Abstract

The book proposes that Foucault's archaeology is a direct response to the predicament for thought in modernity that he described in the closing chapters of The Order of Things, and that science and mathematics are fundamental to the possibility of this response. Centered around the figure of man, Foucault described thinking in modernity as split between empirical and transcendental forms of enquiry, neither of which is able to secure a foundation. To understand how Foucault responds to this situation, the book sets out a series of key ideas in the work of Gaston Bachelard, Jean Cavaillès, and Michel Serres that pave the way for Foucault's account of the historical character of the formal conditions of knowledge. In this way, Foucault's conception of discourse, and above all of the historical a priori, can be understood against the background of what he calls the mathematical a priori. The book also provides an analysis of what Foucault calls ‘temporal dispersion’, tracing this idea back to his critique of Kant. Employing these ideas, the book goes on to provide a detailed commentary on Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge.