Continuity And Rupture:Foucault's Epistemology

This paper attempts to describe the whole picture of Foucault's early epistemology and show the history of Foucault's epistemology during the period from the history of madness to the archaeology of knowledge.I think Foucault's thought of epistemology could be divided into three stages:the first stage is the period from History of Madness to The Born of Clinical Medicine,the second stage is The Order of Things,the third stage is The Archaeology of Knowledge.Through the three dimensions,the content,methodology of three stage and the comparison with tranditional epistemology,this paper tries to grasp the external rupture and internal continuity of Foucault's thoughts.In the period from History of Madness to The Born of Clinical Medicine,Foucault's thought came from the background,that is the French phenomenology,a certain epistemological tradition in France and the thought of structuralism.In History of Madness,Foucault has begun to focus on the history of "line",The Birth of clinical medicine is supplement to History of Madness,and the eve of The Order of Things.In the book,Foucault began to focus on the invisible structure of medical discourse,which determines what is visible.The thought of this stage of epistemology is different with modern knowledge represented by Kant's theory,Foucault questioned the supreme position of subject,he was against essentialism and the linear history.In The Order of Things,Foucault extracted the rules of cognition from human history,and carried out the structural analysis,described the history of episteme,and expounded the process of birth of human as the main body.These great teaching voice were forming under the scientific methods of Foucault:archaeology of knowledge.During the period of The Order of Things,Foucault thought further on the basis of the understanding of historians of science by archaeological methods.Although Foucault was thought as a thinker of structuralism with mistake,he held position of anti-anthropological firmly.The epistemology in Theings Order of Things is the development of History of Madness to The Born of Clinical Medicine,also is the development of the epistemology of the history of science.These theories try to make Foucault's epistemology transcend modern epistemology,which is mainly as follows:from theory of generative to discuss epistemology,oppose the subject,and real concern for social reality.The Archaeology of Knowledge is a work of systematic summary of Foucault's method,and also a work revising his earlier ideas.Foucault elaborated on the unique research objects of epistemological thought:invisible discourse,the difference of discourse and statements,and made a comprehensive introduction to the productive mechanism of discourse.The book is not only a summary of the methodology,but also a few breakthroughs.It weakens the concept of epistemology and ponder over discourse from the micro perspective of discourse practice.These theories enrich the theory of discourse and surpass Foucault's Epistemology Thoughts in the period of The Order of Things.Thus,Foucault became a representative of post structuralism and influenced the postmodern philosophers deeply.The basic position of postmodern philosophers is similar to Foucault's:opposition to object,deconstruction of time and construction of space of different series,the emergence of real history in the dynamic.