ABSTRACT
Sparce as it is, Kant’s recollection of his thought’s rude awakening from the dreams of metaphysics remains one of our few buoyant philosophical myths.1 The story of his encounter with Hume’s skepticism serves as the guiding image of the need for skeptical arousal in Kant’s practice of criticism. While he does not theorize it as such, on at least one occasion Foucault presented an adaptation of this Kantian myth. In many ways, like Kant’s recollection, his story is merely a threadbare dramatization of the event in thought that indispensably inaugurates practicing criticism. Partly for this reason, however, it serves as a helpful figure. It provides a configuration of images with which to schematize the critical function of skepticism in Foucault, and serves as a guiding thread for the assessment of Kant’s distinctive mark on this aspect of his way of thinking.
