Antropologia dal punto di vista genealogico. A priori storico e soggettività in Michel Foucault; «Dianoia. Rivista di filosofia» n. 21, 2015, pp. 413-446. (original) (raw)

One of the main elements of continuity in Foucault's work is the problem of the relationship between a priori conditions and subjectivity. The theme of the a priori represents an essential tool through which Foucault criticizes the modern “anthropological illusion”, attributed for various reasons to the currents of the post-Kantian philosophy – notably idealism, positivism and phenomenology. This illusion consists in considering the impersonal conditions of the experience as some subjective features albeit objectively definable, or within the space – reachable or unattainable – of a pure and fundamental dimension. Foucault’s perspective is identified as a radically anti-transcendentalist conception of the a priori. This is reformulated, since the Fifties, through the concept of historical a priori, then expressed in the notions of episteme and dispositif, and specified in the description of the archaeological and genealogical method. Characterized as a dynamic, multiple, practical plot of constituted and constituent, the historical a priori is a set of "purely empirical" conditions in which the subjectivity emerges, within its limits and its possibilities. Keywords: Subjectivity, historical a priori, transcendental field, phenomenology, genealogy, power, apparatus.

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