Michel Foucault and the genealogy as a criticism of the present

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the criticism to modernity that is in Foucault’s genealogy. First we discuss Focault’s analysis of Kant’s article on Aufklärung and Baudelaire’s concept of dandy. So, we focus gave emphasis the “truth analytic” and its ontextualization made by Foucault of the social role of an intellectual in the light of the great changes in knowledge and in the practices of power in the last decades. To conclude, we suggest that, by studying the Aufklärung investigating the excess of modern racionality, Foucault tries to reassess the possibilities of freedom practices, sustaining the criticism exercise as philosophical ethos. This is needed to redefine the governability and ethical and political commitments made by the agents in different social places.