Kant-Foucault: part two

The post-Kantian landscape is not a barren land.

In part one I suggested what a possible post-Kantian philosophical project might look like and explained how a part of Foucault’s work aligns with that. I also illustrated that Foucault in his open commentary on Kant almost explicitly foreshadows how he is going to unfold that kind of project.

Now I will give short summaries of three works of Foucault that are exemplary of this kind of exposition of empirical concepts and how they even show an underlying affinity with Kant’s core ideas. I will not quote Foucault so there will be a lot of paraphrasing and a bit of personal interpretation going on. I obviously highly recommend reading these three wonderful works and do your own interpretative work.

“The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception” (1963)

This work is a research into the history of medical practice, focusing on the period roughly between 1770 and 1825 with emphasis on a major breakthrough which is the rise of pathological anatomy as an explanatory model in the science and practice of medicine. It deals with what kind of explanatory models, practices and principles where important before and leading up to this breakthrough and also which of those principles still remain relevant after that breakthrough. That last part is of course the more interesting “plot-twist” in this work. The main obvious focal point is indeed how pathological anatomy was clearly a scientific breakthrough which lead to an ontological rearrangement and a sudden increase in medical knowledge. In short here we can consider “pathological anatomy” the model that deals with the fact that diseases can be best explained when we link them to how our internal organs are connected, how they are separated, how their functions interact etc. In other words, we should cut open some corpses to see if we can learn a thing or two there. And thus a whole field of medicine that now seems to be obvious arose from that idea (and its application) and gave way to a lot of useful explanation. Before that breakthrough there where all kinds of different approaches to classifying and dealing with different kinds of diseases which had nothing to do with that idea of an underlying connection of our internal organs. For example classifications that where more inspired by botanical classification (like that of Carl Linnaeus) with criteria that now would appear quite foolish (colors and textures of a certain rash, certain smells of secretion etc..). But also more useful models like for example the evolution of certain diseases, how they develop in time, evolution of fevers etc., which now still is a useful way of looking at medicine.

But indeed more important than the breakthrough itself is what exactly lead to the breakthrough, is it purely the idea of “obviously let’s have a look inside that body” or is there some more conceptual work to be done before you decide that opening up corpses can be useful in the first place. Foucault seems to defend the idea that indeed there’s more to it than that mere idea, after all, the mere idea of cutting open a human body arose way before the actual breakthrough that was anatomical pathology. So in that way, certain ideas are obviously necessary to spark certain purposeful empirical research.

What’s even more interesting is that once that breakthrough happened and surely yielded a vast amount of new scientific knowledge (in practical medical use as well as in theoretical medical knowledge) on a more ontological level and even on a level of medical practice (describing disease, curing disease, health-care, well being...) the incredible useful model of pathological anatomy can’t seem to be completely able to replace the principles that came before. It might be the case that to do good medical science, pathological anatomy on its own is not the holy grail that can do all the work and certainly doesn’t appear to be sufficient to completely ground the concept of “good medical science”. You could say there still remains an overarching principle yet to be unraveled and the principles used before the breakthrough aren’t all redundant and can still play an essential role in the evolution of medicine. Also we see that in order to keep making progress, we need to be able to make abstraction from the concept of “pathological anatomy”, not because it is a bad concept but just because we have to accept that it is not the final overarching principle.

“The order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences” (1966)

Compared to “The Birth of the clinic” this work has a much broader and more ambitious scope. Although it has the same general approach in that it tries to excavate certain historical frameworks that lead to certain ontologies, it has a far less clear and obvious structure and conclusion. It’s actually the same kind of research in shifting ontologies but for science in general and more specific how certain scientific ontologies are bound to shift in accordance with the historical development of language in general or vice versa. The more frameworks emerge in this work, the more it becomes clear that language is inherently obscure and mysterious, especially any genesis (origin story) of a possible linguistic structure. I must point out here that the original french title of the book is “Les Mots et les Choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines” Which translates more literally into “The Words and the Things:….” which would be a far better translation but to avoid confusion with certain similar works of other authors at that time, the publisher opted for “The Order of Things:..” The original title suggests exactly what this work tries to do, namely positing “words” apart from “things” and both giving them their appropriate legitimacy by pointing out how their relation shifts through time. A naive realism obviously is long gone but the very notion of a shifting relation between “the words” and “the things” legitimizes both in a new way.

