Campbell Jones wrote:
>I think that he means 'we' in a more general sense, here, refering to
>something like 'the culture that we are in'. I wouldn't take Foucault's
>openings (as in his other books) too literally.
This is a good clarification. So we're part of something that we didn't
really choose. Would that be another way to phrase it?
Yes, it is a fact, if you believe things like the Gallup Poll, that an
overwhelming majority believe in God in the United States. This is
different, I believe, than the United (Dissolving) Kingdom and perhaps New
Zealand. It is also a fact that the overwhelming majority identify
themselves as heterosexual, based on these polls. I personally have friends
who are more in the agnostic category, but I think I am outside the circle
of "normalcy"!
>....Even if this were so, in what way would the
>alleged beliefs of Americans refute the relevance of Nietzsche's discussion
>of 'the death of god'?
One thing that Foucault is known for is taking Freddie a step further,
declaring the death of man, which therefore allows us to reinvent him (as
well as woman) again.
Later in the book, we'll see how possible this is, I think. In that, if we
are kind of "dropped in" to this place, as you note, Campbell, can we
simply... throw it out? There is a case to be made that Freud's atheistic
psychoanalysis, for example, merely *replaced* Judeo-Christian (also mixed
in with the West's Greco-Roman heritage) codes of ethics with another very
similar one. And then, what do you make of this comment? Perhaps it ties in
with Foucault's title of the first chapter about "We, OTHER Victorians"...
Most revolutions leave the vast majority of things unchanged. The WORST are
the ones that try to start with Year Zero (French Terror and Cambodian).
Evolution is more the key.
So the question then, perhaps, becomes: how can we help to make things
better? And I will define "better" not with a series of "I do NOT mean..."
but by saying:
Build a more-inclusive "tent" of tolerance and heterogenity.
---Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/
>I think that he means 'we' in a more general sense, here, refering to
>something like 'the culture that we are in'. I wouldn't take Foucault's
>openings (as in his other books) too literally.
This is a good clarification. So we're part of something that we didn't
really choose. Would that be another way to phrase it?
Yes, it is a fact, if you believe things like the Gallup Poll, that an
overwhelming majority believe in God in the United States. This is
different, I believe, than the United (Dissolving) Kingdom and perhaps New
Zealand. It is also a fact that the overwhelming majority identify
themselves as heterosexual, based on these polls. I personally have friends
who are more in the agnostic category, but I think I am outside the circle
of "normalcy"!
>....Even if this were so, in what way would the
>alleged beliefs of Americans refute the relevance of Nietzsche's discussion
>of 'the death of god'?
One thing that Foucault is known for is taking Freddie a step further,
declaring the death of man, which therefore allows us to reinvent him (as
well as woman) again.
Later in the book, we'll see how possible this is, I think. In that, if we
are kind of "dropped in" to this place, as you note, Campbell, can we
simply... throw it out? There is a case to be made that Freud's atheistic
psychoanalysis, for example, merely *replaced* Judeo-Christian (also mixed
in with the West's Greco-Roman heritage) codes of ethics with another very
similar one. And then, what do you make of this comment? Perhaps it ties in
with Foucault's title of the first chapter about "We, OTHER Victorians"...
Most revolutions leave the vast majority of things unchanged. The WORST are
the ones that try to start with Year Zero (French Terror and Cambodian).
Evolution is more the key.
So the question then, perhaps, becomes: how can we help to make things
better? And I will define "better" not with a series of "I do NOT mean..."
but by saying:
Build a more-inclusive "tent" of tolerance and heterogenity.
---Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/