Foucault’s Radical Historicism: Limits, Tensions, and the Specter of the Transcendental

Michel Foucault in his study. n.d.

In his article, “The Limits of Radical Historicism: The Methodological Significance of Foucault’s Relationship to Transcendental Philosophy,” Leonard D’Cruz critically examines Michel Foucault’s attempt to historicize epistemological conditions while avoiding the pitfalls of transcendental philosophy. At the core of this inquiry is the tension between Foucault’s commitment to radical historicism—the view that knowledge, power, and subjectivity are entirely contingent on historical circumstances—and the possibility that his methodology inadvertently reintroduces quasi-transcendental structures. “The Limits of Radical Historicism” raises a fundamental question for scholars invested in historicist critique: Can Foucault successfully extricate his framework from transcendental categories, or do aspects of his thought implicitly depend on the very structures he seeks to reject? In exploring this issue, D’Cruz’s analysis serves as a crucial intervention in debates on the limits of radical historicism, offering insights that extend beyond Foucault’s work to broader methodological concerns in historiography and critical theory.

D’Cruz begins by situating Foucault within the larger philosophical tradition of transcendental inquiry, tracing his intellectual departure from Kantian and phenomenological approaches. While Kant sought to establish universal conditions of possibility for knowledge and experience, Foucault rejects this framework, replacing it with historically specific conditions—what he terms the historical a priori. Unlike transcendental structures, which are fixed and universal, Foucault argues that epistemic conditions emerge through contingent discursive formations that shift over time. However, as D’Cruz highlights, this move raises a pressing question: Does Foucault’s method genuinely avoid transcendental presuppositions, or does it merely replace one form of necessity with another under the guise of historicism? The article carefully unpacks this dilemma, demonstrating that while Foucault’s approach represents a significant departure from transcendental philosophy, it remains haunted by certain structural commitments that complicate his radical historicist aspirations.

A crucial element of D’Cruz’s critique involves a detailed analysis of how Foucault positions himself against traditional transcendental philosophy. Transcendental inquiry, as developed by Kant and later refined by phenomenologists such as Husserl, aims to uncover the necessary and universal structures that underlie human cognition and knowledge production. Foucault, by contrast, insists that these conditions are historically contingent and subject to transformation. His archaeological and genealogical methods seek to reveal how epistemic frameworks emerge, solidify, and dissolve within specific historical periods, challenging the notion of immutable cognitive structures. Nevertheless, D’Cruz argues that Foucault’s concept of the historical a priori introduces a paradox: although it is meant to denote historically variable conditions, it still functions as a structuring principle that shapes discourses within a given epoch. This raises an important theoretical concern—if the historical a priori conditions knowledge within a particular era, does it not, in some sense, fulfill a role similar to that of Kant’s transcendental categories?

One of the strengths of D’Cruz’s analysis is his careful engagement with the concept of the historical a priori, a term that Foucault borrows and reconfigures from Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Traditionally, the a priori refers to necessary preconditions for experience and knowledge, existing outside of time and historical contingency. Foucault, however, reinterprets it as something entirely immanent to history, emerging through discursive practices rather than existing independently of them. This innovation allows Foucault to advance a historicist critique of epistemology, but critics have pointed out that his use of the term still implies a kind of structuring force that resembles the very transcendental categories he seeks to avoid. Béatrice Han-Pile, for example, argues that Foucault’s historical a priori risks blurring the boundary between the empirical and the transcendental, raising questions about whether his framework can sustain a purely historicist methodology.

D’Cruz addresses this critique by invoking the notion of historical sedimentation, suggesting that epistemic structures accumulate stability over time without achieving universal status. This idea strengthens Foucault’s historicist position by emphasizing that discursive formations, though contingent, can acquire a temporary fixity that gives them the appearance of necessity. However, D’Cruz also acknowledges that this argument does not fully resolve the tension between Foucault’s radical historicism and the quasi-transcendental implications of his theoretical framework. The article thus positions Foucault’s work as a provocative but ultimately ambivalent effort to escape the grip of transcendental philosophy, illuminating the methodological complexities inherent in his approach.

