglected inaugurated by Cavailles's This in turn, to set the of Husserlian method. and appropriation serves, critique important and then Foucault's distinct first, Canguilhem's stage for the third part that examines, proj the transcendental within the historical, and the historical within the tran

ects

of Cavailles's continuations of the concept. phenomenology respective a brief consideration of the pathways with that this way of reading The essay concludes of power, Foucault the nexus and subjectivation up for understanding opens knowledge, that came to define his work.

for grasping scendental?their

Throughout his complex and unorthodox historical investigations, Foucault al ways held that he was pursuing a single philosophical project, what he ultimately came to call a Critical History of Thought. In the years since his death, the con sistency as well as the coherence of this endeavor has been called into question. In what follows, Iwant to explore an approach to reading Foucault that not only seeks to substantiate the unity of his work, but also helps us to see precisely its stakes. My contention is that the coherence of Foucault's project lies in the sin gularity of its aim: to unearth the stratum of experience that governs the thought and practice of the historical epochs that have shaped the present age. Foucault's work was an examination of the conditions in and through which we have come to be what we are; it thus continually is our present? poses, for us, but one central question: what

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2 At

KEVIN THOMPSON

this point, convention would dictate that we enter into the various ongo over the periodization of Foucault's texts, the shift in method from debates ing to genealogy to problematization, and the change in problematics archaeology from knowledge tent employment to subjectivation. of a specific methodology I shall call a phenomenology to power But I believe that Foucault's consis in the pursuit of the question of the across all these of the concept?cuts

present?what disputes. Indeed, it is only insofar as we situate his work within this important, and admittedly surprising, framework that we can begin to see its real significance and understand the challenge that it can still set before us. Foucault said that his histories were unconventional at a dimension

in that they sought to get of experience that eludes those concerned with what has been said, what has been done, and what has been endured, the collection of facts we typi cally call human history; he designated this dimension with a variety of terms or and les phrases throughout his career: epistemes, dispositifs, problematisations, I shall with be concerned just one jeux de verite. For the purposes of this essay, of his earliest markers for this dimension: the historical a priori. Foucault defined this concept as the historical set of rules that serve as the conditions for the emer gence and interrelations of the experience of discursive and nondiscursive bodies. But what precisely did he mean by such rules? a priori, the principles Foucault sought were neither physical causes nor empirical regularities. They did not bring about an effect nor were they simply persistent patterns of material processes. Instead, what Foucault searched for was the set of requirements that various kinds of knowledge and ways of acting had to Being fulfill in order to be counted as valid instances of knowing objects and events involved in these forms of knowledge
in order to be counted as existing entities and occurrences

and acting, and that the and action had tomeet

at all. In this sense,

what Foucault's of which

Foucault

historical
were

studies tracked were

thinking, doing, and being become

sought transcendental.

the necessary structures by virtue possible. In a word, then, the rules

to say that a set of structures is transcendental has historically meant that the conditions in question are not only necessary, but universal and timeless; that they are unalterable and applicable without temporal or spatial limits. Foucault's Now
coupling of the terms "a priori" and "historical" thus appears to produce a self

contradictory concept. the contingency of the particular. But Foucault dental rules, different conditions for thought, action, and being, can be shown to define different historical epochs. How, then, is this possible? How can a set of conditions be at once the operative structures by virtue of which thought and ac tion are what they are, and at the same time be mutable forms that set down the boundaries of acceptability for what is knowable and doable within a specific age? How is something to be at once transcendental and historical and how is it to be grasped as such? This, we can say, is the core concern of Foucault's critical history of thought. It seeks nothing less than to grasp the simultaneity of historicity and transcendental soundness of Foucault's project thus depends on his hav ity. The philosophical ing worked out a satisfactory way of passage between the Scylla of the timeless

It seems

to contaminate

the purity of the universal with held that specific sets of transcen

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AND TRANSCENDENTALITY 3 HISTORICITY universality of the transcendental and the Charybdis of the mundane contingency of the historical, a pathway that integrates the necessity of the transcendental with the bounded specificity of the historical. The aim of what follows is to show that this is just what Foucault's
achieving.

phenomenology

of the concept was dedicated

to

require a detailed survey of the entire ty of Foucault's historical investigations, along with an assessment of his repeated criticisms of the phenomenological tradition.1 This is obviously beyond the limits A full substantiation of this claim would of the present essay. Instead, the strategy Iwill pursue is to reconstruct a part of tradition within which Foucault situated himself on the relevant methodological as it was taken up, modified, occasions: Husserlian phenomenology and practiced in the thought of the philosopher of logic and mathematics, Jean and the tradition of the of scientific Cavailles, phenomenology rationality that most out his in the of research of the historian of sci work, emerged prominently numerous ence, Georges Canguilhem.2 My contention is that the key to understanding how Foucault sought to think the simultaneity of the transcendental and the historical vein. lies in this largely unexplored methodological The essay has four parts. The first sketches two of the most prominent lines of I argue that both, though fundamentally interpretation of Foucault's methodology. at odds in so many ways, prove nonetheless to be ultimately unsatisfactory be cause they both dismiss Foucault's phenomenological heritage. The second part out the rudiments of the neglected strand of the phenomenological tradition lays inaugurated by Cavailles's important critique and appropriation of Husserlian method. This serves, in turn, to set the stage for the third part, inwhich I examine, first, Canguilhem's and then Foucault's distinct projects for grasping the transcen dental within the historical, and the historical within the transcendental?their respective continuations of Cavailles's concludes with a brief consideration Foucault opens up for understanding tivation that came to define his work. of the concept. The essay phenomenology of the pathways that this way of reading the nexus of power, knowledge, and subjec

1. For discussions of Foucault's various treatments of the phenomenological tradition, see Gerard in Les mots et les choses," inMichel Foucault Lebrun, "Notes on Phenomenology Philosopher, transl. Timothy J. Armstrong (New York: Routledge, 1992), 20-37; Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre, and Historical Reason: Volume Two: A Poststructuralist Foucault, Mapping of History (Chicago: of Chicago Press, 2005), chaps. 8-9; Todd May, "Foucault's Relation to Phenomenology," University to Foucault, in The Cambridge 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge ed. Gary Gutting, Companion on Freedom and Johanna Oksala, Foucault Press, 2005), 284-311; (Cambridge, UK: Press, 2005), chap. 2. Cambridge University 2.1 thus take issue with David Macey's claim that "[i]t would be an error to identify Foucault too as the latter's work is grounded in the pure phenomenology of Husserl" closely with Cavailles, {The Lives of Michel Foucault that seek [New York: Pantheon Books, 1993], 132). For other accounts to draw out the link between Foucault and Cavailles see Stephen Watson, in quite different ways, University "'Between Tradition and Oblivion': and the Esthetics of Existence," UK: Cambridge the Complications Foucault, in The Cambridge Companion of Form, the Literatures of Reason, to Foucault, 1st ed. Gary Gutting, and David Hyder, 262-285; "Foucault,

ed. (Cambridge, Press, 1994), University on the Historical and Husserl of the Sciences," on Science Cavailles, Epistemology Perspectives 11 (2003), 107-129. Others, in addition to Canguilhem, who followed Cavailles in developing and of scientific include Suzanne Bachelard, Jean Ladriere, and pursuing a phenomenology rationality Francois Delaporte.

