Human Nature, History, and Structure: Foucault’s Challenge to Chomsky Through Saussure

Introduction

The 1971 debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault stages a fundamental confrontation about human nature, political critique, and the grounds of emancipation. Chomsky defends the need for a concept of human essence to orient moral judgment and guide social transformation. Foucault, by contrast, warns that such a move risks projecting historically specific norms under the guise of universality. This disagreement is not merely ideological; it reflects a deeper methodological divide concerning whether “the human” precedes social and historical formations or is produced within them.

When read alongside Ferdinand de Saussure’s distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics—and his rejection of a panchronic perspective—Foucault’s challenge appears less ad hoc than structurally grounded in a broader theoretical logic. Saussure’s theory of language helps clarify why Foucault is suspicious of transhistorical claims about human nature and why Chomsky’s search for a universal human essence appears problematic from that perspective.

Chomsky: Human Nature as Normative Foundation

Chomsky’s position rests on the claim that political critique requires a positive vision of human flourishing. In the debate, he insists that one central intellectual task is “to create the vision of a future just society,” a task that presupposes “some firm and humane concept of the human essence or human nature.” Institutions such as multinational corporations or market mechanisms are condemned not merely for their effects, but because they obstruct fundamental human capacities for creativity, freedom, and dignity.

This appeal to human nature performs crucial normative work. It allows Chomsky to argue that certain social arrangements are not only oppressive but wrong in a deeper sense, insofar as they violate something intrinsic to human beings. Critique, on this view, must be oriented toward a recognizable horizon; without some conception of what humans fundamentally are or could be, political struggle risks becoming purely negative or directionless. Chomsky’s own commitments to libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism exemplify this orientation toward a social order presumed to align with innate human capacities for cooperation and creative self-expression.

Foucault: The Historical Positivity of “the Human”

Foucault’s response does not deny the reality of domination, nor does it reject political struggle. His concern is epistemological and methodological. If one claims that a true human nature exists and has been repressed, one must ask how this nature is identified and defined. Foucault’s answer is unsettling: such definitions inevitably draw upon the conceptual resources, values, and norms of a particular historical and cultural formation.

He illustrates this danger through the history of socialism. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist movements argued that capitalism alienated human nature and promised its eventual liberation. Yet the model of fulfillment they projected—organized around work, sexuality, family life, and aesthetic norms—was unmistakably bourgeois. As Foucault notes, this “universalisation of the model of the bourgeois” became a guiding utopia later reproduced in Soviet society. What appeared as emancipation thus involved the reinstallation of historically specific norms under the banner of universality.

This is why Foucault concludes that “it is difficult to say exactly what human nature is.” The difficulty is not empirical but structural. Any attempt to define human nature risks freezing a contingent configuration of values and presenting it as a timeless essence. Concepts of “the human” are not false or illusory; they are positive formations that organize practices and institutions within a given historical field. What is at stake is their elevation into transhistorical foundations.

Saussure and the Logic of Synchronic Linguistics

Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics provides a conceptual framework that illuminates Foucault’s unease. Saussure argues that language should be studied as a system of relations existing at a given moment (synchronic linguistics), rather than as the unfolding of an essence through time. Meaning does not reside in words themselves, nor does it derive from origins; it emerges from differences within a structured synchronic system. Diachronic change, while real, does not disclose a stable core behind linguistic signs.

While Foucault does not derive his method directly from Saussure, the internal logic of Saussurean linguistics helps clarify what is at stake in his suspicion of universals. By treating meaning as relational and historically situated, Saussure renders appeals to transhistorical foundations theoretically problematic. What counts as “human,” “normal,” or “fulfilled” depends on the discursive and institutional arrangements of a given period. To speak of human nature as if it were independent of such arrangements is, from this perspective, a category mistake.

Foucault’s genealogical method can thus be understood as extending this structural sensitivity beyond linguistics. Where Saussure analyzes synchronic linguistic states, Foucault examines historical configurations of knowledge and power that define possible ways of being human.

The Core Tension: Foundations versus Critique

When these positions are placed in dialogue, the disagreement between Chomsky and Foucault ultimately concerns the status of foundations. Chomsky maintains that critique requires grounding in a conception of human nature; without such grounding, resistance lacks justification and direction. Foucault argues that foundations themselves are historically produced and politically charged. Universal claims about humanity do not escape power; they reorganize it.

From this perspective, the problem with Chomsky’s project is not its moral ambition but its confidence that universality can be articulated without reproducing domination. Concepts such as freedom or creativity may appear self-evident, yet they are embedded in specific historical languages and institutional practices. Treating them as natural risks marginalizing forms of life that do not conform to their implicit standards.

Conclusion

Read through Saussure, Foucault’s challenge to Chomsky gains both coherence and force. Human nature does not float above history like a transcendental signified; it is constituted within structured systems that are historically specific yet internally positive. Chomsky’s search for a universal essence aims to secure moral critique, but it risks reifying contingent norms by elevating them into timeless truths. Foucault’s refusal of such universals does not imply political quietism. Instead, it shifts the task of critique from realizing a predefined human essence to analyzing and resisting the concrete historical formations through which human beings are defined and governed. The debate thus exposes a persistent tension in modern thought: whether emancipation requires foundations, or whether foundations themselves must become the object of critique.

Bibliography

Chomsky, Noam, and Michel Foucault. The Chomsky–Foucault Debate: On Human Nature. New York: The New Press, 2006.

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966.