By 'archeology', Foucault generally refers to a study of the methodological assumptions at least tacit in the thinking of different cultures and ages. On the surface, it seems reasonable enough to suppose that people, in each place and period of history will display some particular emphases in their ways of thought, which can be identified as an epistemological framework, underlying their whole cultural context. But such patterns are of course only discernible ex-post-facto, they are not predictable.

For a start, Foucault does not clearly distinguish between the epistemological practises common to all the people of a defined group, and their own theories concerning these practises, and our own estimates of what these practises and theories might be; there is always a vagueness and ambivalence in that issue, which is rhetorically useful (as already indicated).

But, as it turns out, the method he explicitly proposes allows for such lapses. He is not appealing to ordinary scientific methods, to common logic, but to the so-called Critical/Transcendental method, which was inaugurated by Immanuel Kant (Prussia, 1724-1804). Foucault frankly admits use of this form of argument, though he also claims to be using it with other contents, other terms. According to this method, the 'critical philosopher' can somehow 'transcend' the mind's structural limitations, and make unassailable judgments from above, 'as it were'.

Here, let me say that such argument is an 'imposture' from the point of view of pure logic. It is an attempt to introduce a deus ex machina into epistemological discussions. The philosopher becomes a privileged human being, capable in some untold way to become a 'superman', to use a Nietzschean phrase dear to Foucault. This is not logic — it is non-logic, even anti-logic. It has never been validated by the norms of logic, as a form of reasoning.

You cannot at once claim that a Subject is locked into his specificity and finitude, and at the same time capable of acts of consciousness which rise above and overcome these given limits. The two theses are strictly contradictory; there is formally no room for doubts and speculations about a paradoxical credibility in between them (Law of the Excluded Middle). We do not have here a dialectic of 'thesis implies antithesis, therefore the latter is their synthesis', which is the definition of valid 'self-evidence' arguments in logic. The proposed argument is in no way proved necessary by dialectic; on the contrary, dialectic proves it impossible.

If the Subject says 'I see (from above, allegedly) that my consciousness is limited in distortive ways', as do Foucault and Kant, he is automatically de-legitimizing his very own statement (an assertoric cannot imply its own negation, nor, even, imply its own negation to be possible). This means, in formal logic, that the proposition in question is false; a conceptual claim which is logically self-incapacitating is simply incapacitated, it is alethically impossible and not worthy of any further consideration. Yet these people continue to try to evade this absolute law for the resolution of paradox.

Foucault claims that the Kantian 'method' marked a radically new stage in epistemological history. I agree that arguments of this sort have since Kant received considerable 'prestige and importance'; but I do not agree that they are indubitable, quite the contrary, they are entirely spurious. Their credibility is due to the paradox which negates them, rather than to the existence of a paradox which posits them; they are not self-evident, or even possible, they are self-rejecting, logically impossible.

This is not a 'radically different' 'configuration of science' as he suggests (nor are the findings and theories of Ricardo, Cuvier and Bopp, formal examples of such an 'other' science); it is illogical and it is therefore not knowledge (366). Foucault's alleged transcendence of language, is not a sort of mystical state of silent meditation on the noumenal, but an alienation from even ordinary reality. Perhaps he is describing his own peculiar relation to words and things, but it is not a relation I personally recognize

in me, and so it cannot be universal.

This peculiar method is contrasted to the Classical/Scientific method, which Foucault rejects as naive, half-witted and tiny-minded. He claims the change 'irreversible'; but, I say, surely, criticism, too, can be criticized, it is not itself alone above criticism, the exclusive domain of those who are for it. I agree, however, that the Kantian method was a radical break from the Classical — in my view, an unfortunate break. The 'second degree' of language, the language of science, is simply a clarification of ordinary language, a selection and re-affirmation of its most intelligent potentials; it is not something essentially different than ordinary language, and (a-fortiori) nor can the critical method be so construed.

In any case, it would be untrue, historically, to say, as Foucault does, that either the Classical method or the Kantian is exclusively representative of the episteme of its cultural era. Surely, that is hyperbole. Is he referring to university professors, to the scientific community, to intellectuals or to the whole population, of all ages and intelligence, socio-economic milieu, educational level, ethnicity? The indefinition in the subject of his propositions allows him to turn particular ones into universal ones.

But what is clear throughout, is that Foucault does not properly understand the scientific episteme (any more than Kant did, incidentally). His knowledge of logic is limited to actual-categorical propositions and processes, which are used to construct simple classification 'tables' — drawings which display the similarities and differences of things. This is only one of the tools of scientific logic, and not its whole method (thinkers may use a technique long before they become aware that they were using it).

Foucault does not know modal logic, conditional logic of various de re modal bases, causality, or the inductive and deductive capacities of logical conditioning. Class-logic clearly brings out the perpendicularity between the space of objects (subsumed by classes) and that of ideas (classes or classes of classes). When evaluating the content of a thesis, we are duty bound to consider the methods used in formulating it. He borrows terms like 'validation' from logic (which are meaningful to us, only because of their value within logic), and reverses their meanings. He says that certain '…laws of fluctuation and change… cannot be fitted over natural laws', as if formal logic cannot handle transitive relations.