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KEVIN THOMPSON I

coherence

If what we have said thus far is correct, if the real barometer by which to gauge the of Foucault's philosophical project is his attempt to work out a viable theory of the historical

a priori, then two lines of interpretation of this project are to the first, the historical a priori is nothing more especially important. According than a set of empirical patterns articulating common ways of speaking and acting; according to the second, the field of the a priori only becomes historical insofar as it is traversed, from without, by force relations. At the center of the divergence in these approaches stands the question of the status of the historical a priori. As a way into this issue, let us consider more carefully the rudiments of the case that
each of these readings advances.

important advocate of the first line of interpretation is Beatrice Han.3 She has sought to extend a version of the critique first developed by Dreyfus and Rabinow,4 namely, that Foucault's attempt to show that a set of rules serves as the conditions for the possibility of what is sayable, or more properly of what is ac ceptable, within a particular discipline in a specific historical period fails because double that it is itself nothing other than a repetition of the founded-founding Foucault himself had shown to constitute the analytic of finitude in the science a historical a priori can only be an empirical scheme, a de of man. Accordingly, scriptive pattern that seeks to articulate common ways of speaking, but it cannot be the normative and efficacious principles of language itself. People may act in accordance with these rules, but they do not actually follow them. A historical a priori, Han thus argues, is just an empirical regularity, nothing more, nothing less. But this, of course, is to say that Foucault's aspirations for a truly transcendental foundation for his research, a project that would set out and maintain the integrity of the transcendental field, are ultimately left unfulfilled. The ontology required
for a truly coherent account of the transcendental is missing, Han argues, and in

The most

its stead all that is left is an unacknowledged empiricism. The empirical has been to in the transcendental. made stand for The second line of interpretation was set out by Gilles Deleuze.5 On this read ing, the real heart of Foucault's work is its challenge to the empirical dogma that we speak of that which we see, and that we see that of which we speak; in
other words, that words and things bear an essential referential interrelation. Fou

cault calls this assumption into question by opening up the transcendental stratum whose rules govern both what is sayable, the conditions for the formation and usage of words, and what is visible, the conditions for the formation and employ ment of things. Two heterogeneous but interrelated a priori forms thus constitute this field: statements and visible objects.
et le transcen Entre Vhistorique Foucault: de Michel Han, L'ontologie manquee 1998). A revised version of this text was translated into English (Grenoble: Jerome Millon, transl. Edward Pile and the Historical, the Transcendental as Foucault's Critical Project: Between 3. Beatrice and Hermeneutics, transl. Sean Hand

dental

Press, 2002). (Stanford: Stanford University and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: 4. Hubert Dreyfus Beyond Structuralism of Chicago Press, 1983). 2nd ed. (Chicago: University de Minuit, Foucault 5. Gilles Deleuze, 1986); Foucault, (Paris: Les Editions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

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HISTORICITY AND TRANSCENDENTALITY 5 Now Deleuze argues that with this line of interpretation comes a profound prob lem. The conditions of the say able hold a position of priority over those of the visi ble. Language possesses an intrinsic spontaneity, and, as such, can play a distinctly determining role; light, however, the condition for what is visible, provides only a space of receptivity: it is solely a sphere of determinability. Hence, a version of the Kantian problematic of the relation of spontaneity and receptivity, of imagina tion and intuition, reemerges in Foucault, and herein lies, on Deleuze's reading, its decisive dilemma: how can the heterogeneous conditions of language and light be adapted to each other? How can the forms of the say able, the conditions of sponta neity, be joined with the forms of the visible, the conditions of intuition?
Foucault's answer, according to Deleuze's analysis, is the theory of power as

a web of force relations. Conceived qualitative

are neous affected and

in terms of differentials
are a third

elements,
by one

forces are fundamentally

another. As they a result, are thus forces able

of quantitative and one another and affect pathic: they

form?at once, schematize sponta state or, better,

receptive?and

to adapt

ments with what between

is visible. Force relations thus act as the requisite mediating axis these disparate forms and thus make possible the joining of words to

things, reference itself. Deleuze argues that since force relations are, by definition, unstable, variable, and constantly in a state of evolution, then the mutations and shifts of rules from one historical epoch to another are a result of their intervention in the transcen dental Deleuze stratum. Forces, on this reading, are thus the site of the historical, what calls the "non-place" of mutation. But this means that the play of forces, as a mediating axis, necessarily remains distinct from the transcendental stratum itself. Their web becoming, movement intervenes on this field, infecting it from without with the flux of but the transcendental itself is, on this analysis, held distinct from the of alteration, the movement of history. Access to the transcendental in

Foucault, on Deleuze's reading, has thus been bought at the price of maintaining its separation, its purity, with respect to the domain of becoming. History neces sarily enters the a priori only from without. History itself is not endemic to the
transcendental. Now these disparate readings present a rather stark, and apparently irresolv

the integrity of the transcendental able, choice: either (in the case of Deleuze) must be bought at the price of relegating the historical to the impurity of empirical as becoming, or (in the case of Han) the transcendental must be acknowledged nothing other than the empirical in disguise, itsmutability the consequence of the impossibility of keeping it free from the taint of the mundane. However, this is a fundamentally false dilemma. It is rooted in a profound misreading of Foucault's project, one that these otherwise deeply divergent interpretations actually share. Both approaches assume a conventional understanding of the a priori as a di mension devoid of the capacity to change, and they thereby fail to recognize the truly innovative conception of the a priori that Foucault was able to develop by resources born in the tradition of the phenomenol employing the methodological ogy of the concept. The fact that both approaches dismiss Foucault's distinctive phenomenological heritage means that they fail properly to understand his most tool. In order to interpret Foucault properly, then, we significant methodological

