Foucault’s Concept of Actuality
Keywords:
epistemology, archaeology, metaphysics, genealogy and criticismAbstract
This conference attempts to provide an answer to the question about Foucault’s concept of actuality. We understand “actuality”, not as the present moment of the conjuncture, but rather as the presence in philosophy of those principles that do not pass away, that are not transitory, because they touch upon what has always been the intimate life of philosophy. Our thesis, therefore, is that Foucault's actuality rests on the concept of "critique", which is latent throughout his work. Specifically, this concept of critique consists of eradicating two principles that animate traditional metaphysics and epistemology: firstly, the conviction that objects, mute in their exteriority, are independent beings, indifferent to thought; and secondly, the conviction that thought is a mere subjective faculty that confronts objects, but in no way alters them. Foucault's philosophy, from archaeology to genealogy and ethics, is the most powerful attempt of our time to introduce, into both things and thought, a profound historicity, determining both the experience of objects and the experience of thought. Examining things, not in their immutable presence, but in their genesis; consequently, examining thought, not as an individual faculty, but in its changing transformations and mutations—this seems to us to be the true relevance of this philosophy.
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