Blur from my PhD, on representation:
In the order of things:
The theme of the dispersion of the ?I? in Time recurs in The Order of Things in the form of the return to History which will displace the role of representation with respect to being and lead to the emergence of the two fundamental ramifications of modern discourse: phenomenology and structuralism.
'What is essential is that at the beginning of the 19th century a new arrangement of knowledge was constituted, which accommodated simultaneously the historicity of economics (in relation to the forms of production), the finitude of human existence (in relation to scarcity and labour) and the fulfilment of an end of History [?]. Finitude, with its truth, is posited in time; and time is therefore finite. The great dream of an end of History is the utopia of causal systems of thought, just as the dream of the world?s beginnings was the utopia of the classifying systems of thought.' M. Foucault, The Order of Things, 1986, p. 299
[...]
The problem of man?s finitude and the circularity of the human sciences are there seen as productive of effects at the ontological level. What is at stake is not only self cognition but also the ordering of our universe according to criteria of Sameness and self referentiality.
'Language is ?rooted? in the active subject, not in the things perceived. It is not a memory that duplicates representation. We speak because we act, not because recognition is a means of cognition. [?] Representation ceased to have validity as the laws of origin of living beings, needs and words. It no longer deploys the table into which things have been ordered. It is not their identity that beings manifest in representation, but the external relation they establish with human beings. Representation is their effect, their blurred counterpart in consciousness which apprehends and reconstitutes them. It is the phenomenon ? appearance ? of an order that now belongs to things in themselves and to their interior law. Man?s finitude is heralded in the positivity of knowledge. At the foundation of all empirical positivities we discover a finitude. In the heart of empiricity there?s indicated an obligation to work backwards ? or downwards ? to an analytic of finitude in which man?s being will be able to provide a foundation in their own positivity for all those forms that indicate to him that he is not infinite. ' M. Foucault, ?Man and his doubles. III. The analytic of finitude? in The Order of Things, 1986
The result of this process is the overturning of analysis and metaphysics, whereby in place of a metaphysics of representations and the infinite we find a metaphysics of life, labour and language; whilst the analysis of living beings, desires and words is replaced by an analytics of finitude: the endless task of Modern criticism. This is the place of structuralism and hermeneutics, of formalism and phenomenology, and finally of psychoanalysis and ethnology opened up by the appearance of man, their task being to ?fill in the gap in the continuum between representation and being? .
For instance, in the classical episteme, both for Physiocrats and Utilitarians ? who occupy opposite stances in relation to the analysis of value production- value has the same function in economics as the verb has in language: as the verb links and articulates two names and makes it possible to build a proposition, so does value link two things (regarded as equivalent in their utility) and makes their exchange possible. This is only possible in so far as continuity between things and their respective representation is assumed: a relation of continuity and visibility that is broken down with the emergence of the modern episteme.
Humanism permeates contemporary historical consciousness in a way that traps thought in a circularity of intents. ?And it is a fact that, at least since the seventeenth century, what is called humanism has always been obliged to lean on certain conceptions of man borrowed from religion, science or politics. Humanism serves to colour and justify the conceptions of man to which it is, after all, obliged to take recourse?. M. Foucault, ?What is Enlightenment?? in The Foucault Reader, 1984, p. 44
The questions opened up by The Order of Things is one concerning the relation of truth and being: is there a role and possibility for a non - formal ontology, one that is not exhausted in the analytics of finitude intended as a science of measurements, that also avoids a linear historicisation trapped in the interpretative framework of hermeneutical exegesis? Crucially, the question posed by the works on ethics, especially in L?Herméneutique du sujet, is: can the task of a critical ontology of ourselves remain autonomous from the human sciences and discourses of medicine, politics and religion?
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In the order of ethics (Hermeneutique du sujet):
Relevant to this is Foucault?s analysis of the Stoics? attitude to representations and the idea that freedom lies in not being passive to the flux of representations whilst not ordering them. This refers to what he sees as a lack of method in the Cartesian path as well as to the relation between spontaneity and receptivity in Kant?s Anthropology as one concerning man's being a citizen of the world. In fact, for Foucault the Stoic tradition lies in sharp contrast to that of Platonism and Christianity, and remains autonomous from what we have previously outlined as the Platonic paradox. For instance, in relation to nature, the immanent philosophy of the Hellenists never separates knowledge of the self from knowledge of the world, and because of this, knowledge is useful according to what can be made of it, rather than in its validity as a set of logical rules and systematic enunciations.