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6 must seek to reconstruct

KEVIN THOMPSON then, precisely is a phenomenology

this heritage. What,

of the concept? II
On two occasions?both in one, a lecture, the other, an introduc

separate

1978,

insisted on setting the trajectory of his work within the lineage of reflection that had been instigated by Cavailles. Certainly the most philosophical well known instance of this occurs in the Introduction Foucault wrote for the Eng tion?Foucault lish translation of Georges Canguilhem's The Normal Here Foucault proposed an alternative mapping French and the Pathological.6 of the terrain of postwar

thought. Rather than the standard divisions between Marxists and non Marxists, specialists and academics, theoreticians and politicians, Foucault ar that another, much deeper cleavage ran throughout all these streams: the gued separation between a philosophy of experience, meaning, and the subject (with and a philosophy of which he associates principally Sartre and Merleau-Ponty), and the which he includes Cavailles, Gaston (in concept rationality, knowledge, Bachelard, Alexandre Koyre, and Canguilhem himself). This cleavage, he notes, was certainly much older than the postwar period, but its real import was felt, he tells us, in the way inwhich it shaped the reception of Husserlian phenomenology he says?refer during the years just before the war. Specifically, phenomenology, set to delivered in Paris in 1929 and the of lectures that Husserl ring principally of two readings."8 One sought to radicalize it in the di and subjectivity, while the other tried to return this new method to its roots in questions of formalism, intuitionism, and the quest to work out a pure theory of logic. Foucault aligns his own body of work with this latter rection of consciousness
6. Foucault presented the lecture in question, "Qu'est-ce que la critique? (Critique et Aufklarung)," on the 27th of May, A transcript of the lecture was 1978 before the Societe franchise de philosophic 84 (1990); 35-63; "What de philosophie in Bulletin de la societe francaise published posthumously inMichel Foucault, The Politics is Critique," transl. Lysa Hochroth, of Truth, ed. Sylvere Lotringer is the text Foucault con and Lysa Hochroth 1997), 23-82. The Introduction (New York: Semiotext(e), "Introduction The Normal and the Pathological: translation of Canguilhem's tributed for the English III. 1976-1979, ed. Daniel Defert and in his Dits et ecrits: 1954-1988. Volume par Michel Foucault" in The Normal "Introduction by Michel Foucault" Francois Ewald (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 429-442; and the Pathological, Reidel, transl. Carolyn R. Fawcett in collaboration with Robert S. Cohen (Dordrecht: D. 1978, repr. New York: Zone Books, 1991), 7-24. Foucault revised this text in April of 1984 for "La vie: l'experience et la science," Revue de metaphy inclusion in a volume dedicated to Canguilhem, IV. 1980 Volume sique et de morale 90, no. 1 (1985), 3-14; reprinted inDits et ecrits: 1954-1988. and 1994), 763-776; "Life: Experience 1988, ed. Daniel Defert and Francois Ewald (Paris: Gallimard, Essential Works of Foucault, and Epistemology: transl. Robert Hurley in Aesthetics, Method, It was, Volume Two, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1998), 465-478. 1954-1984, on which he was able to work before his death. transl. Gabrielle cartesiennes: Introduction a la phenomenologie,

that were first published cartesiennes1?"allowed

in French

translation

in 1931 under the titleMeditations

Science,"

apparently, the last of his writings 7. Edmund Husserl, Meditations Pfeiffer and Emmanuel Levinas

stances of this translation, Band I (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). Vortrdge, ed. Stephan Strasser, Husserliana, Volume III. 8. Michel "Introduction Foucault," Dits et ecrits: 1954-1988. Foucault, par Michel 9. Cf. "La and the Pathological, Foucault," The Normal 430; "Introduction by Michel 1976-1979, IV. 1980-1988, Volume et la science," Dits et ecrits: 1954-1988. vie: l'experience 764; "Life: Experience and Science," in Faubion, ed., Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, 466.

(Paris: Vrin, 1953). On see the editor's "Einleitung"

the history of these lectures and the circum und Pariser Meditationen in Cartesianische

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ALITY 7 AND TRANSCENDENT HISTORICITY strand and finds in it a distinctive

enment: who are we?9

taking up of the central question of the Enlight

But how could a research agenda dedicated to the most abstract of problems, the foundations of logic and mathematics, have anything to do with the questions
that were to become the main themes of Foucault's research: power, knowledge,

and the formation of modern subjectivity? Wouldn't one think that a philosophy of subjectivity, a philosophy of meaning and responsibility, would have much more to say about such matters as these? I shall come back to these questions at the conclusion of this paper, but if we can lay out the arc along which Foucault saw him sought to think the simultaneity of transcendentality and historicity, and self in doing so as carrying forward the tradition begun by Cavailles, then we can ap perhaps begin to see what itwas about this specific type of phenomenological nexus of power, proach that ultimately led him to grapple with the problem of the knowledge, and even subjectivation. seminal essay, Sur la logique et la theorie de la are science, theory fairly straightforward. Its aim is to develop a comprehensive of science. His most important insight was that such a theory must not just specify legitimate deductive forms, nor merely ground such a project in a properly con The rudiments of Cavailles's ceived epistemology, but that itmust ultimately sary intrinsic progress of scientific knowledge be able to account for the neces itself. That is to say, the theory

of con between a philosophy the same distinction inMay, Foucault employed in a way that is quite similar to the Introduction. As of the concept and a philosophy in which Husserlian to account for the disparate ways he used this cleavage in the Introduction, was appropriated in postwar France. And yet in the lecture, unlike the published phenomenology 9. In the lecture sciousness work, the textual reference was not to the Cartesianische und die variation tranzendentale Meditationen, but rather to Die Krisis der Wissenschaften europaischen this seemingly inconsequential mately at issue is establishing Phanomenologie lies in the fact that whereas of [1936]. The significance in the Introduction what is ulti

work in the history of science, in the the importance of Canguilhem's own emerging concern: Foucault's ismuch more specifically lecture, the matter under consideration establish and power. And while the Carte sianische Meditationen the relationship between knowledge

in the Krisis Husserl method of description, the transcendental of the phenomenological foundations and autonomy, a collapse that seeks to show how the collapse of the classical search for apodicticity is the root form of explanation, of the naturalistic takes place with the Enlightenment's privileging as he wrote. It is thus this that was engulfing Germany grew the barbarism to scientific knowledge and practice that of the crisis of rationality and its relationship not primarily in the question of Enlightenment, provides the context within which Foucault conceives terms of who we are, but as the question of the relationship between the historical formation of scien leads to the fury of power?" tific knowledge and mechanisms of power: "how is it that rationalization element out of which examination Bulletin de la societe francaise de philosophic, ("Qu'est-ce que la critique? [Critique et Aufklarung]," inMichel Foucault, The Politics transl. Lysa Hochroth 44; "What is Critique," of Truth, 42). de 10. Jean Cavailles, Sur la logique et la theorie de la science (Paris: Presses Universitaires transl. Theodore J. Kisiel in Phenomenology France, 1947); "On Logic and the Theory of Science," Northwestern ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans and Theodore J. Kisiel IL: Sciences, (Evanston, to this work are designated in Press, 1970), 357-409. All further references University the text as "SLTS" followed by the appropriate page reference to the French edition and then to the I have modified translation. Where the translation. Cavailles this text necessary, composed English in 1942 during one of several internments he suffered as a founding member of the first Resistance the Natural and

movement

in France. The essay was published posthumously, with Canguilhem serving as co-edi death while forces in 1944. For tor, due to Cavailles's imprisoned by German counterintelligence an account of Cavailles's A life, see the biography by his sister, Gabrielle Ferrieres, Jean Cavailles: in Time of War, 1930-1944, transl. T. N. F. Murtagh (Lewiston, MA: The Edwin Mellen Philosopher Press, 2000).

