The Philosophy of History by Michel Foucault and Cornelius Castoriadis: An Evolution of Methods and Mechanisms of Ontological Oppositions in History

The aim of this article is to study the connections between the works of two famous French philosophers: Michel Foucault (1926-1978) and Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997) on the subject of the philosophy of history. The author tries to prove that behind methodological differences of the both works there are substantial differences on the subject of the ontology of history and its mechanisms. Scholars, such as Marcela Tovar-Restrepo, often compare the both works regarding the connections between subjectivity and power existing in the works of the both thinkers. The question in this study is about the objective conflicts functioning behind their methodological analyses. The investigations lead to the following results: (1) Castoriadis's methodology of the philosophy of history is opposed to that of Foucault not only by his interest to existentialist Marxism, but also by the acceptance of the trans-historical triad "soul-language-object" in the place of Foucault's trans-historical triad "language -work - life"; (2) Castoriadis's ontology of history opposes to that of Foucault by the introduction of the trans-historical conflict "autonomy-heteronomy" in the place of Foucault's trans-historical conflict "(universalist) theology-spirituality". In this sense, the advantage of the both authors is that they include into history some "semantic dimension", the ways and techniques of doing something, specific for a period of time. In fact, Castoriadis radically opposes the both ontological dimensions of history: the "legein", i.e. logical determination, dominating in the Occidental mind and the "teukhein", i.e. different techniques. And Foucault sees their differences clearly, writing histories and genealogies of different techniques, but he never opposes techniques to the power or science. Finally, the problem is not that Foucault can represent a risk to Castoriadis's autonomy (Caumiere), but that the both authors describe history in the pure opposition to speculativism and determinism, just forgetting about its moral dimension.

Keywords

Authors

References