180061 SE Foucault and the doubt about humanity (2025S)

“For Foucault, it really is about justifying the human sciences. But it is a poisonous justification, an archaeology that breaks its idols.” - This is how Gilles Deleuze characterizes the actual point of Michel Foucault's probably best-known book: The Order of Things. The seminar will approach the notoriously difficult text of this archaeology of the human sciences by taking this Deleuzean intuition as a starting point and concentrating on Foucault's reconstruction of the figure of man as an “empirical-transcendental doublet”. In the second part of the seminar, students will have the opportunity to engage with one of three possible texts that tie in with Foucault's characterization of the episteme of modernity (Deleuze, Haraway or Rölli).

The seminar is intended as an in-depth introduction to Foucault's philosophy and history of science and its continuations in the 20th century.

Teaching methods
- preparatory written formulation of a question on the respective reading by the students (to be submitted 9 times per semester 2 days before the course)
- approx. 15 minutes introduction by the course instructor to the respective reading (philosophical-historical and historical contextualization of the text, formulation of questions for the discussion)
- Moderated, open discussion on the seminar reading and group discussions based on the questions submitted