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KEVIN THOMPSON

must be able to account for the historicity of science. Cavailles rejected the most candidates a of his for such neo-Kantianism prominent day theory?Bolzano's and Carnap's logical positivism?because both, albeit for different reasons, turn out in the end to be reductionistic, each failing to preserve, at one and the same time, the objectivity of the fundamental principles of scientific investigation and their historical development. Cavailles therefore turns to Husserlian phenomenol ogy and, in particular, to the concept of intentionality as the best hope for working out a theory of science that would meet these stringent demands. For Husserl, the key to unlocking the nature of science is its relationship to for mal logic and, of this, to its being founded upon the constitutive performances of a transcendental logic. Husserl argues that the purpose of formal consciousness,

logic is to lay down a normative framework within which scientific investiga tion can be carried out and its results validated. Logic is fundamentally, then, the methodology of scientific inquiry. It follows that the basic task of a phenom enology of logic is to disclose and clarify the fundamental standards of evidence that undergird inference, explanation, and truth that, in turn, properly govern the construction of propositions, theories, and their ultimate justifications. According to the investigations Husserl carried out, text that Cavailles principally inFormale und transzendentale Logik [1927]?the submits to an especially careful analysis?formal logic necessarily presupposes, and is thereby said to be founded in, pre-predicative experience, what Husserl fa mously calls a life-world (Lebenswelt), and for this reason the discipline is prop erly deemed a "world-logic" (Weltlogik).11 On Husserl's analysis, then, formal logic and, by implication, the sciences that fall under its governance, are life-world constructions?cultural formations?and their development is thus the work of human consciousness itself. Cavailles con cludes from this that the core project of phenomenology is contained in itsmethod of regressive inquiry or questioning-back it seeks to open up empiri (Ruckfrage): cal history in order to expose the buried layers of sedimentation, the prior consti tutive acts, that have accrued within
intentional sense-history, their

and the norms of intuitive fulfillment

scientific principles?what
order

Husserl
these

calls their
achieve

traditionality?in

to reactivate

ments

by bringing them back, as a "polished system of acts" (SLTS, 76/408), to their originary intuitive givenness. Basic theorems of logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences are to be returned to their origins in the activities and prac

tices from which they emerged, thereby being renewed by being restored to their original animating sources. But what this questioning-back ultimately excavates is the structure of historical genesis itself, what Husserl calls, in the fragment entitled "Die Frage nach dem Urspung der Geometrie als intentional-historiches Problem" [1939], the "concrete, historical a priori": "the living movement of

11. Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Band XVII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, [1927], ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana, 1974); Vernunft Formal and Transcendental transl. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus 1969). Logic, Nijhoff, is the one who actually employs the term Weltlogik in his recasting of Husserl's Ludwig Landgrebe see Edmund Husserl, und Urteil: Untersuchungen der Logik zur Genelogie position; Erfahrung [1939], Investigations Northwestern ed. Ludwig Landgrebe 1972), (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, in a Genealogy transl. James S. Churchill of Logic, Press, 1973), ? 9. University and Judgment: ? 9; Experience and Karl Ameriks II: (Evanston,

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AND TRANSCENDENTALITY 9 HISTORICITY the coexistence and interweaving of original sense-sedimentation (Sinnsedimentierung)."12 sense-formation (Sinnbildung) and

Phenomenology's uncover and renew the historically embedded accomplishments that lie hidden and neglected behind the workings of scientific sense, Cavailles

aim, then, is to of consciousness

inquiry. In this as a kind of Fink's of says, Eugen phenomenology description a to the was return to return correct: is "the the absolutely origin "archaeology" original" (SLTS, 76/408). of taking this approach are Cavailles shows, however, that the consequences theory of science must ultimately be able quite dire. Recall that a comprehensive to account for the kind of changes and transformations that are intrinsic to scientif ic knowledge itself; that is, itmust account for the unique immanent historicity of
science. But, on Husserl's construal, scientific inquiry cannot make any advance

in knowledge innovation?all ismerely

argues,

that would be an advance

intrinsic to itself. Change, transformation, out arise in and of the life-world. All scientific knowledge can do of this deeper stratum. And because,
transcendental logic?that

reflect the movements

there can be no genuinely

as Cavailles
govern

is, no norms

itself is the ground of all norms and (because consciousness ing this movement activities of conscious life are, at best, arbitrary thus is itself beyond them)?the and capricious. Science is then but a sheer garment draped over the arbitrary, ir rational processes of the life-world.13 Cavailles concludes that this move is noth ing less than an "abdication of thought" (SLTS, 77/408) because here, precisely finds that itmust confront history and the historicality of where phenomenology science in particular, it blinds itself to the very uniqueness of scientific change. is a "continual revision The empirical record shows that scientific development and eradication (rature)" (SLTS, of contents by deepening (approfondissement)

und die Husserl, III," in his Die Krisis der europaischen Wissenschaften "Beilage in die phanomenologische Eine Einleitung ed. Walter Phanomenologie: Philosophic, Biemel. Husserliana, Band VI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 380; "Appendix VI: [The Origin of Geometry]," in his The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental An Phenomenology: to Phenomenology, Introduction transl. David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Press, University 12. Edmund transzendentale each side of the intentional structure. He begins with by examining and argues that Husserl's of the reducibility of the (the noematic) conception the delicate balance that the phenomeno objective principles of logic to lived experience undermines concern here if we consider the following line logical project had promised. We can get at Cavailles's norms of consistency, of reasoning: if the rules of sense, validity, and soundness?the inference, and critique works the intentional object founded in and thus, in some sense, are reducible to the life-world, then formal ultimately the states of affairs already pres logic could be nothing other than a merely abstract way of combining ent in the world itself, a mere "close-fitting garment of ideas," as Husserl referred to it. But this would mean that logic would be a set of maximally broad and, accordingly, maximally It empty tautologies. could have no content of its own, and thus no history of development intrinsic to itself. Cavailles thus truth?are concludes account of the content of formal logic is inhabited by a that Husserl's strain of precisely the sort of naturalistic positivism that he had tirelessly sought argues that in tracing turning now to the intentional act itself (the noetic), Cavailles of consciousness, Husserl's logic back to the constitutive performances approach deeply recalcitrant to oppose. Second, the rules of formal 1970), 371. 13. Cavailles's

ties the ultimately it is the foundation of all inquiry to a stratum of activity that, precisely because the productive norms, cannot itself be bound by norms. As a result, the work of constitution, activity of conscious and arbitrary. The transcendental life, can be nothing more than contingent logic that norms of scientific Husserl had sought to uncover as the foundation of formal logic thus could that is left is the flow of temporality, the empty form of becoming. not be a logic at all. All

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10 78/409)14; but such movement

less tion flow and of lived experience, sense-sedimentation."

