Stuart
Because my French skills are a bit weak, I wasn't
familiar with the analysis behind the Heidegger
reference in Herm. Suj., but it seems very
intuitive... I'm more interested in the question of
techne and the modern subject than I am in Heidegger's
destruktion via Parmenides, etc., of truth/falsum.
Heidegger's trenchant critique of the subject/object
dichotomy is clearly connected to his meditation on
techne in "Discourse on Thinking" and "The Question
Concerning Technology": the representation of the
subject as the seeing, calculating signifier tends to
reduce Being to the object, which seems to slide down
the slippery slope to disposable reserve. Dispensing
of any account of language as a material social
practice and consecrating it instead as *the* medium
through which we gain access to 'reality,' the
specifically veridical truth of humanism naturalizes
Being *as* Bestand. This line of thought - more
broadly, Heidegger's description of Dasein's flight
from being-in-the-world and the reduction of Being to
a technological world-picture - could in a way be said
to constitute a phenomenology associated with
Foucault's critique of the mutual presupposition of
knowledge and power: Foucault as a special case of
Heidegger?
Foucault's description of what positivism would seek
to naturalize as humans' perfectly neutral encounter
with 'reality' as *surveillir* - his critique of the
productive relations of truth and power - points to a
materiality of knowledge production that has no place
in the no place of the binary relationships of
Enlightenment epistemology. That the calculation of
objects presupposes their reduction to Bestand seems
closely related to the hypothesis that knowledge is
already power. Indeed the schools, hospitals,
factories, prisons, barracks... are these not all
organized around (fabricated) subject/object relations
in which the object is reduced to disposable reserve
by the calculating eye of the seeing subject?
This line of thought must be refined - its rough edges
clarified - otherwise it leads to rather awkward
questions concerning the relationship of "meditative
thinking" to power, as though "the openess to the
mystery" - the notion that Man's (sic., intentional)
essential nature as a thinking Being, when used
properly, will set Him (sic.) free. Here we see what I
can only interpret as a vestigial humanism in
Heidegger's otherwise thoroughly critical discourse.
Perhaps this is what Foucault saw in Nietzsche: a more
profound - what's the word - disrespect? for the
pretensions of philosophers and their meditations...
=====
~Nate
"This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions."
Byron
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games
http://sports.yahoo.com
Because my French skills are a bit weak, I wasn't
familiar with the analysis behind the Heidegger
reference in Herm. Suj., but it seems very
intuitive... I'm more interested in the question of
techne and the modern subject than I am in Heidegger's
destruktion via Parmenides, etc., of truth/falsum.
Heidegger's trenchant critique of the subject/object
dichotomy is clearly connected to his meditation on
techne in "Discourse on Thinking" and "The Question
Concerning Technology": the representation of the
subject as the seeing, calculating signifier tends to
reduce Being to the object, which seems to slide down
the slippery slope to disposable reserve. Dispensing
of any account of language as a material social
practice and consecrating it instead as *the* medium
through which we gain access to 'reality,' the
specifically veridical truth of humanism naturalizes
Being *as* Bestand. This line of thought - more
broadly, Heidegger's description of Dasein's flight
from being-in-the-world and the reduction of Being to
a technological world-picture - could in a way be said
to constitute a phenomenology associated with
Foucault's critique of the mutual presupposition of
knowledge and power: Foucault as a special case of
Heidegger?
Foucault's description of what positivism would seek
to naturalize as humans' perfectly neutral encounter
with 'reality' as *surveillir* - his critique of the
productive relations of truth and power - points to a
materiality of knowledge production that has no place
in the no place of the binary relationships of
Enlightenment epistemology. That the calculation of
objects presupposes their reduction to Bestand seems
closely related to the hypothesis that knowledge is
already power. Indeed the schools, hospitals,
factories, prisons, barracks... are these not all
organized around (fabricated) subject/object relations
in which the object is reduced to disposable reserve
by the calculating eye of the seeing subject?
This line of thought must be refined - its rough edges
clarified - otherwise it leads to rather awkward
questions concerning the relationship of "meditative
thinking" to power, as though "the openess to the
mystery" - the notion that Man's (sic., intentional)
essential nature as a thinking Being, when used
properly, will set Him (sic.) free. Here we see what I
can only interpret as a vestigial humanism in
Heidegger's otherwise thoroughly critical discourse.
Perhaps this is what Foucault saw in Nietzsche: a more
profound - what's the word - disrespect? for the
pretensions of philosophers and their meditations...
=====
~Nate
"This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions."
Byron
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games
http://sports.yahoo.com