Archéologie

Abstract

Résumé Après avoir rappelé la variété des significations de la notion chez Foucault, l’article fait retour sur ses usages antérieurs, chez Kant d’abord, au sens d’une histoire de l’ archè de la philosophie, puis chez Martial Guéroult avec l’idée de dianoématique, mais aussi chez Husserl et Merleau-Ponty, chez Sartre et Canguilhem, chez Freud et Lévi-Strauss… De cet héritage multiple, Foucault est en un sens l’héritier mais il innove aussi de façon radicale en privilégiant le concept d’une archéologie « horizontale » qui soit une « science de l’archive ».

Archaeological Methodology: Foucault and the History of Systems of Thought

“…Foucault does not refer to the supposed text of Kant -in fact, such a reference, let alone discussion of Kantian archaeology, is absent from his entire oeuvre (McQuillan, 2010: 39). According to a number of scholars (Kusch, 1991;Libera, 2016;McQuillan, 2010;Paltrinieri, 2015), Foucault's reference goes to Kant's employment of the term 'archaeology' in the 'jottings' (lo¨se Bla¨tter) for his unfinished essay on the Progress of Metaphysics (Kant, 2002(Kant, [1804). Here, Kant uses the term just once to designate what the editor (in the title he gave the jottings, sometimes mistaken for Kant's own) called a 'philosophizing history of philosophy'.…”

“…To begin with a seemingly simple question: Why did Foucault call his methodology 'archaeology'? The question has only rarely been posed and has so far not been given a satisfactory answer, arguably because lacking an adequate account of the historical formation of the concept (see Kusch, 1991;Paltrinieri, 2015;Sabot, 2006). It is often stated that archaeology offers a method for the study of the historical emergence of our structures of knowledge, bridging the two disciplines of philosophy and history (Osborne et al, 2015: 24).…”