KEVIN THOMPSON as this is simply ruled out by recourse to the seam

"the coexistence and interweaving formulation, of sense-forma "if there is In Cavailles's succinct

a consciousness 78/409). Therein

phenomenology appear to provide

of progress, there is not a progress of consciousness" (SLTS, the failure of Husserlian ultimate lies, in Cavailles's judgment, as a foundation for a viable theory of science: it simply doesn't the conceptual tools needed to articulate the unique historicity In the last few lines of

of scientific progress. But what then does Cavailles

offer as an alternative?

the final paragraph of the essay, Cavailles provides what is an admittedly cryptic sketch of another way of approaching the historicity of science. Its details are murky, but we can say that he does not here propose simply to abandon the terrain of phenomenological inquiry. Instead, what he advances is a call for a modified form of this methodology, transformed precisely so as to be able to get at the pro foundly eruptive historicity of science itself.15 Cavailles's sciousness flowing approach takes its bearings from the rejection of the claim that con life is not a detached, seamlessly does not itself develop. Conscious stream to which all objectivities can ultimately be traced back, as Husserl

is nothing appeared to presume. Rather, the transcendental field of consciousness other than the theories and investigations within which it dwells and, as such, it is caught up in their continual movement of enrichment and overturning. The logic of scientific development is, then, the logic of the development of consciousness. Cavailles writes, "The progress is material or between singular essences [that is, between historically distinct theories], and its engine (moteur) is the need to surpass (depassement) each of these" (SLTS, 78/409). This, then, is the structure of the historicity that is endemic to scientific inquiry itself. It progresses not by a linear accumulation of knowledge, what Cavailles calls "augmentation of volume by juxtaposition," but by a constant eruption of new insights, concepts, and grids of intelligibility that overturn and replace what preceded them: "What comes after is more than what existed before, not because it contains it or even because it

revision of contents continual this passage in the Introduction?"a 14. Foucault by quotes an exact refer but without it to Cavailles, and eradication"?attributing specifying deepening III. 1976-1979, ence (see "Introduction Volume Foucault" Dits et ecrits: 1954-1988. par Michel in The Normal and the Pathological, Foucault" 14-15; and "La vie: 435; "Introduction by Michel "Life: Experience IV. 1980-1988,770; Volume et la science," Dits et ecrits: 1954-1988. l'experience refers to this and Epistemology, 471). Canguilhem ed., Aesthetics, Method, in for scientific development in terms of working out a proper historical methodology et in Ideologic dans l'historiographie his "Le role de l'epistemologie contemporaine," scientifique J. Vrin, 1988), 23-24; rationalite dans Vhistoire des sciences de la vie (Paris: Libraire Philosophique in the in Ideology and Rationality in Contemporary "The Role of Epistemology History of Science," 13-14. MA: MIT Goldhammer transl. Arthur the Press, 1988), (Cambridge, History Life Sciences, of of Cavailles's examination 15. For a more comprehensive thought that seeks to offer an alternative and Science," same passage in Faubion, Philosophie Sebestik's of this final paragraph to the one proposed here, see Hourya Sinaceur, Jean Cavailles: de France, 1994), 110-122. See also Jan (Paris: Presses Universitaires mathematique Sur la logique to Jean Cavailles, on the entire essay in his "Postface" useful commentary J. Vrin, 1997), 91-142, esp. 138-142. Both et la theorie de la science (Paris: Libraire Philosophique seek to show the roots of Cavailles's him, Sebestik, thinking in Spinoza and Sinaceur, and following interpretation but, inmy judgment, fail to see the way in which what Cavailles proposes builds resources he found in Husserlian furthers the methodological phenomenology. upon

Brunschvicg, and actually

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AND TRANSCENDENTALITY 11 HISTORICITY prolongs it, but because it necessarily breaks out (sort) of it and carries (porte) in its content the mark, each time singular, of its superiority. There is in itmore it is not the same consciousness" consciousness?and (SLTS, 78/409). With this, we expose the real nerve of Cavailles's analysis and themoment at which he deci one that takes its bearings from sively opens a new way of doing phenomenology, the integration of the historical and the transcendental. He argues that since the eruptive movement of historical mutation is endemic to the very nature of scientific knowledge, itmust also be inherent in the transcen dental field that grounds such knowledge, for otherwise this stratum would not be the foundation for a form of knowing that develops in this way. It follows from this that the transcendental must itself be alterable, changeable, and historical for it to be the condition Cavailles concludes for the possibility of scientific inquiry. his reading by naming the new approach thatwould seek to

remain faithful to the unique historicity of the transcendental foundations of sci ence: "It is not a philosophy of consciousness but a philosophy of the concept that
can provide a theory of science. The generative necessity is not that of an activity,

but that of a dialectic"

(SLTS, 78/409).16 We find here, then, the original formation of the distinction that Foucault was to invoke some thirty years later. At its center was the attempt to work out a an insistence theory of the historicity of knowledge, to science we must think the integration of transcendentality that to do and histo

transcendental justice

ricity. Cavailles therefore sets forth the basic outline of such a program, what I of the concept. At the center of its agenda is the propose to call a phenomenology uncovering of a conception of the transcendental that is divorced from its roots in
consciousness, a truly anonymous transcendental field.

The program for such an approach in Cavailles is clear. A phenomenology of the concept must forsake allegiance to the primordiality of consciousness. That which had been the last court of appeal for Husserl must now itself be seen as caught up in the movement of historicity. All a priori structures must necessar ily be conceived as historically mutable and ever-changing forms. In taking this approach, the genuine historicity of science can be understood and a true logic can be found. But in leaving the sphere of of the constitution of consciousness
consciousness behind as the ultimate ground of explanation, a phenomenology of

the concept does not thereby abandon the transcendental field itself. The promise of Husserlian phenomenology proves to lie, then, for Cavailles, not in the concept
of intentionality conceived as a tranquil stream, but in a different form of ar

to break open the seemingly timeless of transcendental historicity at work within it. Cavailles thus points the way to carrying out a truly immanent critical one that carves out a way of doing appropriation of Husserlian phenomenology,
16. I leave aside here the vexing that it refers it is question of exactly what is meant by a dialectic. However, to a movement of surpassing that is immanent within the devel In this sense, it is a dialectic of noemata, rather than a dialectical

chaeology: in the ability of phenomenology domain of science to expose the movement

clear from the context

opment of scientific theory itself. relation between consciousness and its object. For an excellent examination of this originary dialectic, as itwas taken up in the thought of Derrida, see Leonard Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl: The especially Basic Problem of Phenomenology Indiana University Press, 2002), Part Two. (Bloomington:

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12

KEVIN THOMPSON a phenomenology of the ruptural development,

a new form of eidetic description:

the strange "dialectic" of

the concept.

