Abstract

Upon examining the manuscripts of the Foucault Archive at the BnF (2013), one can easily realize that Foucault’s interpretation of Descartes is but a simplified version of Heidegger’s own interpretation of Descartes. Indeed, Foucault, after Heidegger, tells us that there is a connection between Descartes’ Cogito and the Mathesis universalis, though this is nowhere to be found in Descartes' writings. These two contemporary philosophers criticize what they perceive in Descartes, namely the truth of subjectivity as certitude, and they consider uneasiness (unrest, disquiet, Unruhe, Unheimlichkeit) as the affect that truly characterizes thinking. My paper traces the linkage between the Cogito and the Mathesis universalis in Heidegger and in Foucault. I evaluate their agreement with regards to their shared critic of the subject's certitude and the importance of uneasiness, or more specifically of historical uneasiness, as a means of defining subjectivity anew in the 20th century. I compare their respective understandings of the connection between the Cogito and the Mathesis universalis by reading well-known texts, as well as by examining the early writings of Heidegger (which have recently been published in the Gesamtausgabe) and the manuscripts of the Foucault Archive at the BnF, in order to delineate more precisely the conception of subjectivity that is at stake in their philosophy.