I think what's being discussed here is indeed the very heart of what is
important about Foucault. First, in favor of the Foucaultians, I doubt a
Lynn Cheney list-server would even find it worthwile to display this much
self criticism as we are finding here as a group of Foucault sympathizers...
I believe that this is the hear the value and the positive ethic tapped
into and cultivated by a reading of Foucault or the other "postmodernists."
With that said, I won't try and refute a woman I've never read. But the
general argument we're all considering from her is a familiar enough one
that it can be raised without mention of Mrs. Cheney. The supposed
"consequences" of Foucault... Here are my pinches of salt --
1. Let me second the comment that the argument here represented by Cheney
is indeed one of only pragmatic import and not of the truth of what Foucault
is saying. On these grounds, it would be foolish for Foucaultians and it
would be an anti-Nietzschean approach to intellectual discourse to put
pragmatic value over honesty in deciding between competing claims of how the
world is. My chief disagreement with her line of thinking is that it
considers the question of truth to be secondary.
2. With that considered, there is the question of whether Foucault believed
there was no truth. Yes, he believed there was no Truth, conceived of as an
exhaustive, definitive description and valuation of all that is, but he
seriously believed that his writings were a more accurate description of
states of affairs. Nietzsche believed so too. They are incomprehensible if
we assume otherwise. Foucault really believed that there are truth games.
That is a proposition. Did he believe that was an ultimate proposition
never to be improved upon? Probably not. Did he believe that his notion
was ahistorically true, undetached from paricular discourses of his time and
at times influenced by these? Of course not. Yes, we are all speaking in
discourses, but that does not mean that one is not one involving less self
deception. Cheney may not be a self deceiver, either, but of what Foucault
is saying, following Nietzsche, is that self deception is the enemy more
than anything else for the intellectual. Now being true to yourself does
not guarantee you have ahistorical Truth, but it is the most we can do to be
truthful and, we hope, to fairly accurately clean out some of the accretions
of our desires onto our thought. I think about certain questions there are
more and less self deceptive discourses. Even for Foucault...
3. Where the "relavism" comes in is in the question of the value of being
honest. Yes we do not have to be. But why are we trying to be honest and
accurate in representing Mrs. Cheney? Because we admire the model of self
critical honesty that we see, however imperfectly at times, in thinkers like
Foucault and Nietzsche. It is our value, so we use a discourse with notions
of fairness and honesty which within our language game are employed with
sufficient enough rule-governedess for us to practice an ethic we find
valuable. Arguing about whether this ethic is valuable is another matter.
Relativism also comes in in the simple descriptive fact that from an
"objective" point of view, all discourses, however powerfully persuasive,
are at least "discourses" -- even if they carry with them some accurate or
convenient ways of making sense of the world. From this the question of how
power is influencing the discourses is not to discredit all value in them
but to warn that while they may be useful if they are oppressive to one,
there is no t necessity that one except its terms. This has import when one
decides that the word "homosexual" too tightly defines a certain person by
one aspect of himself. One may realize the arbitrariness of this word.
Another may like the word very much, may take pride having found a word to
define and identify himself with in a discourse community in which we all
carry names, arbitrary outside the system but meaningful within...
5. I guess what all this is getting at is, that we've all gone silly if we
buy Cheney's accusation that Foucault is against truth. He's against Truth.
Nothing else makes any sense. And I think, finally (thank you to those
who've born with me this far) that what is most important is to challenge
her ethical notion that a Nietzschean rejection of absolute values
contingent on an invisible external reality must result in killing. It is a
possibility, but are we not anti-essentialists, who believe that humanity is
moldable and, do not most of us get inspired by Foucault for the ethic of
exposing deceptions which falsely attribute the right to impinge on others
to those with power? Is this not an ethic, one grounded in a different kind
of truthfulness, always exposing that, "yes, you can create a discourse
community or a two-bit gang to oppress people, but you do so without the
Externally Granted Moral Authority to assuage your conscience as you do it
and break with the values (though subjective, identity constituting) of your
people, and of most people. In other words, let's build a positive ethic
off of what Foucault touches off in our hearts, not because it is a
discovery of the Truth, but because it is a possibility that We value, as
human beings, nothing more, nothing less.
