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1 " [Foucault's] criticism is not transcendental, and its goal is not that of making a metaphysics possible: it is genealogical in its design and archaeological in its method. Archaeological –and not transcendental– in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events. And this critique will be genealogical in the sense it will not deduce from the form of what we are what is impossible for us to do and to know; but it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do or think. It is not seeking to make possible a metaphysics that has finally become a science; it is seeking to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom. "
― Michel Foucault , The Foucault Reader
2 " Humanism is something entirely different. It is a theme or rather a set ofthemes that have reappeared on several occasions over time in Europeansocieties; these themes always tied to value judgments have obviously variedgreatly in their content as well as in the values they have preserved.Furthermore they have served as a critical principle of differentiation. In theseventeenth century there was a humanism that presented itself as a critique ofChristianity or of religion in general; there was a Christian humanism opposedto an ascetic and much more theocentric humanism. In the nineteenth centurythere was a suspicious humanism hostile and critical toward science andanother that to the contrary placed its hope in that same science. Marxism hasbeen a humanism; so have existentialism and personalism; there was a timewhen people supported the humanistic values represented by NationalSocialism and when the Stalinists themselves said they were humanists.From this we must not conclude that everything that has ever been linked withhumanism is to be rejected but that the humanistic thematic is in itself toosupple too diverse too inconsistent to serve as an axis for reflection. And it is afact that at least since the seventeenth century what is called humanism hasalways been obliged to lean on certain conceptions of man borrowed fromreligion science or politics. Humanism serves to color and to justify theconceptions of man to which it is after all obliged to take recourse. "
3 " Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting. "
