Thanks Kevin - that makes more sense. I still think you are maybe pushing
this a bit too far, particularly in the relation of Dasein and actualite;
but then i think Dreyfus' Being = Power is pushing it too much as well. I
think he might have dropped this claim himself actually.
As you know, i'm very much convinced of the relations between Heidegger and
Foucault, and in terms of the foundations of objects/foundations of subjects
line this seems worth pursuing. But I don't think it explains everything and
am rather cautious about what it does explain. Have you seen the collection
Milchman and Rosenberg edited Foucault and Heidegger: Critical Encounters?
There might be some work there worht looking at. Dreyfus has a 'revisited'
version of the Being and Power piece in it.
On the notion of actualite in general, it might be worth looking at how
often he does use the term. He much more commonly uses 'present' than
'actualite' (i.e. history of the 'present' in Discipline and Punish). The
texts we have been citing are from 1973 and 1983... so is there something
interesting here?
Stuart
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Kevin
Turner
Sent: 06 November 2004 17:48
To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: actualiti
I may be wrong with all this - and your response would seem to suggest that
I am if not wrong then at least stretching the point. However, I think it a
point worth pursuing, if only to find it a dead end and to move on
elsewhere.
Anyway, the argument goes something like this.
I've been reading Dreyfus's articles on 'Being and Power' ('On the Ordering
of Things: Being and Power in Heidegger and Foucault,' "The Southern Journal
of Philosophy" 28, 1989: 83-96; 'Being and Power: Heidegger and Foucault,'
"International Journal of Philosophical Studies" 4, 1996: 1-16), in which he
compares Heidegger's notion of Being and how "things" became "objects" with
Foucault's notion of power and how "human beings" became "subject:"
"For Heidegger, it was through an increasing obsession with "techne"
as the only way to arrive at an understanding of "objects," that the
West lost touch with being. Let's turn the question around and ask which
techniques and practices form the Western concepts of the "subject""
(Foucault 'Truth and Subjectivity' cited in Dreyfus 1989: 83).
In undertaking the above comparison, Dreyfus makes a connection between
Heidegger's notion of the "clearing" (Lichtung) and of "unobtrusive
governance" (Waltens), with Foucault's notion of power. Here, Dreyfus
argues, power can be understood as Foucault's attempt to get at a 'social
clearing' which 'produce, perpetuate, and delimits what people can think,
do, and be' (Dreyfus 1996: 2-3).
To cut a long story short, as it were, it occurred to me that in focusing on
power, Dreyfus was only addressing one-third of Foucault's question
regarding the question "which techniques and practices form the Western
concepts of the "subject"": the other two-thirds being constituted by
knowledge and self.
In the Berkeley lecture Foucault states the following:
"What are we now?...What is our actuality? What are we as part of
this actuality? What is the target of our activity of philosophising
in so far as we are part of our actuality? Those questions deal with
what I shall call the historical ontology of ourselves, or the critical
history of thought. It is in the framework of this...type of questions
that I have undertook several historical enquiries about madness or
medicine, crime and punishment, or about sexuality...I think that any
ontological history of ourselves have to analyse three sets of
relations: our relations to truth, our relations to obligation, our
relations to ourselves and to others. Or, to turn it with other words, in
order to answer the question, what are we now, we have to consider
that we are thinking beings, since it is through thought that we are beings
who look for truth, who accept or refuse obligations, laws, coercions, and
who are related to ourselves or to the others. My aim is not to
answer the general question "what is a thinking being?" My aim is to
answer the question "how did the history of our thought, I mean of our
relation to truth, to obligations, to ourselves and to the others, make
us what we are"? In brief, "how could we analyse the formation of
ourselves through the history of our thought"? And by thought I do not mean
exclusively philosophy nor theoretical thinking nor scientific knowledge. I
don't want to analyse what people think opposed to what they do.
But...what they think when they do what they are doing" ('The Culture
of the Self,' Berkeley Language Centre, 12 April 1983).
Thus it seemed to me that the correlation to Heidegger's "clearing" was not
power but "thought," where thought is understood in terms of our relations
to truth, to rules, and to ourselves.
