In the Final Analysis: Saussure and Foucault on Meaning and Order

Introduction

What happens when something that appears to belong to an object turns out to depend upon relations beyond it?

The question takes different forms in Ferdinand de Saussure and Michel Foucault. Saussure writes that the value of a word is determined, “in the final analysis,” not by what it contains but by what exists outside it. Foucault, in The Order of Things, makes a seemingly different claim about order: it is “at one and the same time” given in things as their inner law and dependent upon the grid through which they are examined.

The two passages do not address the same objects. Yet they confront a structurally similar difficulty. Something appears to possess a property in itself, but closer analysis reveals that the property cannot be separated from the system of relations in which it acquires its value or intelligibility.

The aim here is to examine this narrower problem: what happens to an apparently self-contained object when, in the final analysis, what appears to belong to it depends upon what lies outside it?

1. The Double Side of Order

Foucault makes a striking claim in the Preface to The Order of Things. Discussing the ways in which things are classified and brought into relation, he writes:

“Order is, at one and the same time, that which is given in things as their inner law, the hidden network that determines the way they confront one another, and also that which has no existence except in the grid created by a glance, an examination, a language.”

The phrase “at one and the same time” is crucial. Foucault does not resolve the apparent contradiction by choosing between the two alternatives. Order is not simply discovered in things, as though it were an intrinsic property waiting to be perceived. But neither is it simply imposed upon them by an observer. It occupies both sides of the formulation.

On the one hand, order appears to be given in things. Things can be distinguished and related; they exhibit identities, differences, similarities, and other relations that can be observed and described. On the other hand, Foucault says that order has “no existence except in the grid” through which things are examined and named.

The apparent paradox lies in the status of this grid. It is not merely an individual's subjective interpretation of an otherwise completely ordered world. Foucault is referring to the relational arrangement through which identities, differences, similarities, classifications, and denominations become possible. A thing can be distinguished from another only within some field in which distinctions can operate. A similarity can count as a similarity only where there is a way of determining what is relevant to the comparison. What appears to be an order belonging to things therefore also depends upon the conditions under which those things can be related.

This is why the image of the table is so important in the Preface. Foucault's “operating table” is at once the physical surface on which the umbrella encounters the sewing-machine and the tabula on which thought arranges the entities of the world. The point is not merely that we classify things. It is that there must be some space in which things can be placed in relation to one another at all.

The distinction between the thing and the grid therefore becomes difficult to maintain in the simple form in which it first appears. The order we encounter seems to belong to the things themselves, yet the relations through which that order becomes visible depend upon a system of distinctions.

Foucault's formulation thus raises a question that reaches beyond classification:

What happens when something that appears to belong to an object turns out, in the final analysis, to depend upon a system of relations?

2. Saussure: Meaning Is Not Yet Value

Saussure approaches a related problem from within linguistics. His discussion of linguistic value begins by distinguishing what a word means from the value it possesses within the linguistic system. He writes:

“Its value [...] is therefore not determined merely by that concept or meaning for which it is a token.”

He then makes the stronger formulation:

“The content of a word is determined in the final analysis not by what it contains but by what exists outside it.”

The phrase “in the final analysis” deserves particular attention. Saussure is not saying that a word has no meaning, or that what appears to be its meaning is somehow unreal. A word can be associated with a concept. But that does not exhaust its linguistic value.

The distinction becomes clearer if we separate two questions. The first asks what a word means: what concept does it express or evoke? The second asks what value the word has within the linguistic system. The latter cannot be determined by examining the word in isolation.

For Saussure, linguistic units acquire their value within a system of differences. A word has a particular value partly through its relations to the other words that surround and contrast with it. What matters is therefore not simply what is contained within the word but its position within the system.

This is why the distinction between meaning and value matters. Saussure does not replace meaning with difference. Rather, he shows that meaning does not exhaust linguistic value. A linguistic unit can be associated with a concept and still have a value that depends upon its relations to other units.

The qualification “in the final analysis” is important here. It prevents the argument from becoming stronger than Saussure's own. He is not claiming that the apparent meaning of a word is an illusion. Nor does he ask us to discard the linguistic element in favour of an abstract system. Rather, when the analysis is pushed further, the apparently self-contained unit proves inseparable from the relations in which it functions.

The word remains. Its meaning remains. What changes is our understanding of what it means for that word to possess a linguistic value.

Saussure therefore shifts the question from the apparent content of a linguistic element to the relations through which its value is determined. The element is still there; what can no longer be taken for granted is that its linguistic value belongs to it independently of the system.

That is the point at which his argument can be brought back to Foucault.

3. From Value to Order

The two passages can now be placed beside one another.

Saussure writes that the value of a word is determined, “in the final analysis,” not by what it contains but by what exists outside it. Foucault says that order is both given in things and has no existence apart from the grid through which they are examined.

The similarity lies in the direction of analysis.

For Saussure, we begin with a linguistic unit and ask what gives it value. The answer takes us beyond the unit to its relations within langue.

For Foucault, we begin with an order that appears to belong to things and ask what makes that order intelligible. The answer takes us toward the grid through which identities, differences, similarities, and classifications can be established.

