At 10:00 29/07/02 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi Stephen Bean here,
>I remember seeing the equivalent over the doorway to a school in Germany,
>Wissen ist Macht, (Knowledge is Power). The school was dated, I think, 1895
>
>Stephen
That's interesting, etymologically speaking. Crudely transliterated into
English, 'Wissen ist Macht' becomes 'Wisdom is Might', which seems much
closer to the conventional understanding of the English phrase 'knowledge
is power'. That seems to me to be because 'power' in western society is
synonymous with energy, in that power/energy has no apparent existence
until it is used. The french formation as used by Foucault ('to be able
to') seems to lay a far greater stress on the potential nature of power, on
its conditional (both grammatically and in actuality) qualities.
Nice to see the list discussing some real fundamentals of Foucault's work.
Daniel Smith
University of Aberdeen
------------
Daniel Smith
t22ds@xxxxxxxxxx
>Hi Stephen Bean here,
>I remember seeing the equivalent over the doorway to a school in Germany,
>Wissen ist Macht, (Knowledge is Power). The school was dated, I think, 1895
>
>Stephen
That's interesting, etymologically speaking. Crudely transliterated into
English, 'Wissen ist Macht' becomes 'Wisdom is Might', which seems much
closer to the conventional understanding of the English phrase 'knowledge
is power'. That seems to me to be because 'power' in western society is
synonymous with energy, in that power/energy has no apparent existence
until it is used. The french formation as used by Foucault ('to be able
to') seems to lay a far greater stress on the potential nature of power, on
its conditional (both grammatically and in actuality) qualities.
Nice to see the list discussing some real fundamentals of Foucault's work.
Daniel Smith
University of Aberdeen
------------
Daniel Smith
t22ds@xxxxxxxxxx