ABSTRACT
In the act of speaking, in the act of naming, human nature transforms the linear sequence of thoughts into a constant table of partially different beings: the discourse in which it duplicates its representations and expresses them is what links it to nature. For Classical thought, man does not occupy a place in nature through the intermediary of the regional, limited, specific 'nature' that is granted to him, as to all other beings, as a birthright. If human nature is interwoven with nature, it is by the mechanisms of knowledge and by their functioning; or rather, in the general arrangement of the Classical episteme, nature, human nature, and their relations, are definite and predictable functional moments. The order of nature was conceived, prior to any catastrophe, and upon so continuous a fabric, and in going from one extremity of it to the other one would have been led by the smooth expanse of 'likeness'.
