Wer hat Angst vor dem Humanismus? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Foucault

The article takes stock of Foucault's criticism of anthropology and its "humanistic" core. We try to show that this criticism is based on a misrepresented vision of modern anthropological discourse. Foucault accuse this discourse to be metaphysically compromised. But it’s exactly thanks to the humanistic approach that anthropology – in philosophical meaning ̶ became much more flexible and epistemologically sophisticated, both in its early development and in its twentieth-century version. From this point of view the ambiguous figure of the "allotrope" assumes an exemplary value. Foucault's criticism helps to sharpen the anthropological analysis, but it also shows the inner limitation of the foucaultian "positivistic" concept of man.