Philosophy Lexicon of Arguments

Author Item Excerpt Meta data
Foucault, Michel
Books on Amazon
Ideas II, 193ff
History of ideas/Foucault: It is now possible to reverse the procedure (after examining the discourse). One can walk downhill. The general theory is sketched, now we can reach the possible fields of application. It is about separating oneself from it. Instead: archeology.
FoucaultVsHistory of ideas: indefinite object, ill-drawn boundaries, history of secondary positions. Rather, the history of alchemy than of chemistry. Analysis of the opinions more than knowledge, the errors more than the truth, not the thought forms, but the mentality types.
Also analysis of the silent origin, the distant correspondences, the permanences.
Archeology/Foucault: the attempt to write a completely different history: four differences:
1. With regard to the determination of novelty
2. Analysis of contradictions
3. The comparative descriptions
4. Finding the Transformations.
Archeology: 1. Does not try to define thoughts, ideas, images, themes that are hidden or manifest in discourses. But those discourses themselves. Discourse not as a sign for something else but as a monument. No interpretative discipline, it does not seek a "different discourse." It is not "allegorical".
2. Archeology does not seek to find a continuous transition.
3. It is not ordered according to the sovereign form of the work. The authority of the creative subject as a principle of its unity is alien to it.
4. It is not looking for the restoration of what people have thought, wanted, felt, desired. It does not seek that volatile core.
Archeology: creates the tribe of a discourse.
E.g. the natural history:
1. As leading statements, it will set the statements concerning the definition of the observable structures and the field of possible objects.
2. Those who prescribe the forms of the description.
3. Those who make the most general characterization possibilities appear, and thus open up a whole range of terms.
4. Those who, by making a strategic choice, leave room for a very large number of later options.
This is not a deduction from axioms. Nor is it a general idea or a philosophical core.

Fouc I
M. Foucault
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences 1994

Fouc II
Michel Foucault
Archäologie des Wissens Frankfurt/M. 1981

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> Counter arguments in relation to Ideas

Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2017-03-27