But admittedly Cavailles leaves us with only a provocative and incomplete sketch. We are left wanting to see what conceptual tools and theoretical strategies are really required to employ this new form of inquiry. It was this question that stood as the underlying impetus that led Canguilhem and Foucault, among others, to seek in Cavailles a new way of doing the history of science. Furthermore, itwas retrieved the methodological concepts of archaeol a the their from Husserlian and put them to and historical framework ogy priori we an new now take Foucault at work in way. I propose, then, that importantly his word and consider his and Canguilhem's works as contributions and innova tions within a common this new methodological paradigm, as interconnected of the concept. the tributary, phenomenology Ill and Foucault ought to be If my argument thus far is tenable?that Canguilhem it is seen as working under the rubric of a phenomenology of the concept?then equally important to recognize that they pursue this project in significantly differ ent ways. To begin to get at what separates them, and thereby shed light on both, we can say that whereas Canguilhem tracked the rules immanent within scientific discourse that govern the production of veridical statements, Foucault sought to unearth the conditions discourses contrasting themselves. that regulate the formation and transformation of scientific Put rather simply, and to employ Foucault's own means of that determine what was concerned with "true saying it is to be "in rather rather
so often

from this stream that Foucault

streams fed by

their approaches, while Canguilhem (dire vrai)," Foucault looked for the principles the true (dans le vm*)."17

the proper object of the history of science is concepts For Canguilhem, is epistemological its true methodology than theories, and, accordingly,
than descriptive.18 A concept, as Canguilhem uses the term, is not, as we

assume, simply a term as it is defined or interpreted within a specific theoretical that or disciplinary framework. Rather, it is the initial account of a phenomenon enables scientists to pose the question of how to explain it. On this rendering, a concept is structurally polyvalent. The same concept can play a multitude of dif ferent roles in different
17. For Archeology: a useful From account

theories and yet still retain its identity as a specific con

of this distinction, to Foucault," see Arnold in his The Davidson, and "On Epistemology Historical Press, 2001),

Canguilhem and the Formation (Cambridge, of Concepts Epistemology Critical Project, 79-85. 192-206; and Han, Foucault's statement of method, 18. See Canguilhem's "L'objet de 5th rev. ed. [1968] et de philosophie des sciences, d'histoire l'epistemologie dans l'histoire des de dans

Emergence MA: Harvard l'histoire des

of Sexuality: University sciences," 1983), 9-23;

in his Etudes cf. "Le role

(Paris: Vrin,

et rationalite in Ideologic contemporaine," scientifique l'historiographie in Contemporary sciences de la vie, 11-29; "The Role of Epistemology History 1-23. For useful discus in the History in Ideology and Rationality of Science," of the Life Sciences, historical method, sions of Canguilhem's important role, though they fail to recognize Cavailles's see Gary Gutting, Michel Foucault's of Scientific Reason Archaeology Le Blanc, Canguilhem Press, 1989), 32-52; and Guillaume University de France, 1998). Universitaires (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge et les normes (Paris: Presses

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AND TRANSCENDENT ALITY 13 HISTORICITY cept. The history of science is thus to be written as a history of concepts, and this is just what Canguilhem's studies of health, illness, bodily reflex, and even the concept of life itself, are. The historian's task, however, is not simply to record the in the usages of concepts, but instead to work out what might be called the intrinsic grammar of the scientific theories in which these concepts operate. thus holds that a Reversing Gaston Bachelard's important dictum, Canguilhem historian of science must be a unique kind of epistemologist. Historians of science variations must find the structure of the theoretical models that have prevailed in history. To do this they must isolate the rules internal to scientific discourse that set down the conditions for the coherence, the regularity, of a body of scientific knowledge.

rules govern the construction of concepts, their fields of application, and their range of usages. Borrowing from Husserl, we can say that what historians must uncover is the material a priori for specific sciences. To speak truthfully in science, then, means to speak within the parameters established by the rules that to a specific scientific discourse. These internal systems are the a for producing veridical scientific statements. It is in this sense conditions priori that Canguilhem's historical epistemology seeks to identify the division of truth and falsity specific to each body of knowledge; and it is by virtue of this method that, in turn, it is able it tomark the transformations in these rules. The historical thus moves beyond both the court of transcendental consciousness epistemologist a priori) and the brute empiricality of the chronicler of dates non-historical (the and biographies (empirical history) to grasp the eidetic structures of the deeper logic of the historicity that is inherent in scientific development: "the time of the advent of scientific truth, the time of verification, has a liquidity or viscosity that for different disciplines in the same periods of general history."19 In this way, historical epistemology seeks to take up and extend the project of a phe the of concept. nomenology is different But if true speaking (dire vrai) means standards internal to scientific discourse, to speak in accordance with the a priori then what does being in the true (dans le are endemic

These

vrai) mean? In other words, how does Foucault take up the project of a phenom enology of the concept? Foucault argues that what Canguilhem's approach can do, and what it does out is mark the extraordinarily well, changes in the truth conditions that are im manent within
it cannot do,

scientific disciplines.
however, is account for

It creates a record of epistemic

these transformations themselves.

breaks. What
That is to

shows what rules govern truthful statements within say, historical epistemology of domains scientific specific inquiry, but it cannot get at the coherence and trans of these formability disciplines. To do that, eidetic description would have to have recourse to the deeper stratum of the norms that define the fields of knowledge themselves. Canguilhem's approach thus remains, for Foucault, at the level of and it thus cannot explain the regularities and shifts?the connaissance, rarity, are governed by the principles exteriority, and accumulation of disciplines?that of savoir. It follows that if a phenomenology of the concept is to get at the basis of scientific progress,
19. Canguilhem, des sciences, 19.

and not just mark

de l'histoire des

its shifts, itmust go beyond historical

sciences," in his Etudes d'histoire

epis

"L'objet

et de philosophic

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14

KEVIN THOMPSON

temology's exploration of the internal conditions for the possibility of scientific we have called, following Husserl, the material a prioris of spe claims?what cific disciplines?and unearth the fields by which and in which such knowledge is able to arise, the historical a prioris that regulate the constitution of disciplines as discursive
archaeology.

formations.

