Sergey Gashkov. The “anarcheological” method of “late” Foucault and Christianity. Methodology and critics. Vol. 5. No. 1-2. 2020

Publication Details

The “anarcheological” method of “late” Foucault and Christianity. Methodology and critics
*Title in the language of publication:*	«Анархеологический» метод «позднего» Фуко и христианство. Методология и критика
*Author:*	Sergey Gashkov PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor. Baltic State Technical University «VOENMEH» named after D. F. Ustinov, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Address: 7 1st Krasnoarmeyskaya Street, St. Petersburg 190005, Russia. E-mail: sgachkov@hotmail.com
*Issue:*	ESSE: The philosophical and theological studies. Vol. 5. No. 1/2. 2020. P. 30–56.
*Language:*	Russian
*Document type:*	Research Article
*DOI*	https://doi.org/10.31119/essephts.2020.5.1-2.2
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Abstract

The paper considers the heuristic potential of an interdisciplinary plate-form, emerging in the course of the discussion of the philosophical meaning of the “late” Foucault’s works, in particular, “The History of Sexuality”. The paper aims not only to represent existing positions and points of view on this problem but also to analyze the “late” Foucault’s works as creating the conditions of possibility for the philosophical knowledge of the History. The antagonism of the power and resistance are impersonally and immanently present in the History, as well as that of the “care of the self” and spirituality. As a material for the article, the analysis performed by Foucault of the history of the formation of subjectivity in the early Christian era was taken. Foucault’s “anarcheological” method is to be represented as a systematic reflection on the religious and philosophical transcendentalism denying the “repressive hypothesis” in the mode of a “negative dialectics”. In this thought perspective we can see that the modern methodology of historical knowledge cannot completely depend on the concept of domination. The traditional methodology performs a “shiftiness” (Verstellung) of empirical form and ideal content, whereas the immanent intuition of the history brings to light the discontinuity which the historical discourse tends to represent as a causality. The “anarcheological” method in the History seems to be an “anthropologically” promising project: the hermeneutical polysemy of historical-social sense excludes the domination of the classifier of interpretation and discloses its nature in the form of a “power-knowledge” simulacre. For that reason, the knowledge of the History consists not only in the instrumentalization of “power-knowledge” mechanisms, but, on the contrary: the acceptance of illusiveness of the historical similarity is compensated by the acknowledgment of the meaning of indirect forms of discursive representation of human praxis.

Keywords

Michel Foucault, Early Christianity, practices of oneself, “anarcheological” method, genealogy of power, philosophy of history, methodology of human sciences, “The History of Sexuality”.

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