Dear all,
I would have some questions about this comment of Foucault (thanks to Kevin
about the interesting excerpt):
"...the functioning which makes life possible is a functioning which
constantly wears matter out, in such a way that it is precisely that which
makes possible life which at the same time produces death"
1) What do you think, might Foucault be referring here -- instead of / in
addition to the idea of entropy -- to the attempt of the late eighteenth
century to build a unified physiology + pathology (unified
'physiopathologie')? This way, it was thought, you could get knowledge about
pathological phenomena on the basis of studying normal phenomena: in short,
pathology grounded in normality. (see Foucault's introduction to the English
translation of Canguilhem's Normal and Pathological and a slightly different
version found in DE t. IV. And of course Canguihem's book.)
2) And if this is the case, does he really agree with it? This would be
rather interesting, given how much effort Canguilhem devoted to his attack
against the view that we could obtain all relevant knowledge about
pathological phenomena on the basis of the physiology of a healthy man.
best regards,
Teemu Kemppainen
Univ. Helsinki.
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There's a passage from an interview that Foucault gave (in 1967, I think),
> which may help to shed some light on his understanding of "human nature."
>
> The passage comes from 'Who are you, Professor Foucault?' in Carrette, J.
> R. (ed.) Religion and Culture, Manchester, 1999: 87-104, and it reads:
>
> We have to resign ourselves to taking, faced with mankind, a position
> similar to the one taken towards the end of the eighteenth century with
> regard to other living species, when it was realised that they did not
> function for someone – neither for themselves, nor for man, nor for God –
> but that they quite simply functioned. Organisms function. Why do they
> function? In order to reproduce? Not at all. To keep alive? No more for this
> reason. They function. They function in a very ambiguous way, in order to
> live but also in order to die, since it is well known that the functioning
> which makes life possible is a functioning which constantly wears matter
> out, in such a way that it is precisely that which makes possible life which
> at the same time produces death. Species do not function for themselves, nor
> for man, nor for the greater glory of God; they confine themselves to
> functioning. The same thing may be said of the human species. Mankind is a
> species endowed with a nervous system such that to a certain point it can
> control its functioning. And it is plain that this possibility of control
> continuously raises the idea that mankind must have a purpose. We discover
> that purpose insofar as we have the possibility of controlling our own
> functioning. But this is to turn things around. We tell ourselves: as we
> have a purpose, we must control our functioning; whereas in reality it is
> only on the basis of this possibility of control that ideologies,
> philosophies, systems of metaphysics, religions can appear, which provide a
> certain image able to focus this possibility of controlling functioning...It
> is the possibility of control which gives rise to the idea of purpose. But
> mankind has in reality no purpose, it functions, it controls its own
> functioning, and it continually creates justifications for this control. We
> have to resign ourselves to admitting that these are only justifications.
> Humanism is one of them, the last one’ (RAC: 102).
>
> I see no evidence that Foucault ever radically revised this position.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
I would have some questions about this comment of Foucault (thanks to Kevin
about the interesting excerpt):
"...the functioning which makes life possible is a functioning which
constantly wears matter out, in such a way that it is precisely that which
makes possible life which at the same time produces death"
1) What do you think, might Foucault be referring here -- instead of / in
addition to the idea of entropy -- to the attempt of the late eighteenth
century to build a unified physiology + pathology (unified
'physiopathologie')? This way, it was thought, you could get knowledge about
pathological phenomena on the basis of studying normal phenomena: in short,
pathology grounded in normality. (see Foucault's introduction to the English
translation of Canguilhem's Normal and Pathological and a slightly different
version found in DE t. IV. And of course Canguihem's book.)
2) And if this is the case, does he really agree with it? This would be
rather interesting, given how much effort Canguilhem devoted to his attack
against the view that we could obtain all relevant knowledge about
pathological phenomena on the basis of the physiology of a healthy man.
best regards,
Teemu Kemppainen
Univ. Helsinki.
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Kevin Turner <kevin.turner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There's a passage from an interview that Foucault gave (in 1967, I think),
> which may help to shed some light on his understanding of "human nature."
>
> The passage comes from 'Who are you, Professor Foucault?' in Carrette, J.
> R. (ed.) Religion and Culture, Manchester, 1999: 87-104, and it reads:
>
> We have to resign ourselves to taking, faced with mankind, a position
> similar to the one taken towards the end of the eighteenth century with
> regard to other living species, when it was realised that they did not
> function for someone – neither for themselves, nor for man, nor for God –
> but that they quite simply functioned. Organisms function. Why do they
> function? In order to reproduce? Not at all. To keep alive? No more for this
> reason. They function. They function in a very ambiguous way, in order to
> live but also in order to die, since it is well known that the functioning
> which makes life possible is a functioning which constantly wears matter
> out, in such a way that it is precisely that which makes possible life which
> at the same time produces death. Species do not function for themselves, nor
> for man, nor for the greater glory of God; they confine themselves to
> functioning. The same thing may be said of the human species. Mankind is a
> species endowed with a nervous system such that to a certain point it can
> control its functioning. And it is plain that this possibility of control
> continuously raises the idea that mankind must have a purpose. We discover
> that purpose insofar as we have the possibility of controlling our own
> functioning. But this is to turn things around. We tell ourselves: as we
> have a purpose, we must control our functioning; whereas in reality it is
> only on the basis of this possibility of control that ideologies,
> philosophies, systems of metaphysics, religions can appear, which provide a
> certain image able to focus this possibility of controlling functioning...It
> is the possibility of control which gives rise to the idea of purpose. But
> mankind has in reality no purpose, it functions, it controls its own
> functioning, and it continually creates justifications for this control. We
> have to resign ourselves to admitting that these are only justifications.
> Humanism is one of them, the last one’ (RAC: 102).
>
> I see no evidence that Foucault ever radically revised this position.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list