Our movements of thought always display certain patterns, whether philosophers and historians are yet aware of them or not; changes in logical science may effect changes in the frequency and concentration of our use of these thought processes, but not invent them — their discovery implies that they were there already, because it is only possible by an act of self-consciousness. Foucault's use of phrases like 'partial totalities' (he means 'contexts thought to be total, then found partial', to be exact) or 'thoughts that we cannot think' (when he should say 'things we cannot think of' — which is less dramatic, but more accurate), prevents him from developing a healthy outlook.

Because he lacks this logical training, he imagines that Science consists only of simple tables, and he is always very surprised to discover, in history, events or ideas which do not fit this narrow model. For this reason, he sees the logic of science as flawed, and tries to find some alternative 'logic' which will somehow (he never asks or says just how) resolve the difficulties of epistemology. But it is a red herring, this Classical science of his imagination; it is not a correct image of real science, at any point in time or place.

His arguments do not therefore concern the human mind as it in fact functions; they are irrelevant. His so-called 'archeology' is neither omniscient nor infallible. It is of course conceivable that different people effectively, if not self-consciously, use different epistemological frameworks; but I very much doubt that Foucault has correctly identified the uniformities characteristic of the historical cultures under consideration. He tries to give the impression that his historical thinking is novel and profound,

concerning an additional dimension of time; but none of the evidence he adduces for such an in-depth, into-man line of aseity inductively implies such a conclusion.

While Descartes was predominantly a rationalist, Hume was more of an empiricist, and other people were other things. In every period, there is perhaps a bell-shaped curve, with a multitude of tendencies, though some are more probable for a given time and place. There are shifts in emphasis, perhaps some quick movements or quantum leaps from curve to curve, but there are no 'revolutions' in a strict sense of profound discontinuities. Foucault keeps insisting on them, but he fails to convince (me, at least).

A distinction cannot be transformed at will into a radical difference. Logic, scientific epistemology, have always, since Aristotle at least, sought for timeless generalities about the human means of knowledge. Such a universal science acknowledges freely that different people, at different times in their lives, as well as in different societies and epochs, may use an arsenal of logical techniques which are incomplete or even fallacious.

The logical philosopher has two tasks: to observe the human thought potential and to validate it. That valid potentials are not in all cases actualized, or that invalid potentials are all too often actualized, in no way affects the universality of the logician's findings, for they exist in a modal framework. It is modality which allows the reconciliation between the finitude and specificity of the thinker, and his ability to formulate apodictic statements which are both empirical and rational.

Since logic is able to validate itself very well, thank you, there is no need for a 'transcendental' non-logic; the 'critique' is a redundancy, it has no problem to solve (let alone whether it is capable of offering a credible solution). The Kantian method, and Foucault's applications, are not exempt from the inductive and deductive conditions set by logic; and it does not matter how we characterize the meaningfulness of words.

It must be admitted, however (and this is the faint shining of credibility that the transcendental method has behind it), that there is in fact a 'movement of thought', which consists in 'going above or under' or 'taking a step back or aside' from the situation at hand. And this ability of the Subject to withdraw from a context and conceive of a wider context, is of course perfectly possible and legitimate as a logical act. What Kant achieved, is to remind philosophers to take this distance repeatedly, so as to ensure an overall consistency at all levels. The trouble is, Kant wrongly defined the formal aspect of this movement of thought, as a sort of paradox. It is this interpretation of the event by Kant, which is at issue.

Hegel and Marx were of course among those who adopted this interpretation, misunderstanding the psychology of synthesis. One of the more interesting statements in Foucault's book (which shows that good insight can sometimes come out of a bad method, though I do not agree with it all), is the following; I see it as an attempt at poetic description of the consciousness relation between Subject and Object, which is of course so unique as a universal that it is undefinable:

It is no longer their identity that beings manifest in representation, but the external relation they establish with the human being. The latter, with his own being, with his power to present himself with representations, arises in a space hollowed out by living beings, objects of exchange, and words, when, abandoning representation, which had been their natural site hitherto, they withdraw into the depths of things and roll up upon themselves in accordance with the laws of life, production and language (313).

At a couple of points, to his credit, Foucault waxes romantic (whether sincerely or as a pose, I cannot tell) about the Same, thus suggesting that the ultimate goal of this sophistic self-contradiction dialectic is a Unity. At this point, he returns right back to Nicholas de Cusa's more theistic idea of the ultimate

One. Indeed, this sort of Return, of which Foucault is conscious enough, and which makes him human, is also found in his theory of philology. At first, words were understood as being deeply related to the universals in objects at some level; then they were conventionalized; but at the end, they return to a richer content and relation.