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The Romantic Realism of Michel FoucaultThe Scientific Temptation

CHARLES R. VARELA

INTRODUCTION

The interest of this paper is Foucaults Foucault: the link between Foucaultsidentity and the intellectual orientation of the research strategies of archaeology,genealogy, and problematization in relation to the wide-spread charge of, forexample, a Christopher Norris in philosophy and an Anthony Giddens in thesocial sciences, that Foucault was a determinist of some kind (Norris, 1994, p. 160;Giddens, 1987, p. 98).1 The theme of the relationship of Foucault to his research

is the temptation to scientific realism in virtue of his reaching for a realist ontologyof powers; and the issue defining that relation is that of connecting the notion oflimit-experience, that is Foucaults experience of Foucault as an unformedenergy . . . the space of an untamed exteriority that is outside the gates of time,and, the scientific experience of nature as the space of force-fields as power-centers of influence (Miller, Ibid, pp. 3031, 105; Varela, 2009, pp. 290293). What we aredealing with here is Foucaults involvement in discovering the knot that ties hisfreedom [limit-experience] to the necessity of the world [force fields] (in Miller,Ibid, p. 78); hence, to recover the innocent freedom of nature [untamed

exteriority/energy] (Miller, Ibid, pp. 114115).This issue of the possibility of freedom in nature constitutes Foucaults conflict-ing theories of the subject, that is, subjectivation (freedom) and subjection (deter-minism). If Foucault is concerned with recovering freedom from the necessity ofnature, there can be no serious question but that the theories of the subject are notonly internally related to Kants theory of the transcendental subject, but also toGiddenss specific, that is sociological, problem of structure and agency. A keyreason for this is that Kant, as I have shown elsewhere, was the first to formulatethe general problem of deterministic structure(s) and embodied human agency

from the standpoint of a realist philosophy of science; thereafter the history ofthe problem can be seen to have been a series of footnotes to Kant (Varela, 2009,pp. 34, 267270). In a review of his work under the pseudonym of Maurice

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 43:10021-8308

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Florence entitled, Michel Foucault, the suggested relation to Kant is declared(Gutting, 1994, p. viii).

If Foucault is indeed perfectly at home in the philosophical tradition, it is within the critical

tradition ofKant, and his undertaking could be called A Critical History of Thought (Florence,1994 [1984], p. 314).

We can now refer to an interview just before his death where it is clear that whatwas essential to Foucault was the freedom side of Kants third antinomyhumanagency.

the study of thought is the analysis of freedom, [for,] thought is freedom in relation to what onedoes, the motion by which one detaches oneself from it, establishes it as an object, and reflectson it as a problem (Foucault, 1997, p. 117).

In What is Enlightenment, then, of course, Foucault declares that his work hadalways been theexpressionofapatientlaborgivingformtoourimpatiencefor liberty(Foucault, 1994, p. 319 emphasis provided). Two years earlier, it is the aforemen-tioned deeper faith in agency that underwrites this declared faith in liberty, assertingthat, I believe in the freedom of people. To the same situation, people react in verydifferent ways (Foucault, 1988, p. 14). Kants relevance then is clear: freedom asagency (first critique) grounds freedom as liberty (second critique). I thus offer the

following proposals: Kantian agency is central to Foucaults conflicting theories ofthe subject, and, that the theories of subjection and subjectivation are a variety ofKants third antinomy; also, that Foucaults antinomy is a version of Giddensproblem of structure and agency; and what connects Kant, Foucault, and Giddensis scientific realism. What threads these proposals together is the argument thatFoucualtwasreachingforarealistontologyofpowersandthushewasexploringthepossibility of being a scientist, the suggested purpose of which was to help himfruitfully address and resolve his structure and creativity problem.

WHICH FOUCAULT IS FOUCAULTS FOUCAULT: POSITIVIST OR REALIST?

I am not an artist, I am not a scientist. I am somebody who tries to deal with reality throughthose things which are always, often, far from reality.

Foucault (1980)

I am taking the above quote to indicate an orientation that informed the

standpoints of archaeology and genealogy, surely, but also problematization. Aclue to that orientation is Foucaults admission that he was disenchanted with andhence abandoned philosophy five years after his degree in philosophy in 1948

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(Foucault, 1977, p. 41; Cousins & Hussain, 1984, pp. 68; 1993; Miller, p. 65). Hewas disenchanted with almost all of the intellectual traditions of his timepositivism, phenomenology, existentialism, existential phenomenology, herme-neutics, Marxism and Psychoanalysis; and the abandonment was an act of

transgressioncommandingly working through those traditions in order to jus-tifiably transcend them. Nevertheless, when Foucault tells us that he is trying todeal with reality . . . through things . . . far from reality, The Order of Things intimateswhat he glimpses: the visible order . . . [is] only a superficial glitter above anabyss (Foucault, 1973, p. 251). We have a hint here of an ontological romanti-cism. Consider: while Foucaults pursuit is still philosophy, his transgressionnow invites us to wonder if he was reaching for a philosophy in a new key. Butif not an artist and not a scientist, then, how are we to understand the possibilitythat he is searching for a philosophy beyond positivism and phenomenology,

but, in keeping with the reality far from reality of Marxism and Psychoanalysis?While the empirical realism of positivism and phenomenology favors the super-ficial glitter, the Marxist theory of false consciousness dangerously presumedthe realist ontology of the visible and the invisible, and the unconscious ofFreudianism shamelessly exploited that danger, transforming it into a mostdangerous method.

If Foucault was not happy in his positivism, in this reach for a newphilosophy of reality, then, which Foucault is Foucaults Foucault (Han, 2002,p. 6)? I argue that we should be astonished by Priviteras conviction that There

can be no doubt about Foucaults positivism, but especially so by Dreyfus/Rabinows view that Foucault was an extreme phenomenological positivist. Myargument leads me to accede only to the first part of Deleuzes declaration that hisfriend was a romantic positivist (Privitera, 1995, p. 114; Dreyfus & Rabinow,1983, p. 50; in Privitera, Ibid, p. 129). Finally, I will explore the charge thatCanguilhem dismisses, namely, that Foucault naturalizes culture by withdrawingit from history (Canguilhem, 2005, p. 75). My question, then: which possibilityof naturalism was Foucault up to regarding the charge of a bleak determinism,that is that agency is absent in history (Norris, Ibid; Giddens, Ibid).

FOUCAULTS FOUCAULT: A CENTRAL PROPOSAL

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. . . . Leave it to our bureaucrats and ourpolice to see to it that our papers are in order (Foucault, 1972, p. 17, emphasis provided).