Foucault in this work seems to oppose the radical linguistic view that language is the only structure available to us. While it is obviously a near impossible task to expose structures other than language itself with that same language as our only means, at the same time that is also the exact reason why an explanation of language is bound to contain parts that are inherently obscure and enigmatic. As a consequence this work has a lot more of the earlier mentioned enigmatic writing style and also a far more loose methodology. In that sense it reflects a true empiricist starting point (in not necessarily needing a critique of reason as such when doing the dirty work of excavating concepts). An explanation of language that is completely clear and methodologically consistent is per definition not complete. That’s why I think the radical linguistic standpoint is a tautology, if it would be true, it wouldn’t fit in any true statement. (this is analogous to the near impossible task of explaining non discursive knowledge through discursive concepts). In that way the obscurity is an integral part of the concept and Foucault succeeds brilliantly in exposing the uncanny and mysterious nature of language. It’s as if the true nature of language is not something that is mysterious to begin with and can be revealed through analysis but in fact it is the exact opposite: language has absolute clarity on the surface and by trying to expose it, the mystery increases and one gets stuck in an unavoidable unsolvability, especially when it comes to trying to find out what it is exactly what that language is supposed to point at. Of course Foucault doesn’t just point to the mystery and leaves it with that. In his somewhat haphazard and pragmatic methodology he also succeeds in truly exposing networks that underlie the obvious grammatical structures. In that way the image emerges of various layers of networks that interact with each other as if it where matrices. These kind of elucidating passages remind me a lot of Plato’s Kratylos, where a dialogue that starts off with a seemingly silly etymological word game of explaining the meaning of words, evolves into true Platonic idealism, then becomes a radical realist view (as opposed to nominalist) and eventually ends op offering a conceptual clarity on language that was totally unexpected for the naive empiricist we as contemporary science-minded people, all are.

The downside of his loose methodology and tendency to point out incomprehensibility is that Foucault in this work sometimes looses himself in metaphorical language that could be best described as a messy accumulation of incommensurable concepts that lead to nowhere. As a thinker it might be tempting, when facing the void of incomprehensibility, to nevertheless extensively bear witness to this revelatory experience by piling up the metaphors. To be clear about what amount I’m talking about I would say roughly five complete pages (of a total of 450 pages) I consider to be nonsensical, compared to Hegel I would say that’s not too bad, compared to Kant that’s quite poor. Of course it’s perfectly possible that I’m just too stupid to understand these passages, in which case a retract my critique. Or we could be charitable and assume that now and then Foucault just wants to invoke an incomprehensible void with these passages and the extensiveness of the passage is proportionate to that particular void. On the other hand it’s remarkable that of the three works I summarize here, this work seems to contain the most brilliant expositions of structures and mechanism and at the same time contains the most obscure passages. Apparently one can’t have one without the other and in a way that is also the point of this work. There’s words on the one hand and things on the other hand and trying to point towards a fixed connection between the two can only lead to an incomprehensible mess from time to time.

“The Courage of Truth” (1984)

disclaimer: I adopt Foucault’s use of certain ancient Greek words in this summary, I do this not to give my writing a certain aura of knowledgeability because I can safely say my knowledge of ancient Greek is nonexistent. The use of these Greek words is relevant because when philosophers do this it is usually to point out that that particular word carries within itself a concept that is way broader then a translation to a single contemporary word might suggest. This is in itself already a historical exposition of concepts.

This is a lightly adapted transcript of the last lectures Foucault gave at the Collège de France from 1983 until his death in 1984. It’s an account of his research into the ancient Greek concept of parrhêsia, which literally translates in “to speak everything” and more broadly means speaking truth, speaking freely in a candid and courageous way. He dismantles and contemplates the history of this concept, starting from Heraclitus, obviously elaborating quite a bit on Socrates’ well known Apologia and eventually arriving at a deep dive into cynicism as a kind of culmination of the concept (cynicism as the philosophical school of thought associated with Diogenes of Sinope). The common thread in the exposition is that parrhêsia implies a kind of ethical stance. Speaking the truth freely and candid requires a kind of courage that at least implies that the relation between the speaker and listener is at risk of being harmed. Therefore Foucault connects parrhêsia with the courage needed to be outspoken about one’s own ideas and morals. This courage implies that other well known socratic principle of “know thyself” (gnôthi seauton) and Foucault even takes this further to a necessary “devotion to the self” (epimeleia heautou) and “care for the self”. Speaking freely in that way becomes nothing less than a defense of one’s own way of life, and even requires a complete openness of how you live your life. In that way one becomes accountable for any truth that one speaks and that truth implies a true way of living to back it up. This also implies one has to “know” life and how to live it to speak truth candidly. All this is of course in sharp contrast to our contemporary notion of “truth” or “speaking truth”, which is the far more stripped down concept of a mere logical or syllogistic truth that has the ability to completely stand on its own and can be outspoken regardless of any knowledge or care for oneself.

