> RE the two Foucaults:
>
> can you clarify what differentiates these two foucaults? what is the
difference betweeen
> a Parisian Foucault and and Anglo-AMerican? or a non French version.
> > --
The distinction between an American Foucault
and a French Foucault was first made by
Vinent Descombes simply to point out the
different ways in which Foucault's work was
appropriated. Richard Rorty takes up the
distinction in his contribution to the 1988
international meeting that took place in
Paris. The papers read in this meeting are
published with the title 'Foucault Philosopher'.
The distinction according to Rorty is the one
between the liberal (American) Foucault and the
anarchist (French) Foucault. The American
one seeks 'to define autonomy in purely human terms'
(the quote is from Descombes) without the notion of
a universal law, without trying to give universalistic
self-justifications or appealing to notions like rationality
and human nature. This version of Foucault is, for
Rorty, an up-to-date version of Dewey, a version of
liberalism justifying itself not in universalistic terms but
in terms of social experiments. Being a liberal and a
version of Dewey, this Foucault is O.K. for Rorty.
The problem is with the Franco-anarchist
Foucault! In fact, this problem is not specifically
French. It is common to a whole European tradition
from Blake to Baudelaire, from Nietzsche to Heidegger,
to Foucault and probably to many others. The members
of this tradition are Romantic intellectuals who refuse to
describe themselves in terms of the moral identity they
find in the democratic (!!?) institutions they inhabit.
Instead, they are concerned about their relationship to
themselves, and they want to describe themselves in terms
which do not apply to anyone else. They want to have an
autonomous self, in the sense of being self-invented
(doing things which no one else has done yet)
This Romantic ideal is O.K. for Rorty as long as the
autonomous, private, invented self and the public moral
self (with all the duties and obligations it implies) are kept
apart and the former is not meant to serve as a model for the
latter. Otherwise, one thinks of one's private self as a
model for his fellow citizens, and wants to help or
(God forbid!!) force them to become more autonomous.
Rorty argues that Foucault fluctuates between these two
positions. In his liberal (American) moments, he keeps
his public and private ideals apart, but in other moments he
runs them together.
So much of Rorty's argument is very reminiscent of Berlin's
position in 'Two Concepts of Liberty'. The term 'liberty' is
simply replaced with 'autonomy' (with all the implications
about Rousseau's paradox.) So there is nothing new he
adds to the liberal tradition and its emphasis on negative
liberty.
The next part of the argument is more interesting, if misguided.
Rorty argues that Foucault's work was pervaded by an
ambiguity between 'power' as a pejorative term and power as
a neutral, descriptive term. In the latter sense, which is
vacuous, any relationship is a relationship of power.
Foucault, in his anarchist moments, tried to find a
public counterpart to his private search for autonomy, for
inventiveness.
He refused to make the distinction between his public,
moral identity to be described in terms of a common,
moral (if banal) vocabulary and his private, invented
identity. He refused the distinction between the public
and private spheres. So he used the term 'power'
in the pejorative sense to describe all social compromise
that would violate his invented, created self.
Furthermore, unlike other enemies of the distinction
between the public and the private, Foucault thought
that human subjectivity had no ahistorical, non-
contingent core such as 'rationality' or 'the true self'
that can be used as a justification for political
arrangements and social institutions.
And because there is no such core he concluded that
there is no ground for moral obligation and social
institutions, and ended up with his Nietzschean anarchism.
According to Rorty, those who are against the public/
private distinctions (whether they believe in a
noncontinegnt, ahistorical core or not) have the mistaken
assumption that "unless there is some interesting
connection between what matters most to an
individual (in this case his autonomy as self-invention)
and his purported moral obligations to our fellow human
beings, then he has no such obligations." For Foucault,
there is not only no such connection, but moral obligations
and social institutions are normalizing power networks
that frustrate one's self-invention.
If we drop this assumption, argues Rorty, then one can
at the same time be a Romantic like Nietzsche, Baudelaire,
Foucault, etc., i.e. seek autonomy and have the sense
of moral responsability towards our fellow beings, because
there is nothing wrong with networks of power in the
neutral, descriptive sense: they are simply social and
political arrangements that provide a common vocabulary
for thecompromises we have to make in order to live
without hurting each other.
Foucault did want to do good to his fellow humans, but
because he ignored the ambiguity of the term 'power',
because he was against the private/public distinction, and
finally because he made a wrong assumption -i.e. because
he was an anarchist- we now have two Foucaults:
the American and the French.
I think Rorty is wrong for a number of reasons. The first
is the gross misunderstanding that Foucault always used
the term 'power' in a pejorative sense. He didn't.
The second reason is that Rorty begs the question: using
the private/public distinction to argue against Foucault
is to miss the entire point about Foucault's analytics of
power.