Must we capitulate before this warning and admit that the question of

Foucaults Foucault is unanswerable? We and Foucault, however, are neitherbureaucrats nor the police. And even if Privitera is right that Foucault is guilty ofcertain performative contradictions throughout his careera discourse/power/

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knowledge determinism for examplebeing a bureaucrat or the police in theperformance of his criticality is not one of them (Privitera, 1995; Foucault, 1994,p. 133). After all, discussion and not polemics was his preferred style of criticality(Foucault, 1997, pp. 111113). One of Foucaults deepest beliefs, Pascalian

through and through, is that we human beings are both monsters and incom-prehensible, and thatis exactly why we are to be accepted. The freedom of humanagency that grounds our Pascalian features constitutes the core of his revolution-ary humanism, and expresses exactly his point that humanism begins in compas-sion (Foucault, 1977, pp. 228229). Hence, Foucaults answer to the question as towhether his identity is unavailable is, simply, no. If no artist and, only for themoment, if no scientist, these denials are, perhaps, not the telling point. For,despite the spirit of the Cretan Liars Paradox that frames his performances, in away that counts, we always know who he is. AlwaysMichel Foucault: a concrete

intellectual who is seeking to engage one and all in concrete . . . relationsbetween man and man (Foucault, 1973a, pp. 251253, 1977, pp. 218234, 1998,pp. 147149; Miller, 1993, pp. 68).

FOUCAULTS THEORY OF IDENTITY: THE CONCRETE PERSON

A concept of the concrete person that Foucault presupposes in being a concreteintellectual involved in concrete human discursive relations explicitly emerged in

his two works, Mental Illness and Psychology and Dream and Existence, in 1954(Foucault, 1954a, pp. 313, 1954b, pp. 3154; Miller, 1993, p. 5). Embracing themodern biological epistemic category oforganic entity, Foucault points out that, bythe early fifties, the meta-pathological theory of mental illness as the autono-mous reality of a specific entity in relation to the organism, should beabandoned. Instead, a privileged status [is] accorded to the overall reactions of theindividual(Foucault, 1954a, pp. 2, 6, 7). Furthermore, the same privileged statusis accorded to the notion ofpsychological totality. . . . it has reality and meaning onlywithin a structured personality (Foucault, Ibid, p. 7). Furthermore,

In this priority given to . . . totality one can see a return to concrete pathology and the possibilityof determining the field of mental pathology and organic pathology as a single field. After all, isnot each . . . addressed to the same individual in his concrete reality (Foucault, Ibid, p. 8, emphasisprovided)?

Even though the single field idea is unworkable, he argues, nevertheless, whenFoucault comments that the idea of the unity of body and mind is in the orderof reality, especially with Freud in mind, he is opting for an anti-reductionist

notion of the functional autonomy of personality (Foucault, Ibid, pp. 910). Wehave here the fundamental conception of the concrete reality of the total indi-vidual: the individual as personality refers to the unity of the human being as a

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whole (Foucault, Ibid, p. 9). As personality is the reality and measure of thehuman being, so, person is the reality and measure of personality. For Freud,only the first statement is true: personality explains (away) the person through thetheory of the unconscious; at best, personhood is the promise of the ideal com-

pletion of psychoanalytic therapy; in the meantime, Freud is the only person inrelation to his theory of personality. Therefore, Foucaults conception of the concretepersonality is the conception of the concrete person. He rounds out the latter with a socialpsychological theory of personhood: the historical and dialectical practices ofsocial suggestions constitute the conditions for the genesis of persons (Foucault,Ibid, pp. 1213). In Foucaults essay on Binswangers Dream and Existence heexplicitly moves from the social psychological theory of persons to its philosophi-cal roots in the Sartrean/Heideggerian principle that human being is the exis-tential moment of being in the world with others. Foucault uses Kantian freedom

to dismiss the determinism/biologism that grounds the unconscious.During the time from the nineteen-thirties to nineteen-sixties, all together,Husserlian phenomenology, Heideggerian ontology, Sartrean Existentialism, andMerleau-Pontyan existential phenomenology constituted an antidote but not asolution to the scientific realism of Freudian psychoanalytic theory; thereafter, inthe seventies the challenge culminated in the neo-humanist hermeneutic revoltwithin American Psychoanalysis against Freudian science (Varela, 2003,pp. 9698). The new metaphysical principle of exteriority supplanted the tradi-tional metaphysics of interiority: life-world, being in the world, existence,

and the lived body, were the kindred responses to the scandal of philosophy thatFreuds Cartesianist metapsychology perpetuated in a suspect scientific edifice.The suspicion was that Freud was a Wizard of Oz rather than a scientific wizard.Foucaults Dream, Imagination, and Existence emerged out of the fertile contextof this early moment of Continental Philosophy (Foucault, 1954b, pp. 3178). Hisresponse to Freuds replacement of individual consciousness (freedom) with thesocio-psychobiological unconscious (determinism) was to present the individualhuman being as an original existential reality ; this was to counter psychologicalpositivism and its reductive concept ofhomo natura(Foucault, Ibid, p. 31). This

initial encounter of Binswangerian existential psychoanalysis and Freudian scien-tific psychoanalysis gives us a Foucault focusing on what he refers to as a rigorousHeideggerian-informed anthropological scienceof the phemenological/existentialcontent of the Human Fact (Foucault, 1986, p. 32, 1998, p. 250).

Not some objective sector of a natural universe, but the real content of an existence which isliving itself and is experiencing itself . . . in a world that is at once the plenitude of its own projectandthe element of its situation (Foucault, 1986 [1954] Ibid, emphasis provided).

The Fact that is distinctively Human Foucault calls the originative movementof freedom; and he explicitly asserts that this is to displace Freuds biologicalequipment of the libidinal instinct (Foucault, Ibid, p. 51). Note what is revealed




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here: Foucault begins his theoretical career with a commitment to Kantianfreedom against Freudian determinism, located at the site of the whole humanbeing; where the powers of human agencyautonomy, imagination, reasonarethe faces of one reality, the person (Foucault, Ibid, pp. 5675). Furthermore, now

it is clear that the noumenal/existential core of personhood foreshadows what isto come, the problem of the conflicting principles of transcendentalism andhistoricity in Foucaults theories of subjectivation and subjection. It is thisproblemthat Canguilhems second aforementioned dismissal risks missing (p. 4).

