Towards an Epistemology of Ruptures: The Case of Heidegger and Foucault

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By systematically uncovering and comprehensively examining the epistemological implications of Heidegger’s history of being and Foucault’s archaeology of discursive formations, Towards an Epistemology of Ruptures shows how Heidegger and Foucault significantly expand the notions of knowledge and thought. This is done by tracing their path-breaking responses to the question: What is the object of thought? The book shows how for both thinkers thought is not just the act by which the object is represented in an idea, and knowledge not just a state of the mind of the individual subject corresponding to the object. Each thinker, in his own way, argues that thought is a productive event in which the subject and the object gain their respective identity and knowledge is the opening up of a space in which the subject and object can encounter each other and in which true and false statements about an object become possible. They thereby lay the ground for a new conceptual framework for rethinking the very relationship between knowledge and its object. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Texts Introduction 1 Heidegger’s Reformulation of the Essence of Thought (I): From the Transcendental Power of the Imagination to the Ontological Power of Thought 1. Introduction 2. The transcendental power of the imagination as nonconceptual thinking in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics 2.1 Heidegger on the relationship between intuition and thinking in Kant 2.2 The ontological synthesis of intuition and thinking in the transcendental power of the imagination 2.3 Schematization as the key to the role of the transcendental power of the imagination 2.4 The transcendental power of the imagination as thinking prior to thinking 3. The ontological power of inceptual thinking in the Beiträge 3.1 From transcendental imagination to inceptual thinking 3.2 The distinctive features of inceptual thinking 3.3 First implication: The essential historicity of thinking 3.4 Second implication: Thinking as event 4. Conclusion 2 Heidegger’s Reformulation of the Essence of Thought (II): On the Relationship between Thought and Being 1. Introduction 2. The distinction between two kinds of thinking in the Beiträge 2.1 An interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of Seyn 2.2 The delicate task of separating thinking (1) from thinking (2) 3. The peculiarity of the object of thinking in the Beiträge 3.1 The standard understanding of being and history in contemporary epistemology 3.2 Heidegger’s challenge to the standard understanding 4. Thinking of be-ing and the site of thinking 4.1 The relationship between thinking and be-ing 4.2 Da-sein as the site of thinking 5. An appraisal of the epistemological implications of Heidegger’s ontological framework in the Beiträge 6. The distinction between thinking and science in What Is Called Thinking? 7. Elucidating the peculiarity of the object of thought in What Is Called Thinking? 7.1 The call–response relationship between thought and its object 7.2 Thinking as a prelogical activity in Parmenides 7.3 Being as the object of thought 8. Conclusion 3 Heidegger’s Reformulation of the Essence of Knowledge: From Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism to Heidegger’s Historical Ontology 1. Introduction 2. Husserl’s transcendental idealist account of knowledge 2.1 The formula of Husserl’s revised transcendental idealism 2.2 The correlation between consciousness and object in transcendental idealism 2.3 The question of knowledge in Husserl’s transcendental idealism 3. Heidegger’s historical account of knowledge 3.1 The historical character of the fundamental nature of things 3.2 The relationship between knowledge, metaphysics, and history 3.3 Knowledge as a metaphysical event in history 3.4 The transformation of the very character of knowledge in the modern age: The emergence of the mathematical 3.5 Articulating the metaphysical foundations of modern scientific knowledge 4. Conclusion 4 Foucault’s Reformulation of the Essence of Thought in The Order of Things 1. Introduction 2. Towards a discursive account of thought and knowledge 3. Three forms of thought: From the Renaissance to the Classical to the contemporary 3.1 The Renaissance as a form of thought: Resemblance 3.2 The Classical age as a form of thought: From resemblance to order 3.3 The contemporary period as a form of thought: From order to history 4. Conclusion 5 Foucault’s Reformulation of the Essence of Knowledge: From Husserlian Phenomenology to Foucauldian Archaeology 1. Introduction 2. Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of the historicity of the sciences 2.1 The first way of understanding the transmission of idealities: Reactivation 2.2 The second way of understanding the transmission of idealities: Logical explication 3. The question of historicity: Derrida and Merleau-Ponty on Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry 4. Foucault’s archaeological analyses of the historicity of the sciences 4.1 Archaeology as the analysis of statements 4.2 Foucault’s novel account of knowledge and its relationship to science 5. Conclusion: The metascientific approaches of Husserl and Foucault and their epistemological implications Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index