ABSTRACT
The problematic distinction between passions and interests as principles of governance, however, is not the focus of analysis here and will be critically explored in future work. Although nuances within the different European political contexts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries matter greatly in order to understand how this regime of governance materialised in slightly different forms of incipient liberalism, it is possible to make some general observations. The position developed in this book arises from a different debate than the one developed in contemporary political theory for the analysis of the problem of transcendence and liberalism. Historical epistemology is a term borrowed from historians of science who have developed it as a way of conducting research taking epistemology to be a historical matter. As noted by Rheinberger, this tradition has focused on the reflection of the historical conditions and the means for transforming things into objects of knowledge.