In fully embracing the Sartrean/Heideggerian principle that human being isthe existential moment of being in the world with others, Foucault reads thatprinciple according to his concept of personhood: the moment of being in the world is

personal being;hence, the mode of being in the world with othersis that ofthe concreterelations between concrete persons. From his concept of the concrete person something

much more can be said on this matter than Mark Posters view that that conceptfinally rises to the level of the principle of maturity presented in Kants paper of1784, What is Enlightenment (Poster, 1993, pp. 6380). For, in view of the factindicated above that Foucault deliberately wrote a paper in 1984 with that exactsame title, I will take Kant much more seriously in this context and therefore takeFoucaults deep response to him seriously, and seriously problematic, in thenarguing for the special philosophical character of Foucaults intellectual orienta-tion to his research (Poster, 1993, pp. 6371).

EINSTEIN AND HARR: REALIST METAPHYSICS

In the discussion to follow I am using Harrs notion of the three ways that theterms philosophy/science can be relationally conceived: philosophy or science,philosophy ofscience, and philosophy in science. What frames Harres notion isMax Borns famous observation that theoretical physics is actual philosophy.Regarding the third relation, then, consider Einsteins letter to Moritz Schlick.

In general your presentation fails to correspond to my conceptual style insofar as I find yourwhole orientation . . . too positivistic. . . . I tell you straight out: Physics is the attempt at theconceptual reconstruction of a model of the real world and its lawful structure. In short, I sufferunder the unsharp separation of Reality of Experience and Reality of Being. You will beastonished about the metaphysicist Einstein. But every four-and two-legged animal is de facto in thissense a metaphysicist(in Manicas, 2006, p. 18, emphasis provided).

The realism of science must be sharply differentiated from the empirical realismof logical positivism, for, the philosophy in scientific theory is a depth realistmetaphysics. Thus Harr can state:

Scientific theories are metaphysical devices for expressing the ontology of our world. The natureof explanation is relativised to the kinds of entities, properties and interactions named by the

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theory, and the kinds of predictions it can make will be dependent upon the ontology itpresupposes (Aronson, Harr, & Way, 1995, p. 104).

The import of scientific realism for the question of Foucaults identity/

orientation is three-fold: Foucualts 1980 statement suggests that his reach for anew philosophy is a reach for a metaphysics, the metaphysics is realist, hence,not only is Foucault no more a philosopher than Einstein was in being ascientist, but he may well be no less a scientist than an Einstein was in being oneof those two-legged animals. From this standpoint Derridas dismissal ofFoucaults work on madness and civilization because it presupposes a metaphysicis irrelevant (Miller, 1993, p. 119).

IDENTITY AND ORIENTATION: METAPHYSICS FOR RESEARCH

Perhaps Hans Sluga is right that Nietzsches influence won out over Heideggers(Sluga, 2005, p. 222). Thus, it might be supposed that Nietzsches doctrine of thewill to power is particularly relevant to the widely shared judgment that Power. . . is Foucaults overarching theme (Collins & Makowsky, 1993, p. 257; Mohanty,1993, p. 33; Miller, 1993, p. 15). In 1977 Foucault concurred:

When I think back now, I ask myself what else it was that I was talking about in Madness and

Civilization or The Birth of the Clinic but power (in Hoy, 1986, p. 2).

However, he also reveals, for instance, in A Preface to Transgression 1963,that there is more to his interest in power than the sociological fact that Collinsand Makowsky have in mind. Foucault offers his own In Praise of Philosophyin amending his earlier position on the end of philosophy (Merleau-Ponty, 1969,pp. 1926).

If philosophy is now experienced as a multiple desert, it is not because it has lost its proper object

or the freshness of its experience, but because it has been suddenly divested of that languagewhich is historically natural to it. We do not experience the end of philosophy, but aphilosophy which regains its speech and finds itself again only in the marginal region whichborders its limits: [finding] itself either in a purified meta-language or in the thickness of wordsenclosed by their darkness, by their blind truth. The profound distance that separates thesealternatives . . . manifests . . . a profound coherence. This . . . real incompatibility is the actualdistance from whose depths philosophy addresses us. It is from here that we must focus ourattention (Foucault, 1977, p. 41).

Foucault is directing our attention to the problem of the blind truth of

sexuality and the ineffectuality of discursive language before it, pointing beyondboth the traditional religious and the modern biological and Freudian truth thatare now, he believes, an obstacle (Foucault, Ibid, pp. 2933). Thus the root of [a




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liberated] sexuality . . . the movement that nothing can ever limit is not, exactly, sexu-ality, the power of desire, the libido, but the desire of desire, power (Foucault, Ibid,p. 33, emphasis provided; Miller, 1993, pp. 272274, 279). Thus, it is notNietzsches Daemonic organismic will to power that informs Foucault here, but

his own idea of the power ofpersonhood, and a personhood that wills morepower(Miller, Ibid, p. 72). A metaphysics inspired by the image of a flash of lighteningin the night, and presented as a Critique and Ontology [which] comprehendsfinitude and being (Foucault, 1977, p. 38). Foucault is translating the metaphor,flash of lightening, by way of a transgression model of human being, into itsessential form, the immediacy of being (Foucault, Ibid, p. 37). It is, I suggest,Nietzsches Daemon translated into an ontology of the reciprocity of power andbeing, not as things apart from process, but being as the power of the process ofdynamical actionthe intersection of beings and their violent powers of creativity and excess,

the making and unmaking of limits, and their transgression(Foucault, Ibid, pp. 2952, 35,38; Miller, Ibid). Here, then, is Foucaults Preface to Metaphysics: centered inHeideggers unity of freedom and power, it is a Trinitarian marriage of Kantsabsolute spontaneity, Nietzches will to power, and Dostoevskys absolutelygroundless wild choice (Varela, 1984, pp. 155164). But from Foucaults 1954engagement in metaphysics we already have a cardinal principle which, now, wecan see is being fleshed out in the transgression paper: the existential moment of beingin the world with others is the dynamical action of personhood. Thus, in Preface, whenFoucault begins to declare his famous death of man theme, that The break-

down of philosophical subjectivity and its dispersion in a language that dispos-sesses it. . . . is probably one of the fundamental structures of contemporarythought, we now know how else to read it (Foucault, 1977, p. 42). Philosophicalsubjectivity is the Kantian subject, not the Foucauldian subjectthe person. In his nextmetaphysical paper (1966),The Thought of the Outside refers to the reality thatconstitutes the immediacy of being, discourse as Language to Infinity(1963). While discourse is outside of the philosophical subject, it is notoutside of the person whose being is the immediacy of discourse (Foucault,1998, pp. 147169, 9091). Cartesianism gives way to a metaphysic of incorpo-

real materiality, that is the person, whose mind and body are united in thedynamical action process of being in the world with other persons (Foucault,1977, p. 169). Its dynamism is Merleau-Pontyan: the movement that nothing canever limit.

