On Mon, 03 Jun 1996 09:25:30 +0100, ccw94@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>Please, some rules of scholarship, must apply. Sources please, and some
I do not apreciate the tone of your comment. Here is my source, which is
just as good as the source you have cited:
"What I try to achieve is the history of the relations which
thought maintains with truth; the history of thought insofar as it is the
thought of truth. All those who say truth does not exist for me are
simple minded."
(Foucault, cited by Colins, posted on Foucault List on Mon 3, 1996 )
Now to the more serious questions.
>textual unpacking might not go amiss. What do _you_ think this means? What
>do _you_ think _Foucault_ means? Is it possible on your reading of Foucault
>to claim that _he_ means anything? It is on mine by the way, but i don't
>subscribe to the notion that Foucault denied agency or truth, hence I can
>claim that he is trying to transmit something in his writing, I'm not sure
>that you can. Also, need I point out that even here Foucault, if it is from
>Foucault, is clearly distinguishing truth from the thought of truth.
I don't subscribe either to the notion that F. denied agency, truth, or meaning.
I think this is a simple minded reading of Foucault, and if it were true nobody
would bother to read F.. I do subscribe to the notion that F. denied that
truth, meaning and agency are simple and clear things that can serve as a basis for a
metaphysics. Rather, I think he strove to show that truth and agency are the
complex effects of specific and analysable mechanisms and discursive formations.
I don't understand your claims about what I can claim and what I cannot. Why is what
I can claim about F. limited by what I claim F. claims?
We do agree that F. is clearly distinguishing truth from the thought of truth in the citation
referred above. We don't agree about the right context to place this distinction. You want
to read truth here in the normal context of western philosophy, I am suggesting that
although this context is relevant, the context provided by F. in other places is more relevant.
Here is a famous citation about the nature of truth:
"The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn't
outside power, or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would
repay further study, truth isn't the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude,
nor the privilege of those who have succeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of
this world: it is produced only be virtue of multiple forms of constraints, and it induces
regular effects of power. Each society has its own regime of truth, its 'general politics of truth':
that is, types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true: the mechanisms and
instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is
sanctionned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the aquisition of truth; the
status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true"
Truth, hence, is a thing of this world, i.e. in common philosophical parlance,
truth is material, objective, immanent, existing, positive, etc.
Thought on the other hand - and this is certainly a metaphysical and problematic moment -
although it is also part of the complex of truth, contains a negative instance by which
it can recoil on itself and distance itself from itself, and eventually become other than itself.
In the exercise of philosophy, as F. formulates it, the stake is "to learn to what extent the
work of thinking one's own history can liberate thought from what it thinks silently and allow it to
think otherwise"
Thus, there is a distinct difference between thought and truth as you have rightly pointed out,
which runs through his writing. By the way, the dynnamics of Thought is clearly a humanist
moment, relating back most notably to figures such as Montaigne.
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------
>Please, some rules of scholarship, must apply. Sources please, and some
I do not apreciate the tone of your comment. Here is my source, which is
just as good as the source you have cited:
"What I try to achieve is the history of the relations which
thought maintains with truth; the history of thought insofar as it is the
thought of truth. All those who say truth does not exist for me are
simple minded."
(Foucault, cited by Colins, posted on Foucault List on Mon 3, 1996 )
Now to the more serious questions.
>textual unpacking might not go amiss. What do _you_ think this means? What
>do _you_ think _Foucault_ means? Is it possible on your reading of Foucault
>to claim that _he_ means anything? It is on mine by the way, but i don't
>subscribe to the notion that Foucault denied agency or truth, hence I can
>claim that he is trying to transmit something in his writing, I'm not sure
>that you can. Also, need I point out that even here Foucault, if it is from
>Foucault, is clearly distinguishing truth from the thought of truth.
I don't subscribe either to the notion that F. denied agency, truth, or meaning.
I think this is a simple minded reading of Foucault, and if it were true nobody
would bother to read F.. I do subscribe to the notion that F. denied that
truth, meaning and agency are simple and clear things that can serve as a basis for a
metaphysics. Rather, I think he strove to show that truth and agency are the
complex effects of specific and analysable mechanisms and discursive formations.
I don't understand your claims about what I can claim and what I cannot. Why is what
I can claim about F. limited by what I claim F. claims?
We do agree that F. is clearly distinguishing truth from the thought of truth in the citation
referred above. We don't agree about the right context to place this distinction. You want
to read truth here in the normal context of western philosophy, I am suggesting that
although this context is relevant, the context provided by F. in other places is more relevant.
Here is a famous citation about the nature of truth:
"The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn't
outside power, or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would
repay further study, truth isn't the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude,
nor the privilege of those who have succeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of
this world: it is produced only be virtue of multiple forms of constraints, and it induces
regular effects of power. Each society has its own regime of truth, its 'general politics of truth':
that is, types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true: the mechanisms and
instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is
sanctionned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the aquisition of truth; the
status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true"
Truth, hence, is a thing of this world, i.e. in common philosophical parlance,
truth is material, objective, immanent, existing, positive, etc.
Thought on the other hand - and this is certainly a metaphysical and problematic moment -
although it is also part of the complex of truth, contains a negative instance by which
it can recoil on itself and distance itself from itself, and eventually become other than itself.
In the exercise of philosophy, as F. formulates it, the stake is "to learn to what extent the
work of thinking one's own history can liberate thought from what it thinks silently and allow it to
think otherwise"
Thus, there is a distinct difference between thought and truth as you have rightly pointed out,
which runs through his writing. By the way, the dynnamics of Thought is clearly a humanist
moment, relating back most notably to figures such as Montaigne.
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------