Re: Kant, Hegel, Hitler

> In response to Joe and jln, I think that we are arguing at cross
> purposes. I am not tryingto convince you that Kant and Hegel are
> cool. I don't understand the way you two see the effect of
> philosophers in the courseof events. I am certain that you guys
> don't understand Kant, and I'm even more certain that understanding
> Kant is not even remotely an impoortant thing to do.

I find the notion that one can dismiss *any* aspect of the history
that has contributed to our oh-so-modern forms of thought to be 'not
even remotely important' to be at best wilful ignorance. What has
this sort of attitude to do with the gray and patiently documentary
attitude of the genalogist? Part of Foucault's subtle historical
ironism was to pick texts to analyze that are 'irrelevant' to most
'modern' scholars.


[omitted]

> The poin that follows from Kant's views, and
> that is, in my opinion, and that does separate us, is that in trying
> to resurrect some altenrative to scientific reasoning, especially
> trying to legitimate some aesthetic alternative to scientific
> reasoning, you're falling back into irraitonalism. If by aesthetic
> you don't mean somesolipsistic, private privileged moment, then I
> don't see what distinguishes it from scientific reasoning. Antoine

I would really hate to see discussion on this list fall into what
Foucault termed the 'blackmail of the Enlightenment'--the notion that
one is either *for* something called "reason," or one is *against*
it, and plunging into irrationality. As if, in the grand Kantian
tradition, one is not capable of engaging in a critique of 'reason'
by 'reason,' one which would be (finally) sensitive to 'reason's' own
historical formation.

In "How Much Does it Cost for Reason to Tell the Truth," an excellent
interview collected in the "Foucault Live" Semiotext(e) volume,
Foucault writes:

"Since Max Weber in the Frankfurt School and in every case with many
historians of science like Canguilhem it was a matter of determing
the form of rationalism, which is presented as the ruling one and to
which one gives the status of reason, in order to let it appear as
one of the possible forms of rational work. . . I believe there is
a self-creation of reason, and therefore I am trying to analyze the
forms of ratinality: various proofs, various formulations, various
modifications by which rationalities educe each other, contradict one
another, chase each other away, without one therefore being able to
designate a moment in which reason would have lost its basic design
or changed from rationalism to irrationalism."

It is too easy to dismiss Kant or Hegel as possessors of a
'fascistic' notion of 'rationality,' without paying attention to what
we can, *critically*, use in them. There is something sadly ironic
about pulling this sort of power play on Kant and Hegel, something
that smells of bad air and warmed-over Maoism.

What I recieve from Foucault is the notion that we must not be
content with any particular *form* of rationality, without led to
thereby abandon rational*ism*, especially critical rationalism, as a
mode of human existence. Foucault writes somewhere that we are
creatures possessed with a 'fortunate rationality,' and the critical
task is to determine and separate out what is contingent and what
determined, what fascistic and what ethical in this fortunate
rationality--an attitude, I note, that Foucault attributes to Kant in
"What is Enlightenment?"

///Connor
_________________________________________________________
E.M. Connor Durflinger Philosopher for Hire
"Have Forestructures, Will Travel"
Reverend, Universal Life Church
bc05319@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx PIC Program at B.U.
_________________________________________________________

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