미셸 푸코의 『말과 사물』에 나타난 ‘근대 인간과학’의 개념

Abstract

The notion of (modern) human sciences in Michel Foucault(1926-1984)'s Les Mots et les choses(1966) is crucial for the understanding of his archeological thoughts. The human sciences is presented in the book as a direct successor of kantian notions like Mensch, Anthropologie, etc. The main interests of Les Mots et les choses is clearly to show a sketch of epistemological conditions of the formation of human sciences in modern era. For this purpose, what Foucault tries to do is the analysis of conditions and limits of theses modern human sciences to bring light to the possibility of a meta- human science, that is in fact, (foucaldian) archeology. The archeology analyses the epistemological configuration of theirs historical formations to their possible transformations in the future. Foucault himself declares in an interview in 1967 that his work can be defined as ‘an analysis of cultural facts that characterize our [european] culture’, ‘an ethnology of the culture to which we long.’ In short, what he did in his 1966's Les Mots et les choses, archeological analysis of human sciences, is no other than “an analysis or ethnology of our culture, our rationality and our discourses.”