FOUCAULTS APOLOGY

I read Foucault's essay ''What is Enlightenment?'' as his apology. Res ponding perhaps, to those who claim his work undermines Enlightenment thinking, Foucault sketches a way to continue that liberatory traditio n, offering his own genealogical critique as an heir to Kant in the pr omotion of human freedom. This recovery is questionable. In commenting on Kant's version of the Enlightenment, Foucault fails to examine the archaeology of the key notion of public reason. I attempt a Foucauldi an reading of Kant's essay as an assertion of power rather than of the freedom of thought from power, Foucault's silence here makes conspicu ous the relations of critique. This silence is not fatal, but his apol ogy must be depended for a recovery of critique. The emerging aporia, that in order to criticize power we must first be invested by and impl icated in it, is a profound, but not unanswerable, challenge to any co ntemporary attempt to retain the liberatory promise of Enlightenment t hinking.