In referring to Kants note to the Amphiboly of concepts of reflection,Foucault sees the metaphysics of Preface as equivalent to the shift instituted byKant when he distinguished the nihil negativum and the nihil privatiuma distinctionknown to have opened the way for the advance of critical thought (Foucault, Ibid,pp. 48, 36). In view of this, are we to conclude then that Foucaults interest in

power is the concern of a philosopherwhose special interest is the topicof ontol-ogy? That would certainly put him closer to Nietzsche (and Heidegger) whoseinterest in power was that of a philosopher and not that of a philosopher of

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science, nor indeed the interest of a practicing scientist in the philosophy inscience; and Foucault was a practicing researcher. But as to the question ofwhether he should be slotted into the traditional philosophy or science relation,and especially now in view of the Kantian reference, why should we ever think so?

There is no one to whom Foucault is closer, metaphysically, than Kant. Andtoday, it is quite persuasive to believe, and it makes all the difference, that Kantwas first and foremost a philosopher of science, and then, a philosopher of tran-scendental Idealism. The reason: Kants philosophy ofscience was not that of aphilosopher thinking philosophically about science, but rather it wasthe result ofthe philosophy that is in science, itself. In other words, because he was thinkingthrough the philosophy in science, that is why Kant was thinking philosophicallyabout science. To be accurate, and this is crucial, it was Newtons realist metaphysicsof nature that Kant was articulating in The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science

(Varela, 2009, pp. 267292). For example, Kant was explicating the principle thatNewtonian theory is an ontological connection between concepts, that is theconcepts referencing [powers as] forces causing accelerations in a law-like way(Aronson, 1984, p. 91). And it is precisely Newtons realism where Kant andFoucault are most intimately connected. On this issue, a major point for this paperis this: I have never seen Foucault actually reject the Kantian idea, which he onlyseemingly dismisses in The Archaeology of Knowledge, of the powers of a constituentconsciousness(Foucault, 1972, p. 203, emphasis provided). Did he reject conscious-ness?, yes: Thought. . . . at the level ofexistence, in its very dawning, is in itself an action

(Foucault, 1977, p. 5, emphasis provided); powers of thought . . . [as] action,never. Now we can say that in the 1954 volumes the concept of person isa concept of the powerful particular (Foucault, 1954a, pp. 313, 1954b,pp. 4753).

One of the perfect proofs of the importance of this truth is Foucaults referencein Madness and Civilization to the real person of the doctor. . . . and, his almostmiraculous power to cure [patients that is] structurally located in the the doctor-patient couple (Foucault, 1973, p. 274). Foucault is here expressing theKantian/Durkheimian principle that

this power had nothing extraordinary about it; it was to be explained and demonstrated in theefficacity, simply, of moral behavior [which is itself centered in] . . . the social and moral order [of society]

(Foucault, 1973, Ibid, emphasis provided).

Here, then, we have Foucault in pursuit of a new metaphysics for his work, at theheart of which is a Kantian/Durkheimian interest in power in reference to boththe subject, which he conceives of as a real [concrete] person, and to social life,which he conceives of as a concrete mode of relation[s] between man and man(Foucault, 1973, pp. 251252). Of course, then, in The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault

intends us to understand that the sovereignty of the gaze, the gaze that knows anddecides, the eye that governs, is the sovereign person; and thus the real person in,What is an Author?; but, it is not the sovereign subject (Foucault, 1994, p. 89,




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emphasis provided, 1977, pp. 123124) The sovereign knowing, deciding, andgoverning gaze is personal beingthe sovereign person is personal agency!

In relation to Kant and Durkheim, my proposal is that, precisely because theconcept of person is to be situated in his reach for a realist metaphysics, Foucault

is not a (traditional) philosopher. And even though Foucault himself confirmsthis, stating, I am not . . . a philosopher, others, for instance, Garth Gillanand Jitendra Mohanty, have challenged him (Foucault, 1982, p. 9; Gillan, 1987,pp. 3443; Mohanty, 1993, pp. 2940). Gillan claims that Foucault engages inphilosophy only in the period of problematization, but, without being a philoso-pher: discourse and the body as nomadic desire are the two central ideas (Gillan,1987, pp. 3435); Mohanty declares that Foucaults fundamental concepts, likepower, are philosophical, and, that he is a philosopher, not a scientist (Mohanty,1993, Ibid). Lets find out why these two positions are unconvincing.

FOUCAULT AND KANT: METAPHYSICS AND THE PROBLEM OF THE SUBJECT

Getting hold of Foucaults metaphysics enables me to do the following: to addressBeatrice Hanss thesis in, Foucaults Critical Project: Between the transcendental and theHistorical, that Foucault did not resolve the conflicting theories of the determinismof subjection and the freedom of subjectivation; second, to trace that liability backto the ontology underwriting his work (Han, 2002, pp. 186, 184186, 196). For

example, Dreyfus and Rabinow permit us to say that Foucault never abandonedthe thesis that the practices of the human sciences, themselves, are a functionof both determinate discursive formationssubjectionand self-determiningintelligibilitysubjectivation (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 103) The fact thatthe transcendental and the Historical is the unresolved problem of FoucaultsCritical Project keeps bringing Foucault back to Kant. Ian Hacking certainly acknowl-edges this, suggesting that Foucault has been completing a dialogue with Kant(Hacking, 1986, p. 39). But which one? In addressing the renowned four ques-tions that underwrite Kants critiques Hacking asserts that Foucault deliberately

inverted and destroyed each of them; for example, What is Man? askedKant. Nothing, says Foucault (Hacking, Ibid). While Hacking omits Foucaultsphilosophical depth in relation to Kant, Hans above point indicates why oneshould never do so. Thus I maintain that, first, Foucault could never have com-pleted his dialogue with Kant, and, second, the importance of that fact cannot berevealed by Hacking because he emphasizes the wrong dialogue with Kant. It isthe problem of Kants third antinomy concerning freedom and determinism that should be seen as

reconfiguring the fourth question for Foucault, and thereby renewing its importance for him.Consider this: the conflicting theories of the subject suggest that What is Man

is still presumed in both the archaeological theory of the discursive formation ofdiscourse practices and the genealogical theory of power relations and the fields offorce they constitute, since, however de-centered, each of the men implicated in

