>
>Brian
>
>Well, I know the book, and the Habermas material on Foucault & others. What
>are your thoughts?
>
>Stuart
>
I must confess, I may have opened my virtual mouth prematurely, as I haven't
studied the material in a while. But I do remember "Critique and Power,"
with its list of highly reputable contributors (e.g., Axel Honneth, Thomas
McCarthy, Nancy Fraser), as being one of the richest and most engaging
expositions of contemporary political-philosophical issues I have read.
But the discussions this list has been having regarding Foucault and the
Frankfurt School reminded me of a number of points Foucault brought up in
the interview "Critical Theory/Intellectual History" (this can be found in
Politics, Philo., Culture or in C&P) Foucault here denies any influence or
even awareness of the Frankfurt School's project, and says something along
the lines of "if I had, it would have saved me a lot of work and spared me a
number of detours I have made over the years" (once again, I'm paraphrasing
b/c I don't have the text with me). I think therefore that any relation
between Foucault and the Frankfut School would be better described as a
matter of convergence/divergence than of direct influence, one way or the
other.
I think Doug summarized the Habermassian viewpoint very well, as Habermas
contends that Foucault collapses both "good" and instrumental or "bad"
rationality into each other, thereby rejecting "wholesale modernist reason."
Habermas thus accuses Foucault of being some kind of anti-rationalist and
thus a "Young Conservative," dumping him into a class with "the
postmodernists."
Foucault, however, denies that he is "rejecting" any kind of rationality per
se, only the idea of a singular and true rationality that can find itself
beyond the constraints of discursive practices (once again, refer to CT/IH).
>From this Foucault can assert that rationality is in itself neither "good"
nor "bad," "true" nor "false," but itself discursively constituted (as
opposed to dialectically constituted in a way that couples with something
absolute). I think Foucault explicates a key point of disagreement in his
interview "Truth and Power" (in P/K or the F Reader), when he explains his
rejection of ideology as a tool of analysis (and also the "insidious" notion
of repression).
>From this, I will bring up one point, namely, his accusation that ideology
presumes something about "the order of a subject." In short, Foucault denies
the possibility of discovering an element Habermas finds critical in
deliniating any kind of "ideal speech situation," hench dashing all hopes in
Habermas' mind of blanket emancipation.
Ultimately (although I realize I have not yet given grounds to say so here),
I find the Foucault-Habermas "debate" to be a clash of paradigms in the
Kuhnian sense of the word. By this I mean that, in reviewing and studying
all the different viewpoints, there always is left something between the two
that, from a philosophy of social science standpoint, remains more a matter
of "persuasion" than of argumentation. What is interesting in this situation
as opposed to other debates is how deep into the "subatomic level" of the
philosophy of social science one must go before one finds it.
I hope somebody finds something worthy of comment in this.
Brian
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