Chetan,
I would rather approach the issue as the Modern Age/episteme being a culmination of the history of Western metaphysics, which does include the Western scientific method of ?making the law to others? (another description for positivism).
This is in any case an occasion to refine the question: if Plato up to Lévi-Strauss, subtracting the critical line of Marx-Nietzsche-Freud-Heidegger-Bataille-Levinas-Foucault-Derrida-etc. (all to a certain extent, depending who is speaking), are consummate practitioners of Western metaphysics, what does one make of the Renaissance and classical epistemes? Are these mere variations of Western metaphysics in an attempt to reconcile Derrida with Foucault?
I am most happy to leave Derrida and Foucault playing free in their own breathing-spaces ?both are sufficiently insightful not to collapse one into the other. By the same token, trying to see them together ?in combination? can be just as exciting.
Would you like to play this game? And so, any ideas?
Ruth Thomas-Pellicer
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You write [do research] as you play chess: never conservatively trying to pettily defend your own domain, but in an ongoing assault upon other authors' domains ?their writings. Once you learn how to read them dynamically ?in transposition? you will win over the duel: your enemies will provide you with the answers you were after...it is a kind of magic! --Florence Maurice-Amondi
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