Dan Fincke
graduate student
Fordham University
_________________________________________________________________________
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important about Foucault. First, in favor of the Foucaultians, I doubt a
Lynn Cheney list-server would even find it worthwile to display this much
self criticism as we are finding here as a group of Foucault sympathizers...
I believe that this is the hear the value and the positive ethic tapped
into and cultivated by a reading of Foucault or the other "postmodernists."
With that said, I won't try and refute a woman I've never read. But the
general argument we're all considering from her is a familiar enough one
that it can be raised without mention of Mrs. Cheney. The supposed
"consequences" of Foucault... Here are my pinches of salt --
1. Let me second the comment that the argument here represented by Cheney
is indeed one of only pragmatic import and not of the truth of what Foucault
is saying. On these grounds, it would be foolish for Foucaultians and it
would be an anti-Nietzschean approach to intellectual discourse to put
pragmatic value over honesty in deciding between competing claims of how the
world is. My chief disagreement with her line of thinking is that it
considers the question of truth to be secondary.
2. With that considered, there is the question of whether Foucault believed
there was no truth. Yes, he believed there was no Truth, conceived of as an
exhaustive, definitive description and valuation of all that is, but he
seriously believed that his writings were a more accurate description of
states of affairs. Nietzsche believed so too. They are incomprehensible if
we assume otherwise. Foucault really believed that there are truth games.
That is a proposition. Did he believe that was an ultimate proposition
never to be improved upon? Probably not. Did he believe that his notion
was ahistorically true, undetached from paricular discourses of his time and
at times influenced by these? Of course not. Yes, we are all speaking in
discourses, but that does not mean that one is not one involving less self
deception. Cheney may not be a self deceiver, either, but of what Foucault
is saying, following Nietzsche, is that self deception is the enemy more
than anything else for the intellectual. Now being true to yourself does
not guarantee you have ahistorical Truth, but it is the most we can do to be
truthful and, we hope, to fairly accurately clean out some of the accretions
of our desires onto our thought. I think about certain questions there are
more and less self deceptive discourses. Even for Foucault...
3. Where the "relavism" comes in is in the question of the value of being
honest. Yes we do not have to be. But why are we trying to be honest and
accurate in representing Mrs. Cheney? Because we admire the model of self
critical honesty that we see, however imperfectly at times, in thinkers like
Foucault and Nietzsche. It is our value, so we use a discourse with notions
of fairness and honesty which within our language game are employed with
sufficient enough rule-governedess for us to practice an ethic we find
valuable. Arguing about whether this ethic is valuable is another matter.
Relativism also comes in in the simple descriptive fact that from an
"objective" point of view, all discourses, however powerfully persuasive,
are at least "discourses" -- even if they carry with them some accurate or
convenient ways of making sense of the world. From this the question of how
power is influencing the discourses is not to discredit all value in them
but to warn that while they may be useful if they are oppressive to one,
there is no t necessity that one except its terms. This has import when one
decides that the word "homosexual" too tightly defines a certain person by
one aspect of himself. One may realize the arbitrariness of this word.
Another may like the word very much, may take pride having found a word to
define and identify himself with in a discourse community in which we all
carry names, arbitrary outside the system but meaningful within...
5. I guess what all this is getting at is, that we've all gone silly if we
buy Cheney's accusation that Foucault is against truth. He's against Truth.
Nothing else makes any sense. And I think, finally (thank you to those
who've born with me this far) that what is most important is to challenge
her ethical notion that a Nietzschean rejection of absolute values
contingent on an invisible external reality must result in killing. It is a
possibility, but are we not anti-essentialists, who believe that humanity is
moldable and, do not most of us get inspired by Foucault for the ethic of
exposing deceptions which falsely attribute the right to impinge on others
to those with power? Is this not an ethic, one grounded in a different kind
of truthfulness, always exposing that, "yes, you can create a discourse
community or a two-bit gang to oppress people, but you do so without the
Externally Granted Moral Authority to assuage your conscience as you do it
and break with the values (though subjective, identity constituting) of your
people, and of most people. In other words, let's build a positive ethic
off of what Foucault touches off in our hearts, not because it is a
discovery of the Truth, but because it is a possibility that We value, as
human beings, nothing more, nothing less.
Dan Fincke
graduate student
Fordham University
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.