Abstract

Thirty years after Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France L'Hermeneutique du sujet, the article attempts an assessment of what the study of antiquity represents in the theoretical path of the French philosopher. The claim is that not only - as Foucault himself claimed - the study of antiquity played a crucial role in the recognition of the centrality of subjectivation processes in the political history of thought, but it also contributed to the failure of his archeological-genealogical method.