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=                      Condition of possibility                      =
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                             Introduction
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Condition of possibility ('Bedingungen der Möglichkeit') is a
philosophical concept made popular by Immanuel Kant.

A condition of possibility is a necessary framework for the possible
appearance of a given list of entities. It is often used in contrast
to the unilateral causality concept, or even to the notion of
interaction. For example, consider a cube made by an artisan. All
cubes are three-dimensional. If an object is three-dimensional, then
it is an extended object. But extension is an impossibility without
space. Therefore, space is a condition of possibility because it is a
necessary condition for the existence of cubes to be possible. Note,
however, that space did not cause the cube, but that the artisan did,
and that the cube and space are distinct entities, so space isnât part
of the definition of cube.

From Plato to Descartes, what was presented by the senses was deemed
illusory and . It was believed that the perceptions ought to be
overcome to grasp the thing-in-itself, the essential essence, also
known as Platoâs allegory of the cave. With Kant comes a transition in
philosophy from this dichotomy to the dichotomy of the /. There is no
longer any higher essence behind the . It is what it is, a brute fact,
and what one must now examine is the conditions that are necessary for
its appearance. Immanuel Kant does just this in the Transcendental
Aesthetic, when he examines the necessary conditions for the synthetic
'a priori' cognition of mathematics. But Kant 'was' , so he still
maintains the phenomenon/noumenon dichotomy, but the noumenon has
already been relegated unknowable and to be ignored.

Foucault would come to adapt it in a historical sense through the
concept of "episteme":

what I am attempting to bring to light is the epistemological field,
the 'épistémè' in which knowledge, envisaged apart from all criteria
having reference to its rational value or to its objective forms,
grounds its positivity and thereby manifests a history which is not
that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of
possibility; in this account, what should appear are those
configurations within the space of knowledge which have given rise to
the diverse forms of empirical science. Such an enterprise is not so
much a history, in the traditional meaning of that word, as an
âarchaeologyâ.


                              References
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condition_of_possibility


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