ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates emergent approach to the biophysical world and human agency. Foucault's archaeological analysis of epochal epistemes, his genealogical inquiry into the ontology of the present and his Kantian account of critique are to be addressed in their intimate connection. This point emerges with equal clarity from his view of life, nature and human nature. These words clearly resonate with the Dialectic of Enlightenments account of science and the mastery of nature, despite the distance that seems to separate Foucault's and the Frankfurt Schools understanding of critique. As neoliberalism intensifies the liberal theme of the government of population and the environment to the point of engendering a qualitative change, so the approaches to the biophysical world and human agency we have discussed often appear as intensifications of entrenched orientations, which however undergo a qualitative transformation.
