Foucault and the historical transcendental: On first looking into Foucault's <i>La constitution d'un transcendental historique dans la</i> Phénoménologie de l'esprit <i>de Hegel</i>

Abstract Foucault states that escaping from Hegel “requires knowing to what extent Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it requires knowing what remains Hegelian in that which allows us to think against Hegel, and measuring to what extent our maneuvers against him are perhaps a ruse he has set for us, at the end of which he awaits us, motionless and elsewhere”. With the recent publication of Foucault's Diplôme d'Études Supérieures thesis, La constitution d'un transcendental historique dans la Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel , we can now gauge just how much the “historical a priori” of Foucault's The Order of Things (1966) owes to the younger Foucault's conception of “the historical transcendental”, and to what extent, if any, the mature Foucault was able to escape Hegel's clutches.