Re: Concerns (cont.)



On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, david wachtfogel wrote:

> You're either a materialist or an idealist.

I should hope not.

> If you're an idealist, if you
> believe in the existence of extra material realities such as "love",
> "truth", "right", then you do not accept the materialist project, to
> which Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Foucault belong to.

You think Foucault didn't believe in truth? What about "parrhesia" and
all that jazz?

> So please tell me Randall, tell us all, are you _a believer_, do you
> believe in extra material realities? Are you, to quote Paul Simon,
> "blinded by the light of god and truth and right?"

Was Foucault not "blinded by the light of god and truth and right" in Iran
in 1979, at Vincennes in 1969, in Tunisia in 1968?

I don't know that Foucault ever directly addresses the issue of
materialism vs. idealism, but I'm quite confident that he (like Rorty)
would say that no kind of thing is any more Really Real than any other
kind of thing.

Matthew

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"Yes - Kilgore Trout is back again. He could not make it on the outside.
That is no disgrace. A lot of good people can't make it on the outside."
(Kurt Vonnegut, _Jailbird_)
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Matthew A. King ---- Department of Philosophy ---- McMaster University



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