The problem of the transcendental from Kant to Hegel. The young Foucault's interpretation of the “Phenomenology of Spirit” in his 1949 mémoire

Abstract In this paper, I explore the young Foucault's engagement with phenomenology in his master's thesis, The Constitution of a Historical Transcendental in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. I begin by outlining the context of this early work (Section 1), followed by a brief summary of the thesis and its overall argumentative structure (Section 2). In Section 3, I analyze Foucault's critique of Kant, which concerns not only Kant's ahistorical conception of the transcendental (3.1), but also the lack of critical reflection on the conditions of access to transcendental philosophy (3.2). Finally, I trace the emergence of the theme of the empirico–transcendental doublet in the 1949 thesis, and consider to what extent this notion applies to both Kant and Hegel (3.3).