In a word,

then, one must move

from epistemology

to

As we have seen, for Cavailles, the historical a priori and archaeology desig nated phenomenology's fundamental object and its ultimate methodology. The latter was its excavation and renewal of a science's buried layers of intentional sense-history, while the former was the ultimate structure of temporality that gov erns the process of sense formation and sedimentation that is history itself. On Cavailles's reading, as we can now see, the failure of this project lay in its pre sumption that these layers and such a structure as this were tied to the unchanging flow of conscious concept mutable if the project of a phenomenology life. Consequently, of the is to see all intentional structures as part and parcel of the historically forms of science, then Canguilhem's historical epistemology certainly

provides access to the intentionality embedded within the eruptive flow of scien tific change. But, as we have noted, his approach has also left open the question of the a priori structures that govern the field within which science itself operates, the domain of savoir, the historical a priori, the stratum of the archaeological. Foucault's method phenomenology, thus does not mark a simple return to the project of Husserlian but rather carries out a decisive retrieval of its central method

ological concepts, placing them in service to a truly comprehensive phenomenol ogy of the concept.20 Our review of the history of this line of development lays before us, then, two rather simple questions that take us to the very heart of Foucault's philosophical project: (1) what is a historical a priori?, and (2) what is archaeology? My conten tion is that these questions must be answered together. For Husserl, the historical a priori is the non-historical, unchanging transcen dental structure of history itself: "the living movement (Sinnbildung) interweaving of original sense-production of the coexistence and and sense-sedimentation

But to conceive of the nature of scientific change in this (Sinnsedimentierung)." as Cavailles way is, argued, just to deny it its unique form of development. Cavail les therefore pointed to the necessity of identifying the specific a priori structures at work in science and tracing out the eruptive historicity of these conditions, the dialectic of the concept. Canguilhem's work fleshed out this project through care ful historical investigations of the employments of specific scientific concepts. In
20. In an exchange with George of the concept of Steiner, Foucault noted that his employment in Criticism," in metaphysics derived from Kant's work on progress ("Monstrosities traces this reference to Kant's entitled 1793 manuscript 1 [Fall 1971], 60). Bernauer sind die wirklichen

archaeology Diacritics "Welches

Zeiten seit Leibnitzens und Wolfs die die Metaphysik Fortschritte, as the investigation Archaologie" gemacht hat?" where he defines "philosophische Foucault's renders a certain form of thought necessary of that which (James W. Bernauer, Michel NJ: Humanities Force of Flight: Toward an Ethics for Thought Press, 1990], [Atlantic Highlands, 202, n. 113). I believe that the intellectual lineage that I have sought to reconstruct here supports the in Deutschlands claim that Foucault's actual usage of the method is derived more from phenomenology than from transcendental idealism.

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HISTORICITY AND TRANSCENDENTALITY 15 doing so, Canguilhem

discourse, and,

made

the move
was able

to work within
to uncover

the interiority of scientific

forms of intentional

as a result,

the various

ity embedded in concrete scientific disciplines. But what this approach fails to be able to do, precisely because it remains within the internal parameters of its ob ject, is account for the changing nature of scientific knowledge as a whole. It can not set out the shifting sets of rules under which some form of knowledge counts as scientific in one epoch or another. A phenomenology of the concept demands, then, that transcendentality and historicity be thought together; this is precisely retrieval of the historical a priori seeks to achieve. In the dense pivotal chapter of Uarcheologie du savoir [1969] entitled "L'a to examine scientific discours et that Foucault 1'archive," argues priori historique es as discursive formations is to take them as they stand dispersed in the field within which they may be said to communicate or fail to communicate with one what Foucault's another, the space of what Foucault calls their "positivity."21 Foucault detects here a stratum that lies between the material interiority of science, the domain of the statement (Uenonce), within which Canguilhem worked, and the wholly formal exteriority of timeless structures that were Husserl's ultimate concern. It is the space defined by the principles that govern the formation of (1) the delimitation and description of a specific phenomenon (objects), (2) the determinate place and an authority speaks (subject-positions), (3) the definition of the arrangements and complexes of acceptable statements (concepts), and finally (4) the circumscription of compatible and incompatible theories and themes (strate status from which gies). These rules thus set out the "field in which itwould be possible to deploy formal identities, thematic continuities, translations of concepts, and polemical interchanges" (AS, 167/127). These rules are then the conditions for the reality of
discourses These that rules are, we are could say, extrinsic a to the priori scientific and historical. theories They themselves. are a priori at once,

necessarily,

because they set down the conditions for being in the true. That is to say, they govern not speaking in general, but what has actually been said. They define the parameters of truth and falsity that are operative within a specific epoch and mark
the for threshold evidential of that a statement must cross in order They coexistence to be are, acceptable then, with the others, as a candidate "conditions the specific of confirmation statements, or disconfirmation. the law of their

emergence

form of their mode of being, the principles

form, and disappear" (AS, 167/127). These

according
rules

to which

they subsist, trans

and, as such, bear

are normative

prescriptive efficacy. But they do so not in the sense of absolute standards whose binding force derives from their being principles under which one can freely act, nor do they possess some form of physical causal determinacy. Rather, these rules function at the level of the categorial. Archaeological research carries out a form of transcendental deduction: sive formation by showing, the legitimacy of the rules of discur a form of imaginative variation, that, within through it establishes

21. Michel du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, Foucault, L'archeologie 1969), 166; The Archaeology on Language, & The Discourse transl. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon of Knowledge in the text as "AS" followed by Books, 1972), 126. All further references to this work are designated the appropriate page reference to the French edition and then to the English translation. Where neces the translation. sary, I have modified

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16

KEVIN THOMPSON

a specified historical epoch, a statement can enter the domain of acceptability only insofar as it accords with these conditions not just as a matter of factual happenstance but by right (quid juris). Just as in all transcendental takes the empirical fact of its object as a given and seeks approaches, archaeology formations exist; the conditions under which such a fact is possible. Discursive (quidfacti), there are complexes of existent interrelated statements whose integrity demands that they be treated as unique events; they are, tomake use of Foucault's formula tion for this, temporally dispersed. Archaeology seeks, recursively, the categorial structures, the principles, by virtue of which such occurrences as these are pos sible, and this means not the empirical scheme that some collection of claims must satisfy in order to be counted as a science, but rather the eidetic structure that a formation must possess as categorial conditions in order to be the coherent, stable body that it is. It is thus that the rules of discursive formation are a priori.

