On Tue, 04 Jun 1996 10:12:09 +0100, ccw94@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
>This only applies if you deny that Foucault denied truth, agency and
>intentionality. If you don't then clearly you can make efforts to specify
>what you think F meant. Equally, however, if one were to consistently
>maintain, as some seem wont to do, that F really does deny truth, agency,
>and intentionality, then nothing can be said about F's intentions, and his
>text become reducible to the machinations of readers. In effect, if I use
>D&P as a cookery book this would be admissable because there was no other
>intention/meaning to his work. This is clearly ridiculous, but it is the
>end-point for any reading of F that attempts to deny truth, agency and
>intentionality. In effect, as you point out, why read F if these are denied?
I would like to refer to the problem from another angle. I tried in another
post to address the concept of truth, but I have reservations on the very
terms of the discussion, so I will take your words above for an excuse
to historicise the question, i.e. to move on a certain level of ad hominem
towards those whose argument you ventriloquate as ventriloquating F. denying
the existence of truth.
>from the claim that "F. really denied truth, agency or intentionality," it
follows, you say, that we can use D&P as a cookery book. And I agree,
if only because from a contradiction you can logically draw any conclusion
you like, for how can F. "really" deny truth, when truth is what is implied
by the gramatical form of the assertion and denying truth is an assertion?
but where does this claim, (which F. found so irritating, as your citation shows )
about what F. "really" says come from? To begin
with, the vocabulary: what do people deny? What truths do people deny? Three
things mainly come to mind, crimes they allegedly commited, authorities they reject
and dogmas they do not hold; Three things that come together in
the trial of heresy, for the heretic at once rejects a belief, defies an authority
and commits a crime. (Do you deny that the gospel is the word of God, etc. etc.)
Specifically, this language sounds misplaced in modern science:
Suppose a scientist comes forward with the assertion "The electron has no electric
charge"; she will not (I hope) be asked whether she "denies the electron", although,
insofar that electric charge is part of the definition of the electron, such a question
is not entirely meaningless. Yet she will be probably asked, "what is your evidence,
and if you are right, how should we redefine our knowledge of sub-atomic particles".
I will assume for the moment that the closest thing to "denying truth" that F. articulated
was the statement that "truth is not outside power" which I cited earlier. one could
understand it, among other things, as an assertion of impurity, the impurity of truth,
and ipso facto, one could claim, of intentionality, agency, self, etc. I would even radicalise
that asserion and say that it refers to an essential impurity, not that truth is contaminated
by some "fallen state" of our knowledge, this would be acceptable even to Augustine,
but that truth is essentially contaminated, (which does not mean that all contaminations
are equivalent to each other). Now, in as much as one can recall a philosopho-theological
tradition for which truth is that which is purest, most simple etc., such a statement *can*
be translated to a "denial", a rephrasing in terms of orthodoxy; but this is but one possibility,
another possibility would have been to translate the statement as a "revision", i.e. in terms
of scientific inquiery about the attributes of an object. (Note that the question of wether
F. has proved his point is bracketed for the moment)
If Foucault denies truth, one could read D&P as a cookbook: An evocation of choas,
total desintegration of the world. But this is hardly the first time that the spectre of
annihilation is exorcised in the gardens of knowledge:
Let's recall one precedent.
Thomas More, at the time when Henri VIII was still catholic, accused the english
protestant translator of the Bible, Tyndale, of deviating from the usage of the Vulgate.
To Tyndal's defense that "the circumstaunce doth declare what thyng is
meant" by a word, More replied "If the settyng of the cyrcumstaunce
make all well inough: he nedeth not mych to care what worde he chaungeth nor
how. for he maye set suche cyrcumstaunces of his owne deuyce that he maye
make men perceyue what he meaneth. For so he maye translate the worlde in to
a foteball yf he ioyne therwyth certeyne cyrcumstaunces...". ( Complete
works: the confutation of Tyndale's answer, part 1, p. 165-6; you can find out
about the context of this debate in Greenblatt, "renaissance self-fashioning)
>From the unbelievingly innocuous claim that context is instrumental in determining
a correct translation of a word, More deduced that "one may translate the world into a
football"; another case of heresy that caused an intelligent person to revel in
images of doom. Since the catholic church perceived itself as *the* universal it is easy
to undersand why a serious threat to its hegemony would have appeared to undo reality
itself. But the translation of the Bible into English didn't ruin the world, nor
did it enable anyone to make a football out of it. At most, it was instrumental in the
demise of the catholic hegemony. What connects our two cases of heresy is the relation
between purity, universality, and the fear of annihilation: the purity of a word's meaning
and the universality of the catholic church, the purity of the idea of truth and the universality
which, after a labour of almost half a millenium, came to hegemony in the church's stead.
In the relation between politics and science we come, so it seems, so close to the religious
kernel of modern secular thought, that the old formulae of abjuration are being dusted,
and the forms of inquiery and rational arguments cede before the demands of orthodoxy.
It is very difficult not to be simple-minded when the stakes appear so high, but are they
so high, and in what sense? What is the price of using the language of heresy and
apocalypse in dealing with a philosophical questionning of our thoughts and practices?
Aren't we giving up the very care for the truth in blind defense of truth's virginity?
