Consecrated to history

controversies regarding the modern episteme in Michel Foucault’s thought

Abstract

This work it is about Foucault’s assertion that he considers himself part of the modern episteme. There are two recent publications in our country -Elías Palti and Manolo Rodríguez- that argue with that famous
periodization of The order of things, proposing a new cut that would not have been considered by Foucault. Not only from the point of view of the human sciences, but of science in general, there seems to be a certain consensus in pointing to an epistemic rupture at some point
in the first half of the twentieth century. In this framework, we are interested here in proposing an interpretation of Foucault’s statement that, without denying these disciplinary observations, attempts to restore the sense of this contemporaneity with the modern episteme that Foucault would continue to sustain until his last days. To this end, we will focus on two aspects of it: the role played by the knowledge of history and the paradigmatic figure of Kant.