The parallel can be stated simply:

Saussure	Foucault
linguistic unit	object of knowledge
meaning	order
langue	grid
linguistic differences	relations of identity and difference
value	intelligibility

The table should not be read as an equation. The two thinkers are working at different levels and with different objects. What matters is the structural movement from the apparently self-contained element toward the relations within which it acquires its particular status.

This makes “in the final analysis” the crucial hinge between the two passages.

In Saussure, what initially appears to belong to the word in itself—its linguistic value—cannot, ultimately, be separated from its relations to other words.

In Foucault, what initially appears to belong to things—their order—cannot, at a deeper level, be separated from the grid through which they are distinguished and related.

The point is subtle. Neither thinker simply tells us that the element is unreal. Saussure does not deny meaning; Foucault does not deny things. The analysis changes the level at which we understand them.

This is particularly clear in Foucault's discussion of classification. We may say that two greyhounds resemble one another more closely than a cat and a dog. Yet the judgment presupposes a way of determining what counts as a relevant similarity and what constitutes a significant difference. The question is not merely whether the animals possess observable characteristics. It is how those characteristics become available for comparison within an order.

The same relational logic operates differently in Saussure. A linguistic unit can be identified, but its linguistic value cannot be established independently of the distinctions that place it within the system.

In both cases, therefore, the analysis moves outward.

The apparent property does not disappear. What disappears is the assumption that it can be fully understood in isolation.

This is the narrow point at which Saussure and Foucault meet.

4. The Parallel Has a Limit

The comparison is strongest if its limits remain visible.

Saussure is analysing a specifically linguistic system. His problem is how linguistic units acquire value through their relations within langue. Foucault's concern is broader: he investigates the historical configurations within which objects of knowledge can be distinguished, classified, named, and related.

The relations at stake are therefore not of the same kind. Saussure's differences are constitutive of a linguistic system. Foucault's grid encompasses forms of classification and intelligibility extending across domains such as language, natural history, political economy, and biology.

There is also an important difference in the treatment of history. Saussure's synchronic analysis examines the relations constituting a particular state of a linguistic system. This does not deny that the system has a history; it means that historical succession and the internal organization of a given state are different objects of analysis.

Foucault, by contrast, makes historical transformation central to his account. The configurations through which objects become intelligible are not permanent. The Classical order differs from the modern one, and the relations that organize knowledge can undergo fundamental transformations.

These differences matter because they prevent the analogy from becoming an equation. Langue and the Foucauldian grid belong to different domains and answer different questions.

But the structural resemblance remains: both analyses direct attention away from the isolated element toward the relational field within which it acquires its particular status.

Saussure asks how a linguistic element has value within a system.

Foucault asks how an object can have intelligibility within a historical configuration.

The distinction between the two questions is precisely what makes their parallel interesting.

5. What Exists Outside It

The two passages now illuminate one another.

Saussure asks us to look beyond what a word contains toward “what exists outside it.” Foucault asks us to look beyond the apparent order of things toward “the grid created by a glance, an examination, a language.”

The two formulations contain an interesting symmetry. Foucault says that order exists “at one and the same time” as something given in things and as something that has no existence apart from the grid. Saussure says that the content of a word is determined “in the final analysis” not by what it contains but by what exists outside it.

The first formulation holds two apparently opposed sides together. The second tells us what happens when we pursue the relation between them.

Neither thinker simply denies what appears at first sight. The word still has meaning. Things still exhibit properties and relations. What changes is the level at which we ask what those properties or relations amount to.

This is why Saussure's “in the final analysis” matters. It does not abolish the linguistic element; it changes the terms in which that element is understood. The word's meaning remains, but its linguistic value cannot be separated from the system in which it functions.

Foucault's “at one and the same time” prevents a similar reduction. The order of things is neither simply discovered nor simply imposed. It is given in things and, at the same time, has no existence apart from the grid through which things can be examined and related.

The common problem can therefore be stated quite precisely: What appears to belong to an object may, on closer examination, depend upon relations outside it.

This is a modest claim, but it has a significant consequence. It asks us to question the apparently self-contained object without requiring us to deny the object itself.

The word does not disappear into langue.
The thing does not disappear into the grid.

Rather, the analysis reveals that neither can be fully understood by remaining at the level of what seems to be contained within it.

The movement is therefore not simply from object to system, as though the system were the only reality that mattered. It is from property to relation: from what appears to belong to the thing toward the conditions under which that property acquires its value or intelligibility.

Foucault's “at one and the same time” and Saussure's “in the final analysis” mark two moments of this movement. The first keeps the apparent property and its relational condition in view simultaneously. The second pushes the analysis beyond the apparent self-contained property toward the relations on which it depends.

And this may be the most revealing connection between the two passages.

To understand what something is, we may sometimes have to look for what exists outside it.

References

Saussure, F. de. (1983). Course in general linguistics (R. Harris, Trans.). Duckworth. (Original work published 1916)

Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences (A. M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.). Tavistock Publications. (Original work published 1966)