Introduction to Kant's Anthropology (Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents)

155 Pages·2008·4.3 MB·English

by  Michel Foucault

SEMIOTEXT(E) FOREIGN AGENTS SERIES
Originally published in French by Librairie PhilosophiqueJ. Vrin.
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INTRODUCTION TO
KANT'S
ANTHROPOLOGY
Michel Foucault
Edited, with an afterword and critical notes, by Roberto Nigro
Translated by Roberto Nigro and Kate Briggs
<e>

Contents
Introduction 9
Note on the text and translation 13
INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S ANTHROPOLOGY 17
Afterword I27
Notes 141

Introduction
Traditionally, complementary theses did not get published. Yet the
"translation, with introduction and notes" ofAnthropologyfrom a
PragmaticPointofViewcomprised Foucaults complementary thesis.
Before it could be submitted to the jury, Foucault had to secure a
publisher forHistoiredelafolie, his main doctoral thesis-such were
the rules prior to 1968. The difficulties Foucault encountered have
been documented.1 Moreover, the jury, which included Jean Hyp-
polite and Maurice de Gandillac, encouraged Foucault to detach his
edition ofthe translation from the commentary, in which they saw
the beginnings ofan autonomous essay that could be developed fur-
ther. This, prompting the well-known furor, is what Foucault did:
that essay became LesMots et les choses.
The research for the complementary thesis was undertaken between
1959 and 1960 in Hambourg, a town close to Rostock (where Kant's
manuscripts are held), where Foucault was the director ofthe Institut
Fran ais. On many occasions, he notes the variations between these
manuscripts and the Nicolovius edition. Still, there is no guarantee
that this great excavator ofarchives worked directly with the manu-
scripts themselves. In the short introduction published with his
translation in 1964,2 Foucault notes that the main variations are in the
edition ofKant's work published by the Prussian Academy, which he
was using.3 His other sources can be found in the eleven volumes of
the 1922 Cassirer edition that he owned, purchased in Germany
9
The "geological depth" ofKant's text-which, over twenty-five
years, accompanied the gestation of his critical thinking-is ques-
tioned on the basis of the categories of "genesis and structure," in
homage to Hyppolite's important work on Hegel's Phenomenology
(Hyppolite was the supervisor ofthe thesis). Yet only the beginning
and the end ofFoucaults text respond to these categories; the heart
ofthe essay appeals to the-Heideggerian-category ofrepetition.
Neither a conclusion to nor a part of Kant's critical enterprise,
Anthropologyfrom a Pragmatic Point ofView establishes a conformi-
ty between empirical anthropology-as it stood in the eighteenth
century-and critical philosophy Foucaults research is in fact
bound up with what, for him, had been a key question since the
1950s, one already denounced by Husserl: the growing anthropolo-
gization ofphilosophy, from which the Heideggerian thinking that
is nevercited here, butwhich is nevertheless verymuch present, per-
haps does not emerge unscathed.
Already in "Connaissance de Thomme et reflexion transcendantale,"
a course taught at the University of Lille in 1952-3-97 hand-
written pages, the oldest philosophical text of Foucaults to have
been preserved-Foucault goes back over the destiny ofthe anthro-
pological theme in nineteenth century philosophy: Kant, Hegel,
Feuerbach, Marx, Dilthey, Nietzsche. OfKant's works, he discusses
only the short text of the Logic, which G.B. Jasche published in
1800 with Nicolovius.
From 1952, Foucault was rereading "the great Chinaman of
Konigsberg [who] was only a great critic"4 through Nietzsche, and,
from 1953, Kant and Nietzsche through Heidegger. The 1954 pref-
ace to Binswangers book5 and the "Anthropological circle," the last
chapter ofHistoire de lafolie attest to this. When, in 1964, following
10 / Ititroduction to Kant's Anthroooiogy
Georges Canguilhems advice, he approached Vrin with his transla-
tion, he was in a position to announce (in a note) a forthcoming
study of the "relationship between critical thinking and anthropo-
logical reflection."
It was only in 1963, after having spent a long time contemplating
Las Meninas in the Prado, that he had glimpsed the outline of a
history ofthe transition from the age ofrepresentation to the age
of anthropology. To have published his thesis, which announced
this transition but was still ignorant of the method, would have
been counterproductive. It was in a recent configuration of
knowledge-knowledge of production, of the living and of lan-
guages-and not in the destiny ofmodern philosophy that he now
situated the emergence and the likely disappearance of the figure
of man that emerged in the eighteenth century as an empirico-
transcendental doublet:
It is probably impossible to give empirical contents transcen-
dental value, or to displace them in the direction of a
constituent subjectivity, without giving rise, at least silently, to
an anthropology-that is, a mode of thought in which the
rightful limitations ofacquired knowledge (and consequently
ofall empirical knowledge) are at the same time the concrete
forms of existence, precisely as they are given in that same
empirical knowledge.6
Why publish this text? And so late? We have just evoked Foucaults
reasons for not doing so in 1964. The readers who occasionally
consulted the typed manuscript deposited-like all theses-and
accessible, hence public, in the Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne
Iritroauction / 11
(classmark W 1961 (11) 4°) expressed their surprise at its non-
publication. For Foucault, then, it was an occasion to bemoan the
lack ofliterary agents in France.
Since his death, the thesis has, in its turn, been the object ofa
number oftheses and translations, many ofwhich are available on
the Web.
Typing errors and obscure passages due to the reproduction of
Foucaults handwritten corrections have generated much confusion.
The practice adopted for the publication ofthe lectures at the College
de France has been repeated here: an editorial committee for an
authoritative edition atVrin, apublishing housewhich Foucaultliked
to keep companywith, where he hoped to publish his translation.
Daniel Defert, Francois Ewald, Frederic Gros
-
October 2007
12 / Introduction to Kant'sAnthrooology