신도 인간도 없는 언어의 우주 - 『말과 사물』에 나타난 푸코의 소쉬르 수용 -

Abstract

Michel Foucault (1926~1984) explicates his understanding of Structuralism, as originated by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857∼1913), in Les Mots et les choses. Foucault proposes that： 1) Structuralism is simultaneously a binary oppositional thought inheriting the symbolism of Port-Royal Logic from the classical era, and also a novel thought disconnected from any reliance upon the infinite or God. 2) Structuralism is simultaneously a thought inheriting the condition of possibility in the form of the unconscious constant of Kant’s ‘Analytics of the Finitude’ and also a thought disconnected from any reliance upon the notion of the Subject as understood in the modern era. 3) The episteme of the postmodern era is language, which inherits the classical understanding of Sign and of modern Man. 4) Foucault proposes this latter thesis because he considers that Man and Language have historically never been compatible in the occidental culture. 5) As a result, the so-called postmodern era which is to come should logically represent the negation of modern Man and of the classical understanding of Sign. The philosophical goal which Foucault pursues through these complex argument is the destruction of the notion of ‘modern Man’, that is to say of the Subject. The Subject does not merely use language as an instrument of his expression, but is actually a consequential effect of the functioning of language. God and Man are, from the structuralist point of view, the final effects which derive from the functioning of language, which remains, even in a world without God / Man. Thus, for Foucault, Saussurian Structuralism is an instrument through which modern anthropological Man can be destroyed, and the conditions of possibility for the future can be analyzed.