I haven't read Kriegel's book, but I've read Lilla's compilation. If the
series is like the 'flagship' book, then I would suggest a hearty caveat
emptor. There is indeed a severe reactionary swing to the right in
contemporary French thought -- spearheaded by political philosophers -- and
it is this group that this series seems to be introducing to English
speakers. This group of "anti-postmodernists" mount an extended diatribe
against Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Blanchot, Lacan, poststructuralism and
deconstruction as a whole, lump them together with failed Marxism and
pronounce the critique of the subject "dead." The group -- congealing
around the journal Le debat -- counts among its leaders some real
philosophical hacks, like Bernard Henri-Levi and Luc Ferry, and Alain
Renaut (some of whose work stinks the place up but occassionalyl is
coherent), but there are some in this group who are 'worthy opponents,' like
Philippe Raynaud, Marcel Gauchet and Kriegel. Mark Lilla seems to be a
competent guy. It seems that what binds this group together is their
rejection of structuralism, poststructuralism (which includes
deconstruction), but they seem to be having a very hard time to salvage "the
subject" and give it the substance that they, for political ends, are so
desparate to establish.
I think your take on what they are doing is right on line; they
reject Hegel in favor of Kant and Fichte and return to the French Revolution
(genuinely an obsession with the French) as the watershed where culture and
history seem, to them, tragically to have won out over ahistorical
principles of human rights. There is, in all this, a strong odor of Rieseling.
Reg
>"New French Thought" coming from Princeton University Press. I have read
Blandine
>Kriegel's The State and the Rule of Law and browsed a compilation which
bears the name
>of the series.
>
> I am interested to hear what Foucault scholars think about these new works.
>They seem to me to represent an initiative on the part of French scholars
to return to
>enlightenment liberalism and examine it for its merits. Kriegel's piece,
for example,
>argues that the sweeping abuses of power of the twentieth-century West have
their roots
>in German romanticism, not in Enlightenment rationalism (which has been
accused of being
>the source of the . This, combined with her thorough use of enlightenment
thinkers,
>suggests a suspension of postmodernism, a break with the contemporary
French tradition,
>to create the space necessary to explore again the phenomena of the
Enlightenment.
>
> Note also what Kriegel, touted on the in-flap as having collaborated with
>Foucault, asserts in the chaper on sovereign power:
>
> This is not the era of "bio-politics," or of therapeutic
technologies,
> demographic regulation, and pedagogical and penal discipline,
the
> nineteenth-century development chronicled by Foucault. But a
symbolic
> politics of life has emerged. Feudalism was war; now the
sovereign state
> promises peace. (24)
>
>A powerful statement, that.
>
> Any comments?
>
>***************************************************************************
*************
>Nicholas A. Dronen
>http://w3.servint.com/cognigen/f/fci.cgi?dr2864423
>ndronen@xxxxxxxx
>***************************************************************************
*************
>
>
series is like the 'flagship' book, then I would suggest a hearty caveat
emptor. There is indeed a severe reactionary swing to the right in
contemporary French thought -- spearheaded by political philosophers -- and
it is this group that this series seems to be introducing to English
speakers. This group of "anti-postmodernists" mount an extended diatribe
against Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Blanchot, Lacan, poststructuralism and
deconstruction as a whole, lump them together with failed Marxism and
pronounce the critique of the subject "dead." The group -- congealing
around the journal Le debat -- counts among its leaders some real
philosophical hacks, like Bernard Henri-Levi and Luc Ferry, and Alain
Renaut (some of whose work stinks the place up but occassionalyl is
coherent), but there are some in this group who are 'worthy opponents,' like
Philippe Raynaud, Marcel Gauchet and Kriegel. Mark Lilla seems to be a
competent guy. It seems that what binds this group together is their
rejection of structuralism, poststructuralism (which includes
deconstruction), but they seem to be having a very hard time to salvage "the
subject" and give it the substance that they, for political ends, are so
desparate to establish.
I think your take on what they are doing is right on line; they
reject Hegel in favor of Kant and Fichte and return to the French Revolution
(genuinely an obsession with the French) as the watershed where culture and
history seem, to them, tragically to have won out over ahistorical
principles of human rights. There is, in all this, a strong odor of Rieseling.
Reg
>"New French Thought" coming from Princeton University Press. I have read
Blandine
>Kriegel's The State and the Rule of Law and browsed a compilation which
bears the name
>of the series.
>
> I am interested to hear what Foucault scholars think about these new works.
>They seem to me to represent an initiative on the part of French scholars
to return to
>enlightenment liberalism and examine it for its merits. Kriegel's piece,
for example,
>argues that the sweeping abuses of power of the twentieth-century West have
their roots
>in German romanticism, not in Enlightenment rationalism (which has been
accused of being
>the source of the . This, combined with her thorough use of enlightenment
thinkers,
>suggests a suspension of postmodernism, a break with the contemporary
French tradition,
>to create the space necessary to explore again the phenomena of the
Enlightenment.
>
> Note also what Kriegel, touted on the in-flap as having collaborated with
>Foucault, asserts in the chaper on sovereign power:
>
> This is not the era of "bio-politics," or of therapeutic
technologies,
> demographic regulation, and pedagogical and penal discipline,
the
> nineteenth-century development chronicled by Foucault. But a
symbolic
> politics of life has emerged. Feudalism was war; now the
sovereign state
> promises peace. (24)
>
>A powerful statement, that.
>
> Any comments?
>
>***************************************************************************
*************
>Nicholas A. Dronen
>http://w3.servint.com/cognigen/f/fci.cgi?dr2864423
>ndronen@xxxxxxxx
>***************************************************************************
*************
>
>