Philosophical Archaeology and the Historical A Priori: from Kant to Foucault

Most accounts of the historical a priori can be traced back to Husserlian phenomenology. Foucault’s appeals to the historical a priori are more problematic because of his hostility to this tradition. In this paper, I argue that Foucault’s diplôme thesis on Hegel, his studies of Kant’s Anthropology, his response to critics of The Order of Things, and his later work on Kant’s essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” all suggest that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy helped to shape his conception of the historical a priori.