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discursive practices and their power fields still raises the question of theirconstitutionmanas well as their historicity. With the shift to problematiza-tion this question of the constitution and historicity of the subject re-emergeswith the theory of subjectivation that is exemplified by the aesthetics (or art) of

existence (Foucault, 1988, pp. 4753). Now, even more helpful, then, is Foucaultspronouncement: We are all Neo-Kantians, and therefore, he continues, we areenjoined to honor the ceaselessly repeated injunction to return to the breakestablished by Kantboth to rediscover its necessity and to understand its con-sequences more fully (in Han, 2002, p. 3). Thus, my thesis: the meaning of thefact that Foucault didnot because he couldnot complete what he himself referredto as his essential task [of freeing] the history of thought from its subjection totranscendence by cleans[ing] it all of transcendental narcissism, is given inHans conclusion that Foucault never got passed holdingbotha transcendental and

an historical conception of the subject, to the very end. Let us be very clear here:precisely because Foucault was driven from the very beginning by the concept ofthe person and its noumenal/existential core, to then have conceived of thesubject as being both transcendental and historical, meant, that he could notresolve the conflicting theories of subjection and subjectivation.

In virtue of the above, I am also contending that what we specifically have herethen is a Foucauldian variety of Kants third antinomy. On the one side, embrac-ing historicity and, in effect, thereby rejecting transcendentalism, Foucault paysthe price of the determinism of subjection. This makes perfect sense, of course,

since, to plunge whole sale into historicity, while foregoing phenomenologysdodge that freedom is in a phenomenological realm that is insulated from thephenomenal world, while being in it, is to find oneself right back in the phenom-enal world of determinism (Varela, 2009, pp. 627). On the other side, returningto transcendentalism and in effect thereby rejecting historicity, Foucault explicitlytries to preserve freedom in the theory of subjectivation (Foucault, 1972, p. 203;Han, Ibid). Thus, taking Foucault to have accepted the standard rejection oftranscendentalism/noumenalism, nevertheless, this means that the problem of theFoucauldian subject has been returned to the problem of presumingsome kind of

a metaphysical realm, in which freedom can be preserved and determinism reckoned with,somehow (Varela, 2009, pp. 67). Indeed, in The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault has apromethean image which fully resonates with this idea of the renewed search fora metaphysics and its image of a flash of lightening in the night that will besuitable for a robust theory of the subject[with] the end of the infinite on earth,the flame return[s] to its native fire (Foucault, 1994 [1963], p. 1998). The deepmetaphysical problem of this flame and its home in a native fire turns out tobe that of a liberty that rages beyond its bounds (Foucault, 1973, p. 246).Foucault has thus metaphysically moved beyond Nietzschean mystico-biologism:

persons will from power, for more personal power. I now am even furtherconvinced that it is the inherent difficulties of Foucaults variety of the thirdantinomy that goes a long way in explaining his returns to Kant. At the center is




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the special problem of the returning of the flame to its native fire: if it islanguage and hence discourse that is the house of the concrete person ratherthan the transcendental subject, how is this to be metaphysically understood?; andwhen discourse is linked up to the power/knowledge nexus, how is the metaphysi-

cal situation in this new alliance to be comprehended?; and particularly withreference to the determinism of subjection that certain critics claim not only is thefact of Foucauldian discourse, but also became the fate of the power/knowledgenexus. Moving into problematization and subjectivation, is the metaphysicalproblem of the preceding theoretical efforts now resolved? Specifically, when inhis penultimate return to Kant in, What is Enlightenment, where he reviews hisCritical Project, takes up the problem of the subject, arbitrarily dismissing itstranscendental ground, and then, in resorting to Baudelairs aesthetic theory ofthe subject as the final effort to preserve freedom, from what metaphysical

grounds has he indeed proceeded? The question is crucial because the aestheticreinstatement of freedom leaves us exactly in the same logical place as thenoumenal preservation of freedom. In Science for Humanism: the recovery of humanagency, I only contended that Foucault reclaimed but did not recover freedom(Varela, 2009, p. ix), but part II will show that that follows from Foucaults failureto resolve his variety of the third antinomy. While it may not be, the economy,stupid, Foucaults returns to Kant finalize the demonstration that is presentedhere in part I that, if Foucaults work is to be understood on his terms, its themetaphysics, stupid.

FOUCAULTS RESEARCH STYLE: A DISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC DOMAIN?

Foucault believes that the term, domain of research, rather than the term,discipline, is the more exact designation of his styles of research (Foucault,1998, p. 261). But note the implication: the former term is a discipline, but notexactly. Hence, I will exploit that implication by proposing the term disciplinarydomain: a domain inclined toward being a discipline. And inclined is the operative

word here, since Alan Sheridan is on to something when he asserts that in turningaway from the disciplines of Marxism and Psychoanalysis, no one can say that[Foucault] founded a new one (Sheridan, 1980, pp. 12). It is not the finding ofa new discipline that is really the point here; its not a specified theoretical contentthat Foucault is up to; such a move toward a discipline is more proto-theoreticalthan theoretical, in that sense. And, has he not been clear about this, even thoughhe later relaxes the logicist demand, for instance, when he says, When the timefinally comes to found a theory, it will have to define a deductive order (Foucault,1972, p. 11). Now, my compound term transgresses Foucaults idea of a disci-

pline, either as one of the limitations of discourse discussed in The Order ofLanguage, or in Discipline and Punishment, as a mechanism of the discourse/power/knowledge nexus at work (Foucault, 1995, pp. 136141); for, what I have




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in mind is a domain in which some one could be a monster, like a Foucault,as well as a Mendel, and still be properly spoken of (Foucault, 1972, pp. 232, 224).While Foucault leads us to think that such a discipline nevertheless is stilldestined for the ante-chamber of the sciences proper, yet, it is to be located

somewhere in the positive domain of knowledge wherein reside the empiricalsciences; in the troublesome case of the human sciences, their location isperhaps indicated by the fact that Foucault was indeed making preparations fortheir funeral (Foucault, Ibid). Can we believe, then, that a style of research is adiscipline, exactly, only if it meets the criteria of the proper sciencesthe formaland the physical sciences? There are no other criteria for Foucault?

