ABSTRACT
The traditional philosophical discussion of Christianity, whether critical or apologetic, primarily investigates the truth of the Christian doctrine, or the potential justification of the Christian faith. For centuries philosophers have attempted to generalise ‘critique’ in the everyday sense. This development reached an initial culmination in the Enlightenment, and most particularly in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. And this brings us to the second sense of the concept of ‘critique’. Critique in the first everyday sense is a way of denying or saying no to something. For this reason it is implausible to suggest that Michel Foucault understood his own works as ‘critical sciences’. There is no transcendental ego, nor is there any valid realm of pure reason capable in principle of encompassing the whole range of empirical experience in a unified fashion. Any given language game of justification and legitimation rests upon a complex structure of practical habits and routines.
