This book seeks to distance itself from all the interpretations that make Foucault a frivolous thinker. Our strategy consists of placing it within the criticism of modernity, which, initiated by Kant, would lead to Hegel and then to Marx. We will support the thesis that both archaeology, genealogy and ethics are attempts based on a personal experience to write a critical history that escapes the philosophical axioms that unconsciously animate traditional history. We have called this radical attempt “the force of criticism”. Foucault is far from being able to be reduced to a nihilistic thinker. He is, on the contrary, the most powerful project in our days, to think together and inseparable, the historical and the substantial.