D’Cruz engages with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of sedimentation, emphasizing its utility in elaborating Foucault’s treatment of the body, power, and resistance. However, one notable omission in this discussion is Reinhart Koselleck’s analogous concept of sedimentation, as explored in Sediments of Time. While it is possible that this omission was due to the article’s specific scope, a broader engagement with Koselleck’s insights could have enriched the analysis by situating Foucault’s historical a priori within a more expansive framework of temporality and historical structuring. Bringing Koselleck into dialogue with Foucault and Merleau-Ponty would allow for a more nuanced understanding of how historical conditions sediment over time, shaping both meaning and embodied practices while resisting static universalization. This potential cross-pollination between phenomenology, poststructuralism, and conceptual history could offer a richer perspective on the methodological tensions at play in Foucault’s work.

Another central issue explored in the article is the role of power in Foucault’s thought. A long-standing debate among scholars concerns whether Foucault’s concept of power—ubiquitous, relational, and constitutive of knowledge—functions as a universal explanatory principle, thereby undermining his historicist commitments. D’Cruz acknowledges this critique but argues that Foucault’s approach remains fundamentally historicist. In Foucault’s framework, power is not an external force imposed from above but an emergent property of specific historical formations. By tracing how power-knowledge relations evolve, Foucault avoids reintroducing a fixed transcendental structure while still accounting for the systemic nature of domination and resistance. Nevertheless, D’Cruz suggests that this balancing act is precarious, as the omnipresence of power in Foucault’s analysis risks granting it a kind of structural permanence that stands in tension with his emphasis on historical contingency.

In his later work, Foucault shifts focus to ethics and self-formation, leading some scholars to argue that he reintroduces a constitutive subject—precisely what his earlier work sought to dismantle. This development raises the question: Does Foucault’s concept of subjectivation betray his historicist project? D’Cruz contends that Foucault’s later writings do not contradict his methodological premises but rather refine them. The subject, in Foucault’s account, is not a stable, transcendental agent but a historically constituted formation. His exploration of ethical self-fashioning aligns with his broader effort to historicize identity, power, and resistance, demonstrating that subjectivity itself is embedded within historically contingent structures of knowledge and discipline.

D’Cruz’s article makes a significant contribution to debates on radical historicism, offering a nuanced assessment of the methodological tensions in Foucault’s thought. While Foucault successfully challenges the universality of transcendental conditions, his work repeatedly grapples with the difficulty of articulating a critique that avoids invoking stabilizing structures. The historical a priori, power-knowledge relations, and subjectivation all highlight the challenges inherent in sustaining a purely historicist methodology. Rather than undermining radical historicism, however, D’Cruz’s analysis strengthens it by clarifying its internal tensions. His argument serves as a crucial reminder that even historicist critique must remain vigilant about the conceptual frameworks it employs, ensuring that it does not inadvertently reproduce the very structures it seeks to dismantle.

Extending this discussion beyond Foucault, D’Cruz’s insights have broader implications for scholars working in fields such as historiography, critical theory, and intellectual history. A prime example of this challenge arises in the study of human rights discourse, where historians seek to historicize human rights rather than treat them as timeless moral imperatives. Figures such as Samuel Moyn have critiqued the tendency to project contemporary human rights frameworks onto the past, arguing that the modern human rights movement is a relatively recent phenomenon with distinct ideological and political underpinnings. Yet even within such historicist critiques, there is a risk of reintroducing universalist assumptions, as scholars may implicitly rely on normative claims about justice and dignity that function as stabilizing structures akin to the transcendental categories they critique. This tension illustrates why radical historicism must remain self-reflexive, constantly interrogating its own methodological assumptions to avoid replicating the very epistemic structures it seeks to challenge.