ABSTRACT
My presentation of these philosophical reflections on historicism has been framed by an inversion. I began with Karl Popper, the apostle of a “hard” demarcation between science and pseudo-science and realism, only to find an inner case for scepticism, historicism, and relativism. On the other hand, I join Michel Foucault, seen as a cultural relativist and modern sophist, with Popper’s defense of objective knowledge. In matching their positions, I am suggesting that the debate on the historicity of reason and unreason is not a simple opposition between objectivist and subjectivist, or absolutist and relativist. If it were that simple the debate would not be worth discussing. I have followed the heuristic rule of suspicion; whenever a debate can be neatly classified, resist the temptation to analyze it that way.