In "The Use of Pleasure," Foucault notes that what he has been analysing is
'not behaviours or ideas, nor societies and their "ideologies," but the
"Problematizations" through which being offers itself to be, necessarily,
thought - and the "practices" on the basis of which these problematizations
are formed' (11). I think that the being here implies Heidegger's notion of
being, and thus that it is existence which must be thought. But existence
here does not imply a universal, ahistorical, metaphysical existence, but
precisely involves the question: "What are we now? What is our actuality?
What are we as part of this actuality?
Thus there would seem to be some correlation between actualiti and Dasein.
Not in the sense that they can be interchanged, synonymously, but in terms
of each is, in its own way, addressing the question of our present
existence: that is, each is an historical ontology of ourselves.
As I said, this may be pushing the point. And although the above is somewhat
lose and schematic, it does, I think, raise some interesting questions.
Regards - Kevin
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stuart Elden
Sent: 06 November 2004 16:03
To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: actualiti
1. Has the text from which you translated the passage been translated into
English (i.e. in any of the "Essential Works")?
not as far as i know. it's a very short piece from 1973.
2. What, if any, is the relationship between actualiti and Dasein (i.e.
historical ontology)?
Don't think there is any - my sense is Foucault is talking about this in a
more straight-forward sense than you might be trying to read this. that's
why i would resist 'present reality' as a translation if any emphasis is
given to 'reality'. the 'present' is not necessary stressed in the sense of
presence/present (tense) i.e. Heidegger's spatial/temporal reading of
presence. So the relationship to Dasein is tenuous at the very least. Also,
historical ontology seems something quite different. It is true that
Foucault talks of a history of the present, and a historical ontology of the
present, but i'm fairly sure that is neither the same word for present nor
does it imply every time he says 'present' he means historical ontology.
3. Am I right in thinking that they can both be comprehended as being the
"background" of existence?
Both what? Actualite and Dasein? Dasein is clearly not the background of
existence. Dasein, of course, _is_ existence (albeit not in a
straight-forward way) - although maybe i misunderstand what you mean by
'background', and l'actualite doesn't seem to be this either.
---
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this a bit too far, particularly in the relation of Dasein and actualite;
but then i think Dreyfus' Being = Power is pushing it too much as well. I
think he might have dropped this claim himself actually.
As you know, i'm very much convinced of the relations between Heidegger and
Foucault, and in terms of the foundations of objects/foundations of subjects
line this seems worth pursuing. But I don't think it explains everything and
am rather cautious about what it does explain. Have you seen the collection
Milchman and Rosenberg edited Foucault and Heidegger: Critical Encounters?
There might be some work there worht looking at. Dreyfus has a 'revisited'
version of the Being and Power piece in it.
On the notion of actualite in general, it might be worth looking at how
often he does use the term. He much more commonly uses 'present' than
'actualite' (i.e. history of the 'present' in Discipline and Punish). The
texts we have been citing are from 1973 and 1983... so is there something
interesting here?
Stuart
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Kevin
Turner
Sent: 06 November 2004 17:48
To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: actualiti
I may be wrong with all this - and your response would seem to suggest that
I am if not wrong then at least stretching the point. However, I think it a
point worth pursuing, if only to find it a dead end and to move on
elsewhere.
Anyway, the argument goes something like this.
I've been reading Dreyfus's articles on 'Being and Power' ('On the Ordering
of Things: Being and Power in Heidegger and Foucault,' "The Southern Journal
of Philosophy" 28, 1989: 83-96; 'Being and Power: Heidegger and Foucault,'
"International Journal of Philosophical Studies" 4, 1996: 1-16), in which he
compares Heidegger's notion of Being and how "things" became "objects" with
Foucault's notion of power and how "human beings" became "subject:"
"For Heidegger, it was through an increasing obsession with "techne"
as the only way to arrive at an understanding of "objects," that the
West lost touch with being. Let's turn the question around and ask which
techniques and practices form the Western concepts of the "subject""
(Foucault 'Truth and Subjectivity' cited in Dreyfus 1989: 83).