'This [Demetrius?] critique of useless knowledge does not point us towards the valorisation of a different savoir that has a different content, which would be the knowledge of ourselves and our interiority. It rather points us towards a different functioning of the same knowledge of external things. Self knowledge isn?t here becoming the deciphering of the arcanes conscientiae, the exegesis of the self that will be developed by Christianity. Useful knowledge, knowledge where human existence is in question, is a mode of relational knowledge, at once assertive and prescriptive, and capable of producing a change in the mode of being of the subject.' Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 228
Knowing nature is liberatory for the subject in so far as it places it in relation with the wider rationality of the ?????? [cosmos], as agent as well as element of it. For Foucault, it is a case of ?disengaging [critique] from a humanism so easy in theory and so fearsome in reality; a case of substituting to the principle of the transcendence of the ego, the research into the forms of the immanence of the subject.? This is a crucial aspect of Hellenistic philosophy that we have already explored in our analysis of Foucault?s reading of Kant. In fact the birth of the homo criticus, which sanctions the end of philosophy as spirituality, poses the same problem in Kant?s Anthropology of seeing man both as element and agent, subject and object of knowledge. In this, the problem of immanence versus transcendence is clear: the Stoics can conceive of the two without separation, Kant in the Critiques will not be able to overcome this obstacle in his science, creating man through his doubles, whilst endangering his own science in the Anthropology.
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From Foucault's commentary of Kant's anthropology:
Beck regards Beilegung ? the imputation of a representation ? as the determination of the subject to an object which differs from it and for which it becomes the element of knowledge [connaissance]. Kant remarks that representation is not reserved to an object, rather a relation to something other is devolved to representation and through the latter this relation becomes communicable to others.
He also points out that the apprehension of the multiple and its subsumption under the unity of consciousness is one and the same thing as the representation of what is only made possible through this combination. Only from the perspective of this combination can we communicate with one another: in other words, the relation to the object renders representation valid for each and therefore communicable; this does not prevent the fact that we have to operate the combination ourselves. The main themes of the Critique ?the relation to the object, the synthesis of the multiple, the universal validity of representation- are here strongly grouped around the problem of communication.
There the subject is not found as determined by the manner in which it is affected, but rather as determined within the constitution of the representation ?wir können aber nur das verstehen und anderen mitteilen, was wir selbst machen können? [we can only understand and communicate with others, what we ourselves can do].
Arianna Bove
In the order of things:
The theme of the dispersion of the ?I? in Time recurs in The Order of Things in the form of the return to History which will displace the role of representation with respect to being and lead to the emergence of the two fundamental ramifications of modern discourse: phenomenology and structuralism.
'What is essential is that at the beginning of the 19th century a new arrangement of knowledge was constituted, which accommodated simultaneously the historicity of economics (in relation to the forms of production), the finitude of human existence (in relation to scarcity and labour) and the fulfilment of an end of History [?]. Finitude, with its truth, is posited in time; and time is therefore finite. The great dream of an end of History is the utopia of causal systems of thought, just as the dream of the world?s beginnings was the utopia of the classifying systems of thought.' M. Foucault, The Order of Things, 1986, p. 299
[...]
The problem of man?s finitude and the circularity of the human sciences are there seen as productive of effects at the ontological level. What is at stake is not only self cognition but also the ordering of our universe according to criteria of Sameness and self referentiality.
'Language is ?rooted? in the active subject, not in the things perceived. It is not a memory that duplicates representation. We speak because we act, not because recognition is a means of cognition. [?] Representation ceased to have validity as the laws of origin of living beings, needs and words. It no longer deploys the table into which things have been ordered. It is not their identity that beings manifest in representation, but the external relation they establish with human beings. Representation is their effect, their blurred counterpart in consciousness which apprehends and reconstitutes them. It is the phenomenon ? appearance ? of an order that now belongs to things in themselves and to their interior law. Man?s finitude is heralded in the positivity of knowledge. At the foundation of all empirical positivities we discover a finitude. In the heart of empiricity there?s indicated an obligation to work backwards ? or downwards ? to an analytic of finitude in which man?s being will be able to provide a foundation in their own positivity for all those forms that indicate to him that he is not infinite. ' M. Foucault, ?Man and his doubles. III. The analytic of finitude? in The Order of Things, 1986
The result of this process is the overturning of analysis and metaphysics, whereby in place of a metaphysics of representations and the infinite we find a metaphysics of life, labour and language; whilst the analysis of living beings, desires and words is replaced by an analytics of finitude: the endless task of Modern criticism. This is the place of structuralism and hermeneutics, of formalism and phenomenology, and finally of psychoanalysis and ethnology opened up by the appearance of man, their task being to ?fill in the gap in the continuum between representation and being? .