Stepping back and situating Foucaults alleged involvement in forging a disci-plinary domain in the context of Gaston Bachelards philosophy of science, wemay well have here a response of a serious student to his teachers intention to

conceptualize the nature of the modern scientific spirit of, in this case, notphysicalscience,buthumanscience,and,forthefuture(Privitera,1995,p.5).Afterall, there is a strong suggestion that suffuses The Order of Thingsthat Foucault was notponderously presenting merely the history of various epistemes, but rather, to presentthem in order to work toward the next one. He seems to have been up against what he sawas the disappointment of the human sciences, in this regard, and the challenge ofthe counter sciences as a new epistemethe unthought generally, the uncon-scious specifically (Foucualt, Ibid, pp. 322328, 323324, 373386). In any event,he comes off as one of the makers in the discursive practice of, something, that

seemed to be in the making (Lemert & Gillan, 1982, p. 29). In conjunction with thereachforanewmetaphysics,thisreachforanewdisciplinarydomaintoimplementit, I now want to claim, betrays an unexpected intellectual temptation: Foucaultsromanticism is inclined toward scientific realism. And that, would seem to be theproper context wherein to appreciate his continuous generation of ontologicalconceptions that we witness throughout his career: the concrete person, the dreamand the anthropology of expression, medical gaze/glance/touch, episteme andthe being of language, the archive/discursive formation/discourse practices,discourse/power/knowledge and subjection, subjectivation/Baudelairean subjec-

tivity and the aesthetics of existence. A happy positivism?, no; intimations of anunwieldy realism, promising.

BEYOND THE STRUCTURALIST TEMPTATION: REALISM FOR RIGOR

It is time, now, to recognize that Gary Guttings once useful insight that Foucaultdid not submit to the structuralist temptation, has had its day (Gutting, 1989, p. 270).

After all, I suspect that Foucault felt that structuralism was the wrong scientific

game in town. In the works of 1954 discussed earlier, on the one hand, there is acall for a new rigor for mental medicine, and on the other, a call for a rigorousscience of the human fact (Foucault, 1954a, p. 2; 1954b, p. 32). When, a decade




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later, Foucault declares that archaeology is, in a strict sense, the science of thisarchive, in view of his earlier interest in science for rigor along with his prefaceto metaphysics, we can now take this statement to be an instantiation of anothermoment of that interest that reveals that he was generally succumbing to a scientific

temptation (1998 [1966], p. 263). It is simply not enough to ask, then, as Lemert andGillan do, is Foucault an Artist? Or scientist?; and then, to reply with Theanswer that he is neither simply, yet both, and leave it at that (Lemert & Gillan1982); and still it is not enough, when Sheridan claims that genealogy . . . [is] agay science. . . . [and] that love of hypothesis pervades all of Foucaults work(Sheridan, Ibid, p. 222). For, it is the ontology of a strict sense of that gayscience that is the telling issue. Hence, when Nietzsche can say, We have nosense for causa efficiens: here Hume was right, so that both the causal powerconcept and its corresponding concept of agentive entity are ruled out, Nietzsche

must be irrelevant to Foucault here, for, the concept of a concrete person wouldhave been impossible to come up with (Schacht, 1992, pp. 182, 173184). Andtherefore, in view of his general interest in seeking scientific rigor that referencesa reality beyond visible order, realism must be the possibility of naturalism forFoucault. The systematic answer to which is now to be found not only as a directimplication of his meta-theoretical discussions of science in The Order of Things, but,definitively, in the form and in the formulation of the theory of discourse foundoriginally in the latter, and of course, in both What is an Author and The

Archaeology of Knowledge . However, if Gillan is right that discourse and the

body are two of Foucaults fundamental conceptions, then his ontologicalconcern with realism has specifically to do with embodied discourse. My onlyamendment is this: the body and its desire is a Merleau-Pontyan code for theperson and his/her powers in the practices of discourse underwritten by hismetaphysics of dynamic action.

THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPTATION: A NEW CRITERION OF SCIENCE?

The Order of Things presents Foucaults unqualified respect for mathematics,astronomy, and physics in virtue of the three factors he himself has identified thatconstitute them as the sciences proper, systematicity, objectivity, formalization,and in particular the logicism of the latter (Foucault, Ibid, pp. 365, 347); and yet,even though it obviously had to be qualified, the empirical sciences, as sci-ences, were certainly respected. As for the human sciences, Foucault isambivalent: he is somewhere between bending over backwards in trying not to bedismissive and being in mourning? (Foucault, Ibid, pp. 366367). But I want to setthis issue aside, for, here, I argue that it is more fruitful to attend to the precise way

Foucault identified each of the empirical sciences. His discourse on that issueshows us that, however unsystematic, he was actually indicating quite an impor-tant fourth criterion of science. In the Archaeology of Knowledge this criterion is not




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explicitly found among any of the four thresholds that lead to the emergence ofdiscursive formations, especially in the three that are identified as systems ofscientific thoughtformalization, scientificity, epistemologization (Barry, 2002,p. 52). But, when it is claimed in the above book that the archive, [in producing]

the appearance of statements as unique events, is the atom of discourse, theforth criterion isexemplified by the theory of the archive/statement-connection.(Foucault, 1972, pp. 126131, 129, 80).

Let us begin with Foucaults announcement that in biology the focus is on theenergy of life, in economics the foci are theforcesof the production and distributionof wealth, and for linguistics, the powers of language (Foucault, Ibid, pp. 243244). Furthermore, with reference to his keen regard for the counter-sciences ofLevi-straussian anthropology and Lacanian psychoanalysis, we should particularlynotice their unique interest in the second element of The Analytic of Finitude, the

unthought, in their case, the unconscious (Foucault, Ibid, pp. 322328, 373386). But we all know that care must be taken here, for, while this is not theunconscious ofFreud, it is the unconscious from Freud: they do not conceive of theunconscious in the same way as he didthe structural model of 1923to be sure,but they do conceive of it in the same senseas a realist explanation (Foucault,1998, pp. 252, 249259). Which is to say, of course, that Levi-Strauss and Lacaninfamously gave us their brand of determinism, and they did so, which is a separatething, in Freuds realist format. And Foucault followed suit: archaeology signifiesthe subsoil of our consciousness of meaning (Foucault, 1998, p. 263). In Michel

Foucault and the Subversion of Intellect, Racevskis understands this perfectly.In showing that Western man is subject to determinisms that transcend his consciousness of anidentity, Foucault, in effect, assumes the role of psychoanalyst. His purpose is comparable toLacans, since it also consists in showing. . . . that our humanity is not the image we construe ofourselves but something over which we have little control (Racevskis, 1983, p. 38).