>
> can you clarify what differentiates these two foucaults? what is the
difference betweeen
> a Parisian Foucault and and Anglo-AMerican? or a non French version.
> > --
The distinction between an American Foucault
and a French Foucault was first made by
Vinent Descombes simply to point out the
different ways in which Foucault's work was
appropriated. Richard Rorty takes up the
distinction in his contribution to the 1988
international meeting that took place in
Paris. The papers read in this meeting are
published with the title 'Foucault Philosopher'.
The distinction according to Rorty is the one
between the liberal (American) Foucault and the
anarchist (French) Foucault. The American
one seeks 'to define autonomy in purely human terms'
(the quote is from Descombes) without the notion of
a universal law, without trying to give universalistic
self-justifications or appealing to notions like rationality
and human nature. This version of Foucault is, for
Rorty, an up-to-date version of Dewey, a version of
liberalism justifying itself not in universalistic terms but
in terms of social experiments. Being a liberal and a
version of Dewey, this Foucault is O.K. for Rorty.
The problem is with the Franco-anarchist
Foucault! In fact, this problem is not specifically
French. It is common to a whole European tradition
from Blake to Baudelaire, from Nietzsche to Heidegger,
to Foucault and probably to many others. The members
of this tradition are Romantic intellectuals who refuse to
describe themselves in terms of the moral identity they
find in the democratic (!!?) institutions they inhabit.
Instead, they are concerned about their relationship to
themselves, and they want to describe themselves in terms
which do not apply to anyone else. They want to have an
autonomous self, in the sense of being self-invented
(doing things which no one else has done yet)
This Romantic ideal is O.K. for Rorty as long as the
autonomous, private, invented self and the public moral
self (with all the duties and obligations it implies) are kept
apart and the former is not meant to serve as a model for the
latter. Otherwise, one thinks of one's private self as a
model for his fellow citizens, and wants to help or
(God forbid!!) force them to become more autonomous.
Rorty argues that Foucault fluctuates between these two
positions. In his liberal (American) moments, he keeps
his public and private ideals apart, but in other moments he
runs them together.
So much of Rorty's argument is very reminiscent of Berlin's
position in 'Two Concepts of Liberty'. The term 'liberty' is
simply replaced with 'autonomy' (with all the implications
about Rousseau's paradox.) So there is nothing new he
adds to the liberal tradition and its emphasis on negative
liberty.
The next part of the argument is more interesting, if misguided.
Rorty argues that Foucault's work was pervaded by an
ambiguity between 'power' as a pejorative term and power as
a neutral, descriptive term. In the latter sense, which is
vacuous, any relationship is a relationship of power.
Foucault, in his anarchist moments, tried to find a
public counterpart to his private search for autonomy, for
inventiveness.
He refused to make the distinction between his public,
moral identity to be described in terms of a common,
moral (if banal) vocabulary and his private, invented
identity. He refused the distinction between the public
and private spheres. So he used the term 'power'
in the pejorative sense to describe all social compromise
that would violate his invented, created self.
Furthermore, unlike other enemies of the distinction
between the public and the private, Foucault thought
that human subjectivity had no ahistorical, non-
contingent core such as 'rationality' or 'the true self'
that can be used as a justification for political
arrangements and social institutions.
And because there is no such core he concluded that
there is no ground for moral obligation and social
institutions, and ended up with his Nietzschean anarchism.
According to Rorty, those who are against the public/
private distinctions (whether they believe in a
noncontinegnt, ahistorical core or not) have the mistaken
assumption that "unless there is some interesting
connection between what matters most to an
individual (in this case his autonomy as self-invention)
and his purported moral obligations to our fellow human
beings, then he has no such obligations." For Foucault,
there is not only no such connection, but moral obligations
and social institutions are normalizing power networks
that frustrate one's self-invention.
If we drop this assumption, argues Rorty, then one can
at the same time be a Romantic like Nietzsche, Baudelaire,
Foucault, etc., i.e. seek autonomy and have the sense
of moral responsability towards our fellow beings, because
there is nothing wrong with networks of power in the
neutral, descriptive sense: they are simply social and
political arrangements that provide a common vocabulary
for thecompromises we have to make in order to live
without hurting each other.
Foucault did want to do good to his fellow humans, but
because he ignored the ambiguity of the term 'power',
because he was against the private/public distinction, and
finally because he made a wrong assumption -i.e. because
he was an anarchist- we now have two Foucaults:
the American and the French.
I think Rorty is wrong for a number of reasons. The first
is the gross misunderstanding that Foucault always used
the term 'power' in a pejorative sense. He didn't.
The second reason is that Rorty begs the question: using
the private/public distinction to argue against Foucault
is to miss the entire point about Foucault's analytics of
power.