But inasmuch as these rules are categorial, the conditions for being in the true is not only the sys are, at the same time, historical: "the a priori of positivities tem of a temporal dispersion; it is itself a transformable complex (un ensemble transformable)" (AS, 168/127). The rules for the formation of objects, subjects,
concepts, and strategies are not timeless forms, schemes, or transcendentals,

whether

ideal or real. Rather, it is precisely as categorial that are formations change is signaled by the empirical, mutable. discursive That they historical shifts in the ways inwhich these unities are forged. But if the empirical these be considered nature of discursive formations tion of such bodies must

changes, then the rules that govern the constitu that also shift because the categorial is a dimension does not stand outside of the discourses that it regulates. It is a plane immanent within discourse itself whose groups of rules are, as Foucault says, "caught up in (engagees dans) the very things that they connect" (AS, 168/127). Thus, the categorial is mutable precisely because it is immanent in that which it governs.
Archaeology's transcendental deduction is also, then, a historical deduction: it

carries out historical-eidetic

regulate the acceptability of excavating the stratum of positivity, it has thus unearthed the epochal system that governs not only what is say able (statements: event), but how what is said
can be combined, that is, put to use, and this is what Foucault calls the "archive"

in order to lay bare the economies that descriptions of statements. When archaeology succeeds in its work

(AS, 169/128), the epochal economy of order. is then a form of eidetic description that seeks to remain faithful Archaeology It works not by uncovering the sense to the ruptural historicity of knowledge. which it is concerned, but by ex with the sciences the of traditionality, history, cavating the empirical surface of words and things so as to lay bare the stratum of rules, the layer of savoir, that governs the fields within which scientific dis courses operate. In doing this it also disembeds these principles and, in doing so, it opens up the immanent transcendental historicity that is at work in the develop ment of knowledge itself. To be sure, it does not seek to offer an explanation for why these shifts occur. (To do that would be to seek the non-historical condition of history itself. As we have seen, this is precisely how Husserl conceived of the historical a priori, and Foucault rejects this as a purely formal a priori because, in the end, all it can do is impose an extrinsic unity on the eruptive movement of his

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AND TRANSCENDENTALITY 17 HISTORICITY takes up the project tory.) Thus, Foucault, building on the work of Canguilhem, first announced in Cavailles's critical appropriation of Husserlian phenomenol ogy, and works out a method that takes fidelity to the matters themselves in all their density and fractural dispersion as its fundamental obligation. Archaeology is thereby a phenomenology of the concept?it "describes discourses as practices in the of the element archive" this means that, at (AS, 173/131) ?and specified its core, it thinks transcendentality positivity of knowledge. and historicity together as the stratum of the

IV Iwant to conclude by briefly considering two questions that arise out of attempts such as I have undertaken here to reconstruct some of the intellectual tradition

within which Foucault worked. The first question is one that Foucault himself poses: if the historical a priori is the reigning set of conditions under which we continually labor, how is it an to account as it? render is to of Foucault clear the possible methodological presupposition
under description

under which
must be

archaeological
historically

investigation
close to us, but

labors. The
no longer

archive
our own.

at once

That is to say, such research can take place only with the presumption of a kind of closure, that the epoch to be examined has "just ceased to be ours (viennent de cesser justement d'etre les notre)" (AS, 172/130). Breaking open the historical eidetic structures that have made us what we are thus operates in a "gap/deviation it be the beginnings of our detachment from (Vecart)" (AS, 172/130). Whether the identification of disease with the body, as inNaissance de la clinique (1962, rev. ed., 1972), or the withering away of man as the principle of knowledge, as in Les mots el les choses (1966), archaeology necessarily speaks from and out of the "border of time," what Foucault calls the "outside (dehors)" of our own language (AS, 172/130). The second question is one that I earlier set aside: what was it about that Cavailles initiated specific type of phenomenological investigation led to Foucault not with the of ultimately grapple just historicity knowledge with its relationship to power and subjectivity? Now, of course, even before began
tions

the that but he

to describe
between

his work
and

as genealogical
non-discursive

Foucault was
practices.

interested
Folie

in the rela
et derai

discursive

Consider

son (1961, rev. ed., 1972) and Naissance

knowledge is always invested in centers,

de la clinique. He was convinced

techniques, and procedures of

that

power.

But why would a phenomenology of the concept of itself lead one to a concern with these investments? Husserl and, following him, Cavailles, never took sci ence as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge. It was and is at the very center project of rationality to shape our world so as to be able to live within it. But whereas Husserl sought the cause of the crisis that afflicted freely in the twentieth century in this project's going awry?hence, the call humanity to renew the original animating intentions of the sciences?a of phenomenology the concept shows that the problem lies not in falling away from some teleologi cal progression endemic to history, but rather in the specific epochal constella of theWestern

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18

KEVIN THOMPSON

as well as the mechanisms tions, the stamps of savoir, that govern knowledge of subjugation with which structures of reason become intertwined. It was when Foucault clarity about this issue that he was able to see that must not only seek out the historical a priori by which archaeological inquiry discursive formations arise, but the transcendental historical rules that regulate the entwinement of power, knowledge, and subjectivation. He thus moved from gained sufficient describing discursive practices as they are specified in the element of the archive, to excavating the dispositif that governs discourse and power. There is perhaps no better example of this to be found in Foucault's corpus than in Parts Two and Three of La volonte de savoir (1976) where the "discursive orthopedics" of telling everything [discourse] are shown to be bound up with tactics that solidify perversion in the body [power]; both of these, in turn, are shown to operate under the rules of a specific dispositif, a determinate scientia sexualis (subjectivation). "will to knowledge (savoir)"'. the

I have argued that the coherence of Foucault's philosophical project lies in its to unearth the stratum of experience of a historical methodology development that governs the thought and practice of the epochs that have shaped the present age. I have shown that this required him to work out a way of passage between the absolute purism of the transcendental and the mundane contingency of the historical. But this presented us with a rather stark choice. It seemed that the integrity of the transcendental had to be bought at the price of excluding the im purity of becoming or it would be condemned to be the empirical in but another of the guise. Setting Foucault's work within the lineage of a phenomenology concept has, however, demonstrated that this dilemma is rooted in an important misreading of Foucault's project. Foucault's research is dedicated to unearthing conditions in and through which we have come to the transcendental-historical be what we are. It therefore stands squarely within the broader tradition of tran It seeks to isolate the strictures that govern knowledge scendental philosophy.
and practice, the work of critique, so that we can clearly see where and how we

might begin to constitute ourselves otherwise, the task of enlightenment. Archae ology is thus the method for a genuine "art of voluntary inservitude, of reflective
indocility."22

DePaul

University

22. Michel frangaise

Foucault,

de philosophic

"Qu'est-ce que la critique? (Critique 39; "What is Critique," The Politics

et Aufklarung)," of Truth, 32.

Bulletin

de la societe

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