In undertaking the above comparison, Dreyfus makes a connection between
Heidegger's notion of the "clearing" (Lichtung) and of "unobtrusive
governance" (Waltens), with Foucault's notion of power. Here, Dreyfus
argues, power can be understood as Foucault's attempt to get at a 'social
clearing' which 'produce, perpetuate, and delimits what people can think,
do, and be' (Dreyfus 1996: 2-3).
To cut a long story short, as it were, it occurred to me that in focusing on
power, Dreyfus was only addressing one-third of Foucault's question
regarding the question "which techniques and practices form the Western
concepts of the "subject"": the other two-thirds being constituted by
knowledge and self.
In the Berkeley lecture Foucault states the following:
"What are we now?...What is our actuality? What are we as part of
this actuality? What is the target of our activity of philosophising
in so far as we are part of our actuality? Those questions deal with
what I shall call the historical ontology of ourselves, or the critical
history of thought. It is in the framework of this...type of questions
that I have undertook several historical enquiries about madness or
medicine, crime and punishment, or about sexuality...I think that any
ontological history of ourselves have to analyse three sets of
relations: our relations to truth, our relations to obligation, our
relations to ourselves and to others. Or, to turn it with other words, in
order to answer the question, what are we now, we have to consider
that we are thinking beings, since it is through thought that we are beings
who look for truth, who accept or refuse obligations, laws, coercions, and
who are related to ourselves or to the others. My aim is not to
answer the general question "what is a thinking being?" My aim is to
answer the question "how did the history of our thought, I mean of our
relation to truth, to obligations, to ourselves and to the others, make
us what we are"? In brief, "how could we analyse the formation of
ourselves through the history of our thought"? And by thought I do not mean
exclusively philosophy nor theoretical thinking nor scientific knowledge. I
don't want to analyse what people think opposed to what they do.
But...what they think when they do what they are doing" ('The Culture
of the Self,' Berkeley Language Centre, 12 April 1983).
Thus it seemed to me that the correlation to Heidegger's "clearing" was not
power but "thought," where thought is understood in terms of our relations
to truth, to rules, and to ourselves.
In "The Use of Pleasure," Foucault notes that what he has been analysing is
'not behaviours or ideas, nor societies and their "ideologies," but the
"Problematizations" through which being offers itself to be, necessarily,
thought - and the "practices" on the basis of which these problematizations
are formed' (11). I think that the being here implies Heidegger's notion of
being, and thus that it is existence which must be thought. But existence
here does not imply a universal, ahistorical, metaphysical existence, but
precisely involves the question: "What are we now? What is our actuality?
What are we as part of this actuality?
Thus there would seem to be some correlation between actualiti and Dasein.
Not in the sense that they can be interchanged, synonymously, but in terms
of each is, in its own way, addressing the question of our present
existence: that is, each is an historical ontology of ourselves.
As I said, this may be pushing the point. And although the above is somewhat
lose and schematic, it does, I think, raise some interesting questions.
Regards - Kevin
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stuart Elden
Sent: 06 November 2004 16:03
To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: actualiti
1. Has the text from which you translated the passage been translated into
English (i.e. in any of the "Essential Works")?
not as far as i know. it's a very short piece from 1973.
2. What, if any, is the relationship between actualiti and Dasein (i.e.
historical ontology)?
Don't think there is any - my sense is Foucault is talking about this in a
more straight-forward sense than you might be trying to read this. that's
why i would resist 'present reality' as a translation if any emphasis is
given to 'reality'. the 'present' is not necessary stressed in the sense of
presence/present (tense) i.e. Heidegger's spatial/temporal reading of
presence. So the relationship to Dasein is tenuous at the very least. Also,
historical ontology seems something quite different. It is true that
Foucault talks of a history of the present, and a historical ontology of the
present, but i'm fairly sure that is neither the same word for present nor
does it imply every time he says 'present' he means historical ontology.
3. Am I right in thinking that they can both be comprehended as being the
"background" of existence?
Both what? Actualite and Dasein? Dasein is clearly not the background of
existence. Dasein, of course, _is_ existence (albeit not in a
straight-forward way) - although maybe i misunderstand what you mean by
'background', and l'actualite doesn't seem to be this either.
---
This message is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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