ABSTRACT
This chapter considers transformation of critical epistemology from a general to a historically specific genealogy of the subject. ‘Enlightenment’ and its moral obligations are addressed as the authentic position of the human ‘empirical individual’ as opposed to the ‘member’ informed and disciplined by ‘traditional’ or customary forms of authority. This is an obligation critics continue to recognise. Kant’s Critique speaks of three syntheses of the imagination: that of the past, present, and future that underlie human concepts rather than just impressions. Nietzsche is well aware of the problematics of linguistic representations but his analysis focuses almost entirely on the historical and cultural specificity – the plasticity of expression – rather than anything but the most rudimentary account of human adaptation. Some of Nietzsche’s reasoning is consonant with or at least reconcilable to complexity theory.
