傅柯在 1966 年出版的《詞與物》以考古學方法提出人學的獨特問題，指出人作為一個十九世紀發明的概念，構成一種經驗—先驗對偶，人既是能思主體亦同時是思想客體，因此產生了特屬於現代的問題場域。人的問題既是人對自身認識的雙重提問，同時亦是在生命、語言與勞動的經驗實證性中，成為思考非思的問題。人學的問題性標誌著傅柯哲學最重要的思想運動，亦是承繼拉岡，對笛卡兒我思的進一步翻轉。對傅柯而言，我思僅能遶經我的不在，而我在則來自我所不思，人學成立在思想與存有間所建立的弔詭往返之間，不再有笛卡兒的明證性，相反地，由非思所貫穿，並且使得現代人的存有與瘋狂的親緣性遠比想像中的更迫近。

In 1966 Michel Foucault proposed a singular problem of the human sciences in The Order of Things, indicating that “man,” a concept invented in the 19th century, is formed as the empirical-transcendental doublet. Man is both the subject who thinks and the object of thinking, thereby producing the foundation for the field of problematics which is specific to the modern knowledge. The problem of man suggests that it poses the problem on itself on the one hand, and on the other hand that it becomes the problem of thinking the unthought in the positivity of life, language and work. The problem of human sciences remarks the most important movement of thought in Foucault, and through Lacan, it further overturns Descartes’ cogito. The cogito, for Foucault, only exists where I am not, and I am where I do not think. The human sciences are installed in the back and forth paradox between thought and existence, and no longer have any Cartesian evidence. Conversely, the human sciences are traversed by the unthought, making modern man have a closer affinity with madness more than we imagine.