On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 8:57 AM, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> in The Use of Pleasure, Foucault describes a history of truth in the following way:
>
> 'Not a history that would be concerned with what might be true in
> the fields of learning, but an analysis of the "games of truth,"
> the games of truth and error through which being is historically
> constituted [constitutes itself historically] as experience; that is,
> as something that can and must be thought' (UP: 6-7).
>
> What I'm specifically interested in is the part that states that
> "being is historically constituted as experience." And what I'm
> wondering about is the "as" in this sentence. Shouldn't this
> read "by experience" or "by way of experience" or "through experience"?
The French text says "à travers lesquels l'Être se constitue
historiquement comme expérience, c'est-à-dire comme pouvant et devant
être pensé."
As a matter of writing and translation first of all, "comme pouvant et
devant être pensé" is a clarifying restatement of "comme expérience,"
so "comme" before "expérience" should be "as," just the same as the
"comme" before "pouvant et devant être pensé."
Secondly, as a matter of philosophy, for Foucault the "being" of a
modern human being is not a given that exists prior to and independent
of "experience," nor did the phenomenon called "experience" as we know
it exist before modernity. In other words, he is calling attention to
a historically very new phenomenon -- "being constituted as
experience" -- whose modern origins have been forgotten, constantly
obscured by our everyday existence/experience itself.
Thirdly, what inevitably gets lost is the double meanings of the
French word "expérience," which is not only "experience" but also
"experiment." The latter meaning fell out of the usage of the English
language after the end of the eighteenth century, according to Raymond
Williams (see his Keywords).
Yoshie
> in The Use of Pleasure, Foucault describes a history of truth in the following way:
>
> 'Not a history that would be concerned with what might be true in
> the fields of learning, but an analysis of the "games of truth,"
> the games of truth and error through which being is historically
> constituted [constitutes itself historically] as experience; that is,
> as something that can and must be thought' (UP: 6-7).
>
> What I'm specifically interested in is the part that states that
> "being is historically constituted as experience." And what I'm
> wondering about is the "as" in this sentence. Shouldn't this
> read "by experience" or "by way of experience" or "through experience"?
The French text says "à travers lesquels l'Être se constitue
historiquement comme expérience, c'est-à-dire comme pouvant et devant
être pensé."
As a matter of writing and translation first of all, "comme pouvant et
devant être pensé" is a clarifying restatement of "comme expérience,"
so "comme" before "expérience" should be "as," just the same as the
"comme" before "pouvant et devant être pensé."
Secondly, as a matter of philosophy, for Foucault the "being" of a
modern human being is not a given that exists prior to and independent
of "experience," nor did the phenomenon called "experience" as we know
it exist before modernity. In other words, he is calling attention to
a historically very new phenomenon -- "being constituted as
experience" -- whose modern origins have been forgotten, constantly
obscured by our everyday existence/experience itself.
Thirdly, what inevitably gets lost is the double meanings of the
French word "expérience," which is not only "experience" but also
"experiment." The latter meaning fell out of the usage of the English
language after the end of the eighteenth century, according to Raymond
Williams (see his Keywords).
Yoshie