In thus joining Freud, Lacan, and Levi-Struass in this theoretical manner, it isclear that although the traditional problem of freedom and determinism is centralto Foucualts work, its proper context is the structure/agency problem. Yet,

defining that problem in Foucaults case is a problem. From the very beginning ofhis work in psychology and existential psychoanalysis to the very end of his work inproblematization, he believed what he had declared in, The Order of Discourse,that, it would be ridiculous to deny the existence of individuals who write andinvent (Foucault, 1972, p. 222). But, contrary to that, not only is it shown in theabove quote regarding the subsoil of consciousness that, at the very least, thelanguage of his archaeological theory of discourse is deterministic, that intent isactually stated elsewhere when he clarifies the meaning of subsoil. First, thisstatement:

I have no difficulty in accepting that mans languages, his unconscious, and his imagination aregoverned by laws of structure (Foucault, 1972, p. 20).




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And now this:

I have tried to disengage an autonomousdomain that would be that of the unconscious of science,the unconscious of knowledge, which would have its own rules, just as the unconscious of thehuman individual also has its rules and determinations (Gutting, Ibid, p. 53, emphasis provided).

It is evident that the theory of discourse as an autonomous/anonymous unconscious domain ofdeterministic/determinate rules is deliberately Freudian in form and clearly realist in formulation

(Foucault, 1998, p. 251). Although critics have noticed the line moving fromFreud to Levi-Strauss to Lacan, and then to Foucault, they have not understoodthat it is the scientific realism of the explanatory format of all three andFoucault,that identifies them, which is a separate matter, in their deterministic intent. Thatis, regarding the latter, when in What is an Author, Foucault can state that

the subject . . . must be stripped of its creative role and analyzed as a complex and variablefunction of [the unconscious of] discourse (Foucault, 1977, p. 138),

we have the following: the unconscious is the real agent, the conscious is only soin appearance. When Foucaults theoretical logic is thus spelled out, and therealism of its format is exposed, my decision to cast such a theory as a variety ofthe structure/agency problem gains in plausibility. After all, Giddens casts hisproblem as a realist problem; but he did so, remember, in order to transcenddeterminism: causal powers theory was to provide for a conception of freedom,

that is the concrete person as personal agency (Varela, 2009, pp. 1011, 32034)!The point of Science for Humanism was to prove that he was right (Varela, Ibid,pp. 268292, 293321). We will see in part II that in Foucaults last return to Kanthe reinstates Kantian freedom as the power of agency and of liberty; and he doesso, forgetful of the realist metaphysics that he presupposed in the early fifties, andhad been dwelling in since the sixties.

Stepping back and keeping before us what has been stated above, consider thisfact: the human sciences of psychologism, sociologism, and historicism,with their traditional humanisticcommitment to the sovereignty of the subject in its

original Kantian format, and then in its phenomenological and existential recon-figurations, are the furthest away from Foucaults epistemological respect for the empiricalsciences(Varela, 2009, pp. 1427).With this observation I want to bring out thecritical fact that what the natural, empirical, and counter sciences have incommon is a fourth criterion. And, that it is thisfactor which not only excludes thehumanistically regarded human sciences from being empirical sciences, but itdetermines that biology, economics, and linguistics are a science, for that veryreason. And, since Foucault obviously distinguishes the empirical from the naturalsciences, that is why he did not declare that they also share the criteria of

systematicity and formalization. In other words, the empirical sciences are notexactly the sciences proper, but they aresciences. This may well be the thrust ofthe reach for a disciplinary domainan empirical realist science.




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THE TEMPTATION TO SCIENTIFIC REALISM:

THE FOURTH CRITERION OF SCIENCE

It is now time to show how Foucault himself actually introduces the three foci of

the empirical sciences, the discursive context of which is the unfolding of themodern episteme emerging from the Kantian theory of the transcendental field.

Opposite to this opening to the transcendental, and symmetrical to it, another form of thoughtquestions the conditions of a relation between representations from the point of view of thebeing itself that is represented: what is indicated, on the horizon of all actual representations, asthe foundation of their unity, is found to be those never objectifiable objects, those never entirelyrepresentable representations, those simultaneously evident and invisible invisibilities, those realities thatare removed from reality to the degree to which they are the foundations of what is given to us andreaches us: the force of labour, the energy of life, the power of speech (Foucault, Ibid, p. 244,emphasis provided).

With reference to the invisible invisibilities that are the realitiesthat are removed fromreality and hence are never objectifiable objects, and that thus constitute the founda-tions of what is given to us and reaches us, what is being picked out here by Foucault isthe depth realistfeature that the Harr formulation of it quoted earlier (p. 9) declaresconstitutes science as a metaphysical/explanatory endeavor.

Finally, note this remarkable comment by Foucault. If we consider,

the powerto provide a foundation . . . for the various links that can join its various elements, [it is

clear that] the condition of these links resides henceforth outside representation, beyond itsimmediate visibility, in a sort ofbehind-the-scenesworld even deeper and more densethan representationitself. In order to find a way back to the point where the visible forms of beings [life, labor, andlanguage] are joined . . . we must direct our search towards that peak, that necessary but alwaysinaccessiblepoint, which drives down, beyond our gaze, towards the very heart of things. Withdrawn intotheir own essence, taking up their place within the force that animates them, within the organic structurethat maintains them, within the genesis that has never ceased to produce them, things, in their fundamentaltruth, have now escaped from the space of the table. . . . It is from the starting point of thearchitecture they conceal, of the cohesion that maintains its sovereign and secret sway over each one of their parts,it is from the depth ofthe force that brought them into being and remains in them, as though motionless yet stillquivering,that things . . . offer themselves, though very partially, to representation. And from their inaccessible

store, representation can draw out, piece by piece, only tenuous elements whose unity . . . alwaysremains hidden in that beyond (Foucault, Ibid, pp. 238239, emphasis provided).

And from the closing chapter ofThe Birth of the Clinic we know what that realistfeature is which is the reference for what always remains hidden in that beyond, thoseinvisible invisibilities. It is revealed in Broussaiss insight that localization [ofdisease at the organic site] demands . . . a causal schema that explicitly calls forthe idea of the irritability of the tissue andthe irritatingpower of the agent(Foucault,1994, p. 189, emphasis provided). Hence, note that what we have here is a fourth

empirical sciencean open disciplinary domain of which the archaeology ismerely a possible, and only an initial, exemplar: a theory ofdiscourse as an autono-mous unconscious domain of rules has the determinate properties of power, energy, and force.




