Michel Foucault e a analítica da finitude

Abstract

In Les mots et les choses, Foucault (1996) proceded through archaeological research to an investigation of the historical development of knowledge about man. This means that, in fact, it was not a story of the Human Sciences, but an investigation in which they were taken as institutions, as practices or discourses that define man as an object of possible knowledge from mainly the empirical sciences - biology, political economy and philology - that analyze the fundamental relations with the life, work and language; and, on the other hand, philosophical reflection that admits it as subject and foundation of all these positive aspects. With the objective of developing an archeology of the Human Sciences, the most general characterization of Les mots et les choses, Foucault argued that the intended purpose of this analysis could not be due simply to a history of ideas or the sciences. In fact, the archaeological level analysis allowed to discover and evaluate the systems of knowledge underlying the three great stages of Western thought, conventionally called by the philosopher the Renaissance, the Classical Era and Modernity. In the case of Modernity, Foucault defined it as the Age of Man and sought to demonstrate how in this épistémè the man is, at the same time, subject and object of all their own knowledge. This is the problem that turns Foucault's critique to the anthropologic-humanist structure of modern thought, which we will analyze in this article admitting, therefore, an indication of a study of ways of questioning and the centrality that the analytic of finitude takes this philosophical task of diagnosing the present.