Foucault y el problema de la antropología: Crítica, finitud y sujeto

Juan Jaña Villarroel

doi:10.53870/metanoia20261441

Authors

Juan Jaña Villarroel Katholieke Universiteit Leuven https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2374-0022

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53870/metanoia20261441

Keywords:

Critique, Anthropology, Human Sciences, Modernity, Posthumanism

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between the anthropological critique developed by Michel Foucault and the philosophical foundations of posthumanist thought. Beginning with the diagnosis of the “death of man”, it reconstructs the genealogy of the human figure as the subject of knowledge, showing that its emergence does not reflect a fixed essence, but rather a specific epistemic configuration of modernity. Far from being a simple rejection of humanism, the anthropological critique dismantles its transcendental premises, thereby opening the possibility of thinking beyond the anthropological paradigm

The analysis is organized around three key moments in Foucault’s early work: La Questionne Anthropologique, where philosophy appears exhausted in its conversion towards anthropology; the Introduction to the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, which reveals the ambivalence between empiricity and transcendentality in the figure of man; and The Order of Things, where the “analytic of finitude” is formulated as the structure of modern knowledge. From there, the notion of the “anthropological slumber” emerges, reflecting the illusion of a subject capable of grounding knowledge in itself.

This critique reaches a turning point with the displacement toward a non-anthropocentric mode of reflection supported by a tragic and aesthetic inversion of thought. Posthumanism thus appears not as a technological overcoming of man, but as a philosophical opening toward a mode of thinking without a central figure or essential foundation.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Juan Jaña Villarroel, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Es un filósofo chileno, bachiller en Artes por la Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades de la Universidad de Chile. Desde 2025, cursa el Research Master of Philosophy en el Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte de la Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Bélgica. Sus intereses académicos se orientan hacia la filosofía contemporánea, el pensamiento latinoamericano y los estudios posthumanistas.

References

Basso, E. (2022). Young Foucault. Columbia University Press.

Botticelli, S. (2023). La constitución de un “nosotros” desde las críticas al humanismo moderno. Ideas. Revista de Filosofía Moderna y Contemporánea, (18), 92–123. https://doi.org/10.69498/ri.2023.18.465

Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Polity Press.

Ferrando, F. (2019). Philosophical Posthumanism. Bloomsbury Academic.

Foucault, M. (1992). Introduction to Binswanger’s Dream and Existence. In Dream and Existence. Humanities Press International.

Foucault, M. (1984). ¿Qué es la Ilustración? (Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?) En Dits et écrits. (Vol. 4; pp. 562-578). Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1986). Historia de la sexualidad 1: La voluntad de saber. Siglo XXI Editores. (Agregada por cita en texto).

Foucault, M. (1992). Introduction to Binswagner’s Dream and Existence. Humanities Press International.

Foucault, M. (1994). Dits et écrits 1954-1969. Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (2009). Una Lectura de Kant : Introducción a La Antropología en sentido pragmático. Siglo XXI Editores.

Foucault, M. (2010). Las Palabras y las Cosas: Una arqueología de las ciencias humanas (2.a ed.). Siglo XXI Editores.

Foucault, M. (2011). Sobre la ilustración (J. De la Higuera, Ed.; J. De la Higuera, E. Bello, & A. Campillo, Trads.). Editorial Tecnos.

Foucault, M. (2022). La question anthropologique. Cours, travaux et textes inédits (1954-1955). EHESS/Gallimard/Seuil. (Agregada por cita en texto).

Foucault, M. (2024). La cuestión antropológica. Siglo XXI Editores.

Han-Pile, B. (2016). Phenomenology and anthropology in Foucault’s “Introduction to Binswanger’s Dream and Existence “: A mirror image of The Order of Things? History and Theory, 55(4), 7–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.10825

Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual Bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University Of Chicago Press.

Herbrechter, S. (2013). Posthumanism : A Critical Analysis. Bloomsbury.

López, C. (2023). Foucault y el destino antropológico de la filosofía del siglo XIX. Nuevo Pensamiento, 13(22), 1–21. https://p3.usal.edu.ar/index.php/nuevopensamiento/article/view/6817

McQuillan, J. C. (2016a). Philosophical archaeology and the historical a priori. Symposium, 20(2), 142–159. https://doi.org/10.5840/symposium201620222

McQuillan, J. C. (2016b). Beyond the analytic of finitude: Kant, Heidegger, Foucault. Foucault Studies, (21), 184–199. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i0.5023

Piecyk, C. A. (2025). From the “Death of God” to the “End of Man”: The Trajectory of the modern conception of the human (and its overcoming), from Kant through Nietzsche and Foucault, to transhumanism and posthumanism. Maynooth Philosophy Supplement, 1, 32–54.

Sforzini, A. (2020). Foucault and the history of anthropology: Man, before the “Death of Man.” Theory, Culture & Society, 37(7-8), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420963553

Torres Apablaza, I. (2024a). Ejercicios de caligrafía filosófica: Michel Foucault y la crítica al humanismo en su lectura temprana de Nietzsche y Heidegger. El Banquete de Los Dioses, 14, 10–37. https://publicaciones.sociales.uba.ar/index.php/ebdld/article/view/9534/8237

Torres Apablaza, I. (2024b). Michel Foucault, una lectura posthumanista. Ética, política, porvenir. Editorial Alma Negra.

Vallejos, A. L. (2024). El joven Foucault y la pregunta por el hombre: Reseña de: Foucault, Michel, La cuestión antropológica. Una historia de la pregunta por el hombre. Ideas. Revista de Filosofía Moderna Y Contemporánea, 20, 205–210.

Wolfe, C. (2010). What Is Posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press.