On Sun, 20 Oct 1996, Stephen D'Arcy wrote:
>
> Speaking of controversial interpretations of Foucault: I think
> Foucault is so far from being a "post-modernist" that he has much more
> in common with Immanuel Kant than he does with, say, Lyotard or
> Derrida (not that I would admit that Derrida is a postmodernist).
>
I would agree with the points that Foucault is not a post-modernist and
that its even possible to go so far as saying that Foucault is a
Kantian. However, in doing this there is a certain level of violence
that is perpetrated against the notions of Kantianism and modernity. If
you will, in "What is Enlightenment" Foucault's call to arms is to be a
Kantian, not in the sense that we will take up Kant's questions in the
manner that Kant approached them but that we will takeup the questions of
the present at the same level of analysis that Kant applied to the
questions of his day. That is, it is not for us to ask what is
enlightenment but rahter we must ask 'What is modernity?' In asking this
we do not escape modernity into some figure of the post- but instead
there is an acknowledgment that modernity yet remains to problematic to
have been left behind.
Or, to offer another tack, if Foucault is a Kantian then so too is
Nietzsche. The question then is not 'How does Foucault advance the
Kantian project', but 'what elements of discourse which were deployed in
Kant can be found still functioning in Nietzsche and Foucualt?'
Flannon