Abstract

In this article, we seek to analyze some of the methodological assumptions that contribute to the understanding of Foucault’s nominalism, as well as some of the theoretical consequences of this nominalism. With this intent, in the first part, we deal with his “refusal” of universals, emphasizing the distinction, made in the first volume of the History of Sexuality, between sex and sexuality. In a second moment, we underline this option of Foucault’s method based on excerpts from Nietzsche that demarcate the knowledge’s arbitrary and contingent character.