Matthew wrote:
> True, but I don't think any "theory of freedom" could be compatible with
> Foucault, either--precisely because he teaches that freedom is not an
> object, hence not something you can theorize about. Once you make it an
> object by theorizing about it, you lose it.
This is not to deny what you say about Foucault, but it seems to me that
this notion of theorizing suffers from a problem similar to the one you
talk about in connection with freedom. It treats "theorizing" as if its
purpose was to lay an egg and then sit on it. But theorizing, it seems to me,
is always provisional; this is pretty clear from the history of thought.
Theorizing is movement. In the course of this movement, one always loses
things and then regains them (though differently), and then loses them again.
The questions is, what _else_ happens. What happens in this loss and this
regaining? What does it enable us to do? What is it good for?
-m
> True, but I don't think any "theory of freedom" could be compatible with
> Foucault, either--precisely because he teaches that freedom is not an
> object, hence not something you can theorize about. Once you make it an
> object by theorizing about it, you lose it.
This is not to deny what you say about Foucault, but it seems to me that
this notion of theorizing suffers from a problem similar to the one you
talk about in connection with freedom. It treats "theorizing" as if its
purpose was to lay an egg and then sit on it. But theorizing, it seems to me,
is always provisional; this is pretty clear from the history of thought.
Theorizing is movement. In the course of this movement, one always loses
things and then regains them (though differently), and then loses them again.
The questions is, what _else_ happens. What happens in this loss and this
regaining? What does it enable us to do? What is it good for?
-m