A Comprehensive Summary of The Order of Things by Michel Foucault

Foucault argues in The Order of Things (2010) that there are dominant epistemologies in a given period that give power and validity to different ways of knowing and have changed over time. His method is an archeological analysis of Western history where he finds the common episteme present throughout linguistics, economics, and science. There are four periods of Western thought, the Renaissance, the Classical Period, Modernity, and the emerging fourth period (referred to now as Post-Modernity). There are four epistemological characterizations for each period: Resemblance,

Nominology/Taxonomy, Representation, and Dispersion. A culture can only have one dominant episteme at a given time (p. 183). Changes in the dominant episteme do not happen in an instant but rather over longer periods and are usually started from influences of outside cultures which hold a different dominant episteme (pp. 55-56)

Resemblance is the episteme present in the Renaissance period. This is a way of knowing that sees knowledge of things through their resemblance and connection to other things. Foucault uses the painting Las Meninas to show the epistemology of resemblance as the painting emphasizes the importance of sight and vision as forming knowledge (pp. 1-18). Language in this system is used to name and sort things as being alike to other things (p. 49, 90). Science and history are just observations (p. 142). Economics in this period sees trade based on the worth of something, as it resembles other valuable things, money represents value insofar as it is a valuable material (p. 189). All knowledge in each of the three fields is known only insofar as things resemble other things which is an imprecise means of knowing (p. 33, 61). The problem of this imprecision eventually leads to the next episteme.

The shift from the Renaissance and resemblance to the Classical Period and nominology/taxonomy is represented by Foucault through the use of Don Quixote. Don Quixote is a person who sees things as other things and relies on resemblance and similitudes to understand reality (p. 52). The book critiques the imprecise nature of resemblance by taking it to ridiculous extremes (p. 53). The shift recognizes the importance of sorting things based on differences and what they are not as opposed to similitudes. There is an emphasis on naming and categorizing things and aspects of things in a way not possible in the earlier period (p. 74). Ordering the now-named and categorized things is essential under this episteme (pp. 63-64). Ordering requires both the qualitative abilities of nominology/taxonomy and also the quantitative qualities of mathematics (pp. 79-80). Language sees development and emphasis on grammar but with precision by naming the parts and types of language and the rules of their use (p. 90).

Science is developed as natural history by taking observations and adding the influence of rationality and the increasingly popular scientific methods made possible in the episteme of categorizations and ordering (pp. 136-137, 142). There are two important categories of understanding things. Structure refers to the components that make up a thing. Living things are dissected into their different components, and their functions. (pp. 146-147). Character is a description of that which makes up a thing's identity and what differentiates it from other things (its characteristics) (p. 151). The description of characteristics is relative to the amount of precision in picking up characteristics needed at a given time (p. 153). These tools are applied to understanding human nature which is important in this period. However, Foucault argues that in this episteme it is impossible for them to truly grasp the truth in the totality of this fundamental nature (p. 78). In this system, the structure of a thing and the character of a thing are irreconcilable as we are unable to achieve the necessary precision (p. 158) Nonology or taxonomy possibilities are necessarily infinite and beyond our grasp to maintain beyond a certain level (pp. 174-175).

Economics in this period sees a study of wealth and the development of mercantilism (p. 180). There is a shift by bringing analysis to representations of wealth, prices and money (p. 195). Wealth becomes understood as objects valued for serving needs and desires (p. 190). Wealth requires abundance beyond one's own consumption and scarcity so as to not be available to everyone, otherwise, they are commodities. (p. 208) Money was no longer only valued for the material it was made up of but for being a means of exchange (p. 194, 197). Money and coinage bought exactitude to exchange more precisely the value something held (p. 184). Foucault recognizes the complex nature of exchange and of value and says there is no such thing as a ‘fair’ price (pp. 199-200, 213). The power of wealth and money is tied to the quantity of people and the quantity of wealth. (p. 200). Therefore government policy has to reconcile these two aspects ensuring the population grows consistently to avoid too little over time and too much too quickly. Only with healthy population growth is there a steady increase of labour which sees wages and prices stay stable, and trade balanced, are exponential growth and reduction of poverty possible (p. 204).

