Thoughts on The Order of Things

[sodapopinski51]

The discourse of "Man," as in Rights of Man, Liberal Humanism, and The Human Sciences began when the Classical Period ended. The entire book is primarily about this transition, and how subsequent philosophers are indebted to this transition. While the book reads like a History of Philosophy, very few sources are cited. Rarely is a footnote given,

Comments

[sodapopinski51]

Yes, I agree with what you said completely. The aspect of the text that I overlooked when I first read it (I'm now reading it for a second time closely) is the Doxic subversion you mentioned. An episteme is popularized by doxa. For instance, the classical period Foucault studies was the prevalent episteme in the late 16-late 18th century. A certain epistemological construction, a limit to the knowable, was occurring, a horizon of the thinkable, yet the doxa, the common folk, absorbed these ideas without really knowing they were doing so. So this raises all sorts of complex questions regarding Freedom, free-will, agency, so on and so forth