Foucault’s Hegel Thesis: The “Tragic Destiny” of Life and the “Being-There” of Consciousness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i36.7227Nøgleord:
French Hegelianism, Jean Hyppolite, early Foucault, Husserl, Eugen FinkResumé
In this paper, I offer an intellectual-historical reading of Foucault’s unpublished master’s thesis. In contrast with other recent scholarship on the pre-1961 period of Foucault’s career, the purpose of this paper is to grapple with the philosophical content of this thesis on its own terms, distinguishing it as far as possible from his mature work. This allows forgotten concepts to re-emerge in the course of reading the text and for a novel engagement with such neglected facets of Foucault’s oeuvre. Indeed, the key concept which I argue emerges from Foucault’s early thesis is that of language as the être-la of thought. By closely following Foucault’s Husserlian reading of Hegel, and his response to Eugen Fink’s paradoxes of phenomenology, it is possible to see how Foucault briefly lands upon a novel kind of scepticism about the reality of history and minds. In the same way, I will also show why Foucault was unable to fully develop or commit to these sceptical positions during this part of his career. The article concludes by briefly suggesting contrasts between my reading of this early text and the way Foucault’s oeuvre is more generally understood.
Referencer
Basso, Elisabetta, "Foucault's Critique of the Human Sciences in the 1950s: Between Psychology and Philosophy," Theory Culture & Society 17 (2020), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420950824
Basso, Elisabetta, Young Foucault. The Lille Manuscripts on Psychopathology, Phenomenology, and Anthropology, 1952-1955. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.7312/bass20584-008
Bianco, Giuseppe, "La Dialectique Bavarde et le Cercle Anthropologique" in Jean Hyppolite : Entre Structure et Existence, ed. Giuseppe Bianco. Paris: Rue d'Ulm, 2013. https://doi.org/10.14375/NP.9782728804900
Colebrook, Claire, "A Cut in Relationality: Art at the End of the World," Angelaki 24:3 (2019), 177-178. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2019.1620469
Descombes, Vincent, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Scott-Fox and J. M. Harding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Elden, Stuart, "Do We Need a New Biography of Michel Foucault?," American Book Review 39:2 (2018), 12. http://doi.org/10.1353/abr.2018.0008
Elden, Stuart, The Early Foucault. Cambridge: Polity, 2021.
Fink, Eugen, "The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism", [1933] in The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critical Readings, ed. R. O. Elveton. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003059592-3
Ford, Russel, Introduction to "Hegel and Kierkegaard," in Jean Wahl. Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings, ed. Alan D. Schrift and Ian Alexander Moore, 90-106. New York City: Fordham University Press, 2017.
Foucault, Michel, La Constitution d'un transcendantal dans la Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel [1949], unpublished text accessed at Bibliothèque National de France. BnF, NAF 28803, box 1.
Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge [1969], trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. London: Routledge, 2011.
Foucault, Michel, "The Order of Discourse" [1970] in Uniting the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, trans. Ian Mcleod, ed. Robert Young. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.
Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish [1975], trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin Books, 1991.
Geroulanos, Stephanos, An Atheism That is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought. Red-wood City: Stanford University Press, 2010.
Gutting, Gary, Thinking the Impossible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Heckman, John, "Introduction," in Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenome-nology of Spirit [1949]. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2000.
Hegel, G.W.F., Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1977.
Huffer, Lynne, "Foucault's Fossils: Life Itself and the Return to Nature in Feminist Philos-ophy," Foucault Studies 20 (2015), 124-125. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i0.4933
Husserl, Edmund, Cartesian Meditations [1931], trans. Dorian Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4952-7
Hyppolite, Jean, Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit [1949], trans. John Cherniak. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2000.
Koyré, Alexandre, "Note sur la langue et la terminologie hegeliennes," Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger 112 (1931), 439.
Lawlor, Leonard, "Translator's Preface" in Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence [1953]. New York: SUNY Press, 1997.
Macherey, Pierre, "Did Foucault Find a 'Way Out' of Hegel?," Theory, Culture & Society 40:1-2 (2023), 19-36. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221084903
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Humanism and Terror [1947], trans. John O'Neill. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
Pippin, Robert, Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness [1989]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Roth, Michael C., Knowing and History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Roberts-Garratt, Oliver, "The Philosophy of the Early Foucault (1949-1954)," PhD thesis, Exeter University, 2022.
Sforzini, Arianna, "Foucault and the History of Anthropology: Man, before the 'Death of Man'," Theory, Culture & Society 40:1-2 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420963553
Vuillerod, Jean-Baptiste, La naissance de la anti-hégélianisme. Louis Althusser et Michel Fou-cault, lecteurs de Hegel. Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.enseditions.40112
Downloads
Publiceret
Citation/Eksport
Nummer
Sektion
Licens
Dette værk er under følgende licens Creative Commons Navngivelse – Ikke-kommerciel – Ingen Bearbejdede Værker (by-nc-nd).
Authors retain copyright to their work, but assign the right of the first publication to Foucault Studies. The work is subject to a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, but despite these restrictions, authors can take for granted that Foucault Studies will permit articles published in Foucault Studies to be translated or reprinted in another format such as a book providing a full reference is made to Foucault Studies as the original place of publication.