While it’s obvious that for example a tyranny can be a clear threat to parrhêsia Foucault also points to the less obvious threat of democracy, suggesting that since in a democracy any ethical stance is completely outsourced to the very mechanism that is democracy, there isn’t really any place left for real defense of ethical stance and thus democracy is structurally at odds with parrhêsia. In other words if contemporary democracy works how it should, any ideological discourse these days won’t stand a chance and even any ethical standpoint is looked at as somewhat inappropriate. The obvious upside of this is that democracy is potentially capable of disarming any harmful ideology but all the same renders any ethical discourse highly suspicious. Foucault suggests that despite this tension parrhêsia nevertheless finds other ways to emerge and points at how in the 19th century for example the modern idea arises that the life of the artist in its manifestation should in a way be a testimony of what art in truth is. Understanding art becomes interconnected with understanding what the life of the artist is. Also political activism, anarchism, revolutionary thinking and on the darker side radicalization and terrorism are for Foucault possible ways in which parrhêsia finds its way despite democracy opposing it. Additionally he also sees on the one hand pahrresia as “confiscated” by religion in that only religious institutions seem to be occupied with the question of a “true way of life” and on the other hand an invalidation of that same question by the scientific institutions.

It is only somewhere halfway his series of lectures that Foucault also decides to spend some time on trying to explain a more literal or logical notion of “truth” in ancient Greek philosophy. Because clearly they must have had some notion of truth that somewhat resembles our contemporary logical notion of truth that provides the basis for pahrresia? But even what we could consider the most literal translation of “truth” namely the ancient greek word alêtheia appears to be not as straight forward as expected (or hoped for). Foucault clarifies an etymological structure of the word and points to four possible meanings of which the first one is most obvious, after all the prefix “a” in a-lêtheia is a negation of what follows and thus one could translate this word to “that which is not hidden”. A second translation could be “that which is not mixed with something else” suggesting purity and singularity. A third meaning points to “that which is straight” suggesting a certain conformity, a conformity even with how things should be. The last meaning Foucault points out is “that which doesn’t change” and points to identity or substantiality. So again we arrive at this peculiar property of language that at the surface we seem to have at our disposal a clear meaningful concept but when we analyze it there is on the one hand a clarity in that we can expose a certain structure and content but on the other hand the original “perceived” clarity of the concept “truth” is somewhat obscured or dissolved. We can’t find anything in its parts that can truly live up to the perceived clarity of the concept as a whole, the analysis clarifies, yes, but at the same time it obscures. Although Foucault doesn’t explicitly mention Kant here the attentive Kantian is quite happy with the offered analysis because it clearly seems to point at a bunch of what Kant would call categories of thought, where we eventually always end up with when trying to analyze any empirical content into concepts.

How is all this Kantian?

One could point at any post-Kantian philosophical work and claim it is in a way Kantian because there are concepts that are being analyzed. That’s a bit like saying a work is Kantian because it has words in it. In part one of this essay I pointed out what Kant might find a useful way of doing philosophy and of course a lot of post Kantian philosophy falls under that category of conceptual analysis/synthesis with a strong awareness of the empirical side, awareness of its suitable place so to speak, you don’t need Kant for that, that’s just reasonable empirical philosophy (or science). Reason would be a nonsensical concept if one would need Kant for being reasonable. And yet there’s a lot of philosophy that just doesn’t fall under that category of what Kant would regard good empirical philosophy. The best example would be the tendency to start with definitions when it comes to empirical philosophy. There’s nothing to learn from a definition when it comes to gaining knowledge of the world, we have to accept the given concepts with their obscurity and their messy contingent history and we have to accept that discursive thought is not possible without concepts. Of course the only difference between a definition and a concept is that a concept is not definitive so it can be tempting to try to force our concepts into a definitive mould¹. A second example of bad empirical philosophy from a Kantian viewpoint is the tendency to take empirical concepts and wanting to cram them into a definitive speculative ontology.

Foucault I think can be considered Kantian in two ways. Firstly he is explicit in his knowledge of Kant’s core critical ideas, which is obvious when we read his doctoral thesis “Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology” (1964) and his lecture “Qu’est-ce que la critique” (1978) and moreover he isn’t interested in reassessing these ideas, in other words we can be sure Foucault won’t be bothering us with yet another metaphysical system. And secondly he is more or less explicit in that the way he treats empirical concepts seems to perfectly align with what Kant set out to be good empirical philosophy, in other words Foucault indeed resists the temptation to take empirical concepts and mould them in a definitive or speculative ontology, in stead he says: let’s reads some old books an see what we can really learn about the world of today. Because in the end empirical philosophy is just a matter of explaining new words with even older words and older words with new words.

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©Mathias Mas, 2025.

1. The only “mould” Kant suggested is the mould of discursive thought and that mould simply comes down to our ability to grasp our knowledge of the world in forms of “this is that”. And in his attempt to find out what is logically necessary to come to the form of “this is that” he didn’t even claim to have “defined” the pure concepts of our thought but merely to have pointed out their principle as the pure concepts without which no object can be thought. To the best of his abilities and starting from given concepts he then proposed a possible table of these concepts and deduced them from their subjective source.