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------
>
>This only applies if you deny that Foucault denied truth, agency and
>intentionality. If you don't then clearly you can make efforts to specify
>what you think F meant. Equally, however, if one were to consistently
>maintain, as some seem wont to do, that F really does deny truth, agency,
>and intentionality, then nothing can be said about F's intentions, and his
>text become reducible to the machinations of readers. In effect, if I use
>D&P as a cookery book this would be admissable because there was no other
>intention/meaning to his work. This is clearly ridiculous, but it is the
>end-point for any reading of F that attempts to deny truth, agency and
>intentionality. In effect, as you point out, why read F if these are denied?
I would like to refer to the problem from another angle. I tried in another
post to address the concept of truth, but I have reservations on the very
terms of the discussion, so I will take your words above for an excuse
to historicise the question, i.e. to move on a certain level of ad hominem
towards those whose argument you ventriloquate as ventriloquating F. denying
the existence of truth.
>from the claim that "F. really denied truth, agency or intentionality," it
follows, you say, that we can use D&P as a cookery book. And I agree,
if only because from a contradiction you can logically draw any conclusion
you like, for how can F. "really" deny truth, when truth is what is implied
by the gramatical form of the assertion and denying truth is an assertion?
but where does this claim, (which F. found so irritating, as your citation shows )
about what F. "really" says come from? To begin
with, the vocabulary: what do people deny? What truths do people deny? Three
things mainly come to mind, crimes they allegedly commited, authorities they reject
and dogmas they do not hold; Three things that come together in
the trial of heresy, for the heretic at once rejects a belief, defies an authority
and commits a crime. (Do you deny that the gospel is the word of God, etc. etc.)
Specifically, this language sounds misplaced in modern science:
Suppose a scientist comes forward with the assertion "The electron has no electric
charge"; she will not (I hope) be asked whether she "denies the electron", although,
insofar that electric charge is part of the definition of the electron, such a question
is not entirely meaningless. Yet she will be probably asked, "what is your evidence,
and if you are right, how should we redefine our knowledge of sub-atomic particles".
I will assume for the moment that the closest thing to "denying truth" that F. articulated
was the statement that "truth is not outside power" which I cited earlier. one could
understand it, among other things, as an assertion of impurity, the impurity of truth,
and ipso facto, one could claim, of intentionality, agency, self, etc. I would even radicalise
that asserion and say that it refers to an essential impurity, not that truth is contaminated
by some "fallen state" of our knowledge, this would be acceptable even to Augustine,
but that truth is essentially contaminated, (which does not mean that all contaminations
are equivalent to each other). Now, in as much as one can recall a philosopho-theological
tradition for which truth is that which is purest, most simple etc., such a statement *can*
be translated to a "denial", a rephrasing in terms of orthodoxy; but this is but one possibility,
another possibility would have been to translate the statement as a "revision", i.e. in terms
of scientific inquiery about the attributes of an object. (Note that the question of wether
F. has proved his point is bracketed for the moment)
If Foucault denies truth, one could read D&P as a cookbook: An evocation of choas,
total desintegration of the world. But this is hardly the first time that the spectre of
annihilation is exorcised in the gardens of knowledge:
Let's recall one precedent.
Thomas More, at the time when Henri VIII was still catholic, accused the english
protestant translator of the Bible, Tyndale, of deviating from the usage of the Vulgate.
To Tyndal's defense that "the circumstaunce doth declare what thyng is
meant" by a word, More replied "If the settyng of the cyrcumstaunce
make all well inough: he nedeth not mych to care what worde he chaungeth nor
how. for he maye set suche cyrcumstaunces of his owne deuyce that he maye
make men perceyue what he meaneth. For so he maye translate the worlde in to
a foteball yf he ioyne therwyth certeyne cyrcumstaunces...". ( Complete
works: the confutation of Tyndale's answer, part 1, p. 165-6; you can find out
about the context of this debate in Greenblatt, "renaissance self-fashioning)
>From the unbelievingly innocuous claim that context is instrumental in determining
a correct translation of a word, More deduced that "one may translate the world into a
football"; another case of heresy that caused an intelligent person to revel in
images of doom. Since the catholic church perceived itself as *the* universal it is easy
to undersand why a serious threat to its hegemony would have appeared to undo reality
itself. But the translation of the Bible into English didn't ruin the world, nor
did it enable anyone to make a football out of it. At most, it was instrumental in the
demise of the catholic hegemony. What connects our two cases of heresy is the relation
between purity, universality, and the fear of annihilation: the purity of a word's meaning
and the universality of the catholic church, the purity of the idea of truth and the universality
which, after a labour of almost half a millenium, came to hegemony in the church's stead.
In the relation between politics and science we come, so it seems, so close to the religious
kernel of modern secular thought, that the old formulae of abjuration are being dusted,
and the forms of inquiery and rational arguments cede before the demands of orthodoxy.
It is very difficult not to be simple-minded when the stakes appear so high, but are they
so high, and in what sense? What is the price of using the language of heresy and
apocalypse in dealing with a philosophical questionning of our thoughts and practices?
Aren't we giving up the very care for the truth in blind defense of truth's virginity?
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------