By questioning the logic of practice as the main topic of intellectual life in France in the 1960s, we shall undertake a confrontation between the ideas of Foucault and Sartre. Without playing down their differences of opinion, which have often been emphasized by the humanist dispute, we shall endeavor to bring forward a topic these two authors share: the proposal of an attempt at the intelligibility of practice, based on a duly defined historic material. Such a confrontation will enable us to examine thoroughly the notions of praxis, genealogy, and the politics of truth. This will entail radically new theories about a “situated thought” shared by both the universal intellectual and the specific intellectual, about a “historic and philosophical” practice which will not hold its object – the “practical ensembles” too close and will not derealize or overhang it, in a complex relation between past and present. The theoretical space which is open in this manner between Foucault and Sartre on the question of the intelligibility of practice also permits a confrontation with Marx and marxisms (Althusser mainly), as well as with social sciences (Bourdieu mostly).
