On Sat, 8 Mar 1997, malgosia askanas wrote:
> I think that maybe the main isuue is not so much whether there is such a
> thing as truth, or the distinction between Truth and truths, but the
> question of how not to be shackled by our own idea of "truth".
Perhaps I'm just stating the obvious here, but I think that in order to
wage the battle against our ideas of truth we have to get really close to
them, understand them, and even appreciate them. And isn't there a way in
which we might come to affirm a truth about ourselves, even one that has
been created for us by social powers that operate on us? Perhaps not all
truths shackle us; some empower us.
In his recent post, Stephen D'Arcy did indeed provide the list a service
by summarizing an important point from F's "WIE":
D'Arcy writes: [Foucault] names this modified Enlightenment attitude "the
critical ontology of ourselves," about which he makes the following
remark: "the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the
historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment
with the possibility of going beyond [i.e., transgressing] them."
He distinguishes his own mode of critique from Kantian critique by
saying that, whereas the latter sought to define unsurpassable limits,
the former "will separate out, from the contingency that has made us
what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking
what we are, do, or think." [end snippet from D'Arcy]
To this I would just like to add that this transgressive experiment can
only take place in the context of and in a real sense only when we are
respectful of the truths that currently shape us. This is what I take F to
be arguing when he quotes Baudelaire saying "You have no right to despise
the present" ("WIE" in _Foucault Reader_, p. 40). F goes on to say (and
here I paraphrase):
For the attitude of modernity, the high value of the present is
indissociable from desperate eagerness to imagine it, to
imagine it otherwise than it is, to transform it not by
destroying it but by grasping it in what it is.
Extreme attention to what is real which is then
confronted with practice of a liberty that simultaneously
respects this reality and violates it. ("WIE," 41)
> I think that maybe the main isuue is not so much whether there is such a
> thing as truth, or the distinction between Truth and truths, but the
> question of how not to be shackled by our own idea of "truth".
Perhaps I'm just stating the obvious here, but I think that in order to
wage the battle against our ideas of truth we have to get really close to
them, understand them, and even appreciate them. And isn't there a way in
which we might come to affirm a truth about ourselves, even one that has
been created for us by social powers that operate on us? Perhaps not all
truths shackle us; some empower us.
In his recent post, Stephen D'Arcy did indeed provide the list a service
by summarizing an important point from F's "WIE":
D'Arcy writes: [Foucault] names this modified Enlightenment attitude "the
critical ontology of ourselves," about which he makes the following
remark: "the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the
historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment
with the possibility of going beyond [i.e., transgressing] them."
He distinguishes his own mode of critique from Kantian critique by
saying that, whereas the latter sought to define unsurpassable limits,
the former "will separate out, from the contingency that has made us
what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking
what we are, do, or think." [end snippet from D'Arcy]
To this I would just like to add that this transgressive experiment can
only take place in the context of and in a real sense only when we are
respectful of the truths that currently shape us. This is what I take F to
be arguing when he quotes Baudelaire saying "You have no right to despise
the present" ("WIE" in _Foucault Reader_, p. 40). F goes on to say (and
here I paraphrase):
For the attitude of modernity, the high value of the present is
indissociable from desperate eagerness to imagine it, to
imagine it otherwise than it is, to transform it not by
destroying it but by grasping it in what it is.
Extreme attention to what is real which is then
confronted with practice of a liberty that simultaneously
respects this reality and violates it. ("WIE," 41)