Abstract

This study examines Michel Foucault's reading of Kant and Nietzsche, so as to show that critique and genealogy meet at the very locus where a methodological displacement of metaphysics has been operated, particularly in the critical region that was assigned by modernity to the conception of human nature. The "genealogy of modernity" is shown to constitute the major thesis of a Foucauldian "philosophical discourse of modernity" which, contrary to Habermas's criticisms, does not evade questions of truth, normativity, and value, but rather problematizes them. The genealogy of modernity is itself made possible by the articulation of the three axes of truth, power, and ethics that determine the historical a priori of our modern ethos as the condition of who we are, that is, the formation of modern subjectivity with its regimes of veridiction and jurisdiction, modes of subjectivation and practices of freedom. ;Chapter One shows how Kant's critique of metaphysics made possible the birth of "modern man," based upon a conception of morality that follows the practical use of pure reason. As a being endowed with reason which ought to be rational, man is to fulfill in history his moral destination --hence, what Foucault terms the empirico-transcendental doublet. Kant's dualism in anthropology and morality is bridged only by means of a teleology which betrays the historical constitution of its subjectivity. ;Chapter Two examines Nietzsche's critique of Kant's teleology, as genealogy unmasks the truth of modern man in a radical, self-overcoming critique of morality. The knowing subject of Kant's critique is unmasked as the moral subject of a metaphysics that remains bound to the morality of ressentiment, as its will to truth betrays a reactive will to power. The birth of modern man signals the death of God, and the latter entails man's self-overcoming. ;Chapter Three shows how Nietzsche's genealogical critique of Kant is appropriated by Foucault in his aestheticist articulation of truth, power, and ethics, with the important difference that Kant's ontology of the present is also invoked by Foucault's permanent critique of normalization and disciplinary power