The classical age ends when knowledge begins to emphasize that which is not observable, but more abstract aspects of reality which lead to Modernity. In this period the episteme can be seen as emphasizing the visible function of things and how it serves the invisible (p. 249). Linguistics sees the focus on inflection and tone as giving life and meaning to language (p. 252). Two authors can use the same sentence made up of the same grammatical components and express different meanings (pp. 254-255). This difference exists but the cause is not a visible component that can be named and organized. We also see a return of language to its use not to understand reality but to express experience and express fantasy (p. 330). Science sees a shift from natural history to biology via understanding the nature of being alive, understanding the unseen components of life, and how the living and non-living interact (p. 252, 289). It also develops ideology which studies the nature of ideas and their relationship to knowledge (p. 261). Economics develops into political economy which sees an emphasis on the role of people's labour and the relationships of people within the hierarchies of wealth creation (pp. 240-244). By focusing on the invisible towards transcendent knowledge, especially in our use of language, the subversion and toppling of old knowledge systems is possible which leads to the final observed episteme (pp. 270, 273)

The fourth episteme is the most complex and difficult to comprehensively describe as it is still emerging and is by its nature outside of the current ways of knowing. According to Foucault (who builds off Kant) transcendent knowledge is the knowledge that is concerned with the concepts of and the relationships between the visible and the invisible, the subjective and the objective, and the knowable and the unknowable (pp. 261-273). In this episteme, the old structure of knowledge is less valued and we move into Post-Modernity. Linguistics becomes understanding the essence of language itself and seeing language as not a means of communication of reality but reality itself, through us, as action (pp. 315-316). Language is also dissolved away and replaced with a system that does not obscure reality in attempting to understand but transparently represents it (pp. 323-324). Science becomes concerned with metaphysics which questions all levels of existence that we build our knowledge on top (p. 264). History will be understood as having led humanity to face itself objectively for all it has done (p. 283). The economics of development and scarcity be reduced to the recognition of finitude in all aspects of existence with no recognition of a utopic system (p. 286). Humanity becomes the center of post-modern episteme as humanity is a manifestation of the transcendent characteristics of reality; made clear, we hold many paradoxical attributes that are also attributes of reality itself, so we understand ourselves as a means of understanding reality and obtaining transcendent knowledge (pp. 340-346). The means of humanity’s understanding itself is to relate knowledge to individuals' experiences instead of rationality and scientific method (pp. 351-352). Transcendent reflection is a means for one to understand their experience and requires attempting to think and understand the “unthought” which is that which is, and makes up the individual but is alien to them (p. 356). Foucault finds that meaning in life stems from our transcendent nature and ability to gain transcendent knowledge, at the heart of what will be humanity's journey in postmodernism is the origin. The origin is a double entendre, which describes how meaning is imbued into our existence in the originality inherent to our finite experience and the origin of everything in the existence of which we are a part (p. 360). The origin is what, from humanity's outset, instills us with momentum towards a higher purpose, which is that higher purpose that paradoxically will always remain intangible to people (p. 361). Only in death, the origin is revealed to us, the meaning of life is to pursue what can only be known in death, and while humans cannot help but resist this conclusion when faced with this reality, we recognize its poetic perfection (p. 364). Because of the importance of death, dedicating one's pursuit of knowledge to death while seen as mad in the current system is the key to truth in post-modernity (p. 409). Only studying humanity in this way could possibly constitute an understanding of human nature, which was not possible in earlier attempts due to the epistemological constraints at the time (p. 347).

Understanding how Foucault’s work relates to manifestations of power requires some extrapolation. The titular “order” has two meanings: Order as a fundamental, invisible force, foundational to many parts of reality, and imbued into our cultural manifestations of it and the way a culture orders things within a hierarchy of values (pp. xxi-xxii). The second order is where power manifests itself, as it is where things are ordered into different groups, to hold different values, some above and some below. Foucault views the epistemological shift towards post-modernity and dispersion as the true means of humanity acquiring meaning, freedom, and the dissolving of the hierarchal manifestations of power made possible by and born out of past epistemologies.

References

Foucault, M. (2010). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Routledge.