Philosophies of Immanence and Transcendence

Abstract

This paper embarks from the argument that both Derrida and Habermas made similar kinds of “performative contradiction” objections to Foucault's argument in History of Madness. This can be connected with a larger claim: both Derrida and Habermas can be considered thinkers of transcendence. Within the notion of transcendence offered by Habermas are elements which can be compared with Derrida's notions of the trace, l’avenir and messianicity without messianism. By contrast with both, Foucault is a thinker of immanence—of the historical a priori or what Deleuze would call the immanent transcendental. This paper argues that both Derrida and Habermas misunderstand the nature of Foucault's project in History of Madness. Both construe it as what Habermas would call a rejection of Enlightenment reason or what Derrida calls a revolution against reason—and perhaps this could be connected to their own philosophical assumptions about transcendence. Neither succeeds in fully factoring the degree to which Foucault’s project is contingent and historical. Foucault is best understood as undertaking a history of a form of rationality, and this is to be differentiated from a critique of Reason as such.