For instance, in the classical episteme, both for Physiocrats and Utilitarians ? who occupy opposite stances in relation to the analysis of value production- value has the same function in economics as the verb has in language: as the verb links and articulates two names and makes it possible to build a proposition, so does value link two things (regarded as equivalent in their utility) and makes their exchange possible. This is only possible in so far as continuity between things and their respective representation is assumed: a relation of continuity and visibility that is broken down with the emergence of the modern episteme.
Humanism permeates contemporary historical consciousness in a way that traps thought in a circularity of intents. ?And it is a fact that, at least since the seventeenth century, what is called humanism has always been obliged to lean on certain conceptions of man borrowed from religion, science or politics. Humanism serves to colour and justify the conceptions of man to which it is, after all, obliged to take recourse?. M. Foucault, ?What is Enlightenment?? in The Foucault Reader, 1984, p. 44
The questions opened up by The Order of Things is one concerning the relation of truth and being: is there a role and possibility for a non - formal ontology, one that is not exhausted in the analytics of finitude intended as a science of measurements, that also avoids a linear historicisation trapped in the interpretative framework of hermeneutical exegesis? Crucially, the question posed by the works on ethics, especially in L?Herméneutique du sujet, is: can the task of a critical ontology of ourselves remain autonomous from the human sciences and discourses of medicine, politics and religion?
-------------------------------------
In the order of ethics (Hermeneutique du sujet):
Relevant to this is Foucault?s analysis of the Stoics? attitude to representations and the idea that freedom lies in not being passive to the flux of representations whilst not ordering them. This refers to what he sees as a lack of method in the Cartesian path as well as to the relation between spontaneity and receptivity in Kant?s Anthropology as one concerning man's being a citizen of the world. In fact, for Foucault the Stoic tradition lies in sharp contrast to that of Platonism and Christianity, and remains autonomous from what we have previously outlined as the Platonic paradox. For instance, in relation to nature, the immanent philosophy of the Hellenists never separates knowledge of the self from knowledge of the world, and because of this, knowledge is useful according to what can be made of it, rather than in its validity as a set of logical rules and systematic enunciations.
'This [Demetrius?] critique of useless knowledge does not point us towards the valorisation of a different savoir that has a different content, which would be the knowledge of ourselves and our interiority. It rather points us towards a different functioning of the same knowledge of external things. Self knowledge isn?t here becoming the deciphering of the arcanes conscientiae, the exegesis of the self that will be developed by Christianity. Useful knowledge, knowledge where human existence is in question, is a mode of relational knowledge, at once assertive and prescriptive, and capable of producing a change in the mode of being of the subject.' Foucault, Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, p. 228
Knowing nature is liberatory for the subject in so far as it places it in relation with the wider rationality of the ?????? [cosmos], as agent as well as element of it. For Foucault, it is a case of ?disengaging [critique] from a humanism so easy in theory and so fearsome in reality; a case of substituting to the principle of the transcendence of the ego, the research into the forms of the immanence of the subject.? This is a crucial aspect of Hellenistic philosophy that we have already explored in our analysis of Foucault?s reading of Kant. In fact the birth of the homo criticus, which sanctions the end of philosophy as spirituality, poses the same problem in Kant?s Anthropology of seeing man both as element and agent, subject and object of knowledge. In this, the problem of immanence versus transcendence is clear: the Stoics can conceive of the two without separation, Kant in the Critiques will not be able to overcome this obstacle in his science, creating man through his doubles, whilst endangering his own science in the Anthropology.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Foucault's commentary of Kant's anthropology:
Beck regards Beilegung ? the imputation of a representation ? as the determination of the subject to an object which differs from it and for which it becomes the element of knowledge [connaissance]. Kant remarks that representation is not reserved to an object, rather a relation to something other is devolved to representation and through the latter this relation becomes communicable to others.
He also points out that the apprehension of the multiple and its subsumption under the unity of consciousness is one and the same thing as the representation of what is only made possible through this combination. Only from the perspective of this combination can we communicate with one another: in other words, the relation to the object renders representation valid for each and therefore communicable; this does not prevent the fact that we have to operate the combination ourselves. The main themes of the Critique ?the relation to the object, the synthesis of the multiple, the universal validity of representation- are here strongly grouped around the problem of communication.
There the subject is not found as determined by the manner in which it is affected, but rather as determined within the constitution of the representation ?wir können aber nur das verstehen und anderen mitteilen, was wir selbst machen können? [we can only understand and communicate with others, what we ourselves can do].
Arianna Bove