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From the above discussion in which I have laid out Foucaults discovery ofscientific realism, and assuming that he could have been confronted with this in aninterview between 1980 and 1984, we can easily imagine that he could have alsocommented at some point that, When I think back now, I ask myself what else

it was that I was talking about [throughout the three domains of my research] butcausalpower.

FOUCAULTS FOURTH EMPIRICAL SCIENCE: A FATAL TENSION

The fourth empirical science leaves us with a position in a fatal state of tension.Taking the above statement that discourse is a determinate unconscious domaintogether with Foucaults statement in, The Order of Discourse, that discourse

is not about objects or subjects, since it is neither language nor speech, noteFoucaults declaration.

Finally, if it is true that these discursive, discontinuous series have their regularity, within certainlimits, it is clearly no longer possible to establish mechanically causal links or an ideal necessity amongtheir constitutive elements (Foucaualt, 1972, p. 231, emphasis provided).

We have here an explanatory standpoint whose tension stems from two assertionsthat contradict each otherthe thesis that discourse is deterministic andthe thesis

that discourse is non-deterministic. And it is presented in the realist format ofLevi-Strauss and Lacan. Even though, if one were to insist, Foucault meant thisposition to be proto-theoretical, this comment does not save him, for weve seenthat he did claim that any future theory would be deductive in form. Thus, asunmistakably deductive in form there is an allusion to determinism, and the scentof a Hempel. So, the link between the deductivism of structuralism and a deter-minist version of realist science cannot be ignored. Furthermore, in admitting thathe confused too much the effects of power proper on enunciative play . . . withsystematicity, the theoretical form, or something like a paradigm, this wont do

as an answer (in Dreyfus and Rabinow, Ibid, p. 104) For, what exactly, is theconfusion with regard to the theoretical nature of the alleged systematicity; whatontological paradigm is being alluded too? The Foucualt/Giddens connectioncentered on the idea that the sovereign person is personal agency helps us here.

In his study of Foucaults epistemology Privitera suggests that Foucaults versionof Giddenss problem is structure and creativity (Privitera, Ibid, pp. 97, 9198).Specifically, it is the problem of the deterministic principle that being speaks thesubject.Andyet,aftertheDreyfus/RabinowcriticismthatFoucaultsascriptionofcausal powers to discourse is incomprehensible, Foucault learned his lesson

(Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. xxiv). Moving from the archive/discursiveformation/discourse dynamic to the dynamics of power relations and fields offorces the archaeological theory of the archive was abandoned. The lesson learned




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has to do with the metaphysical status of an alleged hidden mechanism produc-ing statements. After all, he did, at least in the case of Freud , andDurkheim, pointoutin 1965, that Freud fatally discovered the unconscious as a thing; he perceivedit as a certain number of mechanisms. . . . thereby [committing] psychology to a

radical concretification (Foucault, 1998, p. 252). Nevertheless, note, that evenafter he dismissed not only these two concretificantions but the concretificantion ofdiscourse after 1969, in 1980, we have seen that Foucault has claimed that he nevergave up his search for the reality ofthingsfar from reality. Thus, considering bothFoucaults resort to thediscourse/power/knowledge dynamic andhiscommitmentto realism, it cannot be a surprise that critics like Han (after quoting Foucualthimself: Foucault, 1995[1975], pp. 2728) and Privitera, for example, can stillclaim that the determinism of archaeological subjection continues in the genealogy;and furthermore, that critics like Giddens can, as weve seen, therefore declare that

Foucaults determinism is a matter of the absence of agency in history (Han, 2002,p. 143; Privitera, Ibid, p. 122; Giddens, 1987, p. 98).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Foucaults scientific realist temptation reveals his theories of the subject to be aGiddensian problem of structure and creativity (Privitera, Ibid, pp. 97, 9198). Toadvance this understanding let us refine Guttings point about Foucaults resisting

the structuralist temptation in light of Roy Boynes insight that the periodic tableillustrates the core structuralist paradigm (Boyne, 2000, p. 194).The refinement: Foucault was not engaged in the structuralist desire to achieve

a Mendeleevian physics of the historical sciences. But even this is no longer thepoint: the deeper insight into structuralism and science is that the latter is a realistpractice, hence, the core of the periodic table illustrates instead the Harranrevelation that by mid-nineteenth century the causal powers construal of matterwins the day in physics and becomes the bedrock of modern field theory (Varela,Ibid, pp. 267292). The import of this is that the Mendeleevian exemplar must be

subsumed under the causal powers metaphysic because it underwrites it. But,what is now particularly important about that is this: in Foucaults case it is theunprincipled resort to causal powers ascription rather than the muddled aping of periodic

table-reading by certain linguists, anthropologists, and psychoanalysts, that nails the crucial

significance of the structuralist temptation. For, as weve seen, when Foucault can initiallyassert that the archive is the atom of discourse, his later rejection of that ideaimplies that he somehow decided that it is, now, in effect, the ether ofdiscoursean illegitimate unobservable explanatory causal power. How was thatever decided. Certainly no thought experiment analogous to the Michelson/

Morley experimental defeat of the ether hypothesis has ever been in evidence.The Dreyfus/Rabinow discussion of that issue does not help us (Dreyfusand Rabinow, Ibid, pp. 79103) Now for part II: the relationship of Foucaults




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scientific temptation to the problem of the unresolved conflict between the theo-ries of subjection and subjectivation, the theme of which is returning to Kant.

Charles R. Varela

Research AssociateDepartment of Anthropology

University of Illinois

Champaign/Urbana, USA

[email protected]

Acknowledgements. My special thanks to Rom Harre for the usual excellence of hisreading of this paper. I also want to thank the anonymous reviewer who accu-rately saw the need for a revised introduction.

NOTE

1 In locating MFs theorizing in the context of the Norris/Giddens charge of determin-ism, I also want to relate that charge to what I will call the debate between the Frank Pearceand Tony Woodiwiss thesis that MF is a non-humanist variation of ordinary realismtheDurkheimian tradition of social fact determinismand the T. J. Berard defense againstany such general charge and specific thesis. My discussion of Foucault on these mattersshould be read accordingly: 1) against the Pearce/Woodiwiss thesis Foucault is ultimately

not a fatalist (determinist), though he is a realist, and, he is a humanist 2) partially for theBerard defense, Foucault is a realist and humanist, but he never quite resolved hisstructure/agency problem. Now, a special paper, perhaps, would be needed to give bothsides a full and proper presentation; my reference is thus preliminary and thus an orien-tation to the discussion to follow in parts one and two (Berard, 1999).

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