some questions in response
1) in what sense are you using the term "negative"
2) it's my understanding that any such theory of the human being would be constitutive of the human being, not an imposition from outside/beyond - so wouldn't the discourse produce the body/of knowledge you're terming the human being, but Foucault may well call Man
3) in terms of displacement, might it be better thought of as a shifting of focus that again constitutes, rather than imposes, and part of its function is to suggest a single grid?
As for your second question, though Foucault disliked the notion of an oeuvre, he also retrospectively linked his work back to earlier work - whether the expression refers to it or not may not be answerable; perhaps instead, we can look at what is the result/consequence of such a referral?
And to the third, Foucault's terminology differs - again he used genealogy, a history of the present - as did what he considered he was doing at different stages - so maybe the question is, in his work on the ethics of the self, what evidence is there that he undertook such a work, that it related to his previous work, and what can be elucidated by seeing those connections, and just as importantly, what are the tensions that exist if such a conjunction occurs.
And apologies that this answers nothing, only poses more :-)
Geoff Parkes
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Turner" <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
1) in what sense are you using the term "negative"
2) it's my understanding that any such theory of the human being would be constitutive of the human being, not an imposition from outside/beyond - so wouldn't the discourse produce the body/of knowledge you're terming the human being, but Foucault may well call Man
3) in terms of displacement, might it be better thought of as a shifting of focus that again constitutes, rather than imposes, and part of its function is to suggest a single grid?
As for your second question, though Foucault disliked the notion of an oeuvre, he also retrospectively linked his work back to earlier work - whether the expression refers to it or not may not be answerable; perhaps instead, we can look at what is the result/consequence of such a referral?
And to the third, Foucault's terminology differs - again he used genealogy, a history of the present - as did what he considered he was doing at different stages - so maybe the question is, in his work on the ethics of the self, what evidence is there that he undertook such a work, that it related to his previous work, and what can be elucidated by seeing those connections, and just as importantly, what are the tensions that exist if such a conjunction occurs.
And apologies that this answers nothing, only poses more :-)
Geoff Parkes
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Turner" <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx>
Finally, my questions:
Firstly, would I be correct in thinking that one of the things that motivate both of these negative tasks is the question of imposition?
(1) imposing a general theory of the human being upon human beings (hence the nominalist reduction of philosophical anthropology), and
(2) imposing a single grid of intelligibility upon all historical processes (hence the displacement relative to social history).
Secondly, I initially thought that "philosophical anthropology" referred exclusively to existentialism/phenomenology (i.e. to Chapter 4 of MMPer). However, following our discussion of the internal/external dimension, and given that Foucault states that what he means by "philosophical anthropology" is "a general theory of the human being," would I now be right in thinking that this expression refers to the analysis undertaken in the whole of Part One of Maladie mentale et personnalité?
Third and lastly, would I be correct to state that the displacement that Foucault undertook relative to the domain (economic and social context), the concepts (contradiction, alienation), and the methods (dialectics) of the history of societies was a displacement in the direction of a (critical) history of (systems of) thought?