There is a sense in which every philosopher both constructs and confronts the philosophical universe in which their work takes form and has its effect. Plato's thought unfolds within the gravitational pull of the Greek city-state, the wandering sophists, the agonistic relations between Athenian aristocrats, and the massive presence of Socrates. Deleuze, to take a contemporary example, creates his concepts and embarks on his lines of flight between thinkers such as Nietzsche and Spinoza, artists and writers including Bacon, Lawrence, (...) and Melville, and contemporary phenomena such as psychoanalysis and consumer capitalism. If we can speak of "Foucault's philosophy," it is in this sense of attempting to sketch out the philosophical universe in which Foucault's work and thought unfolds. What are the philosophical reference points that structure his thought? What are the questions and problems to which he tries to respond? How does he link up his thought with the actual concerns and struggles of both himself and others? The essays in this volume offer a series of answers to these questions, while this introduction attempts to give a preliminary overview of the terrain to be covered. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 187-188 [Access article in PDF] Listening to Foucault Patrick J. Bracken ERICA LILLELEHT'S INTERESTING PAPER combines philosophy, history, service analysis, and social commentary. The philosophical themes are below the surface, implicit rather than explicit. As such the paper echoes the work of Foucault himself. The subjects of his books and other writings ranged from histories of madness and psychiatry, hospitals (...) and medicine, prisons and punishment, to sexuality and ethics. But these were clearly more than histories. In doing what he initially called archaeology and later genealogy, Foucault was writing about different dimensions of how the Western world has come to understand what it is to be human. In Foucault's hands history becomes philosophy. The essence of his work is an invitation to question the project of Enlightenment. However, his interrogation of the legacy of Enlightenment is far from a rejection of reason as has sometimes been claimed. Rather it represents a realization that there are different forms of reason, none of which can claim a place of privilege over others. Foucault challenged the idea that we have to choose to be for or against Enlightenment (Foucault, 1984).Of central concern for him is the idea that knowledge and power imply each other and cannot be separated. This, of course, is anathema to both Marxist and liberal analysts who hold out the idea that truth and ideology are mutually exclusive. The assumption is that if we get the starting point of our analysis right, the truth ("pure and simple") will emerge. For Foucault there are "regimes of truth," discourses through which certain things can be said and statements can be judged as true or false. Such regimes are social products, bound up with the economic, cultural, and political realities of their times. This is not some sort of mindless relativism nor a nihilistic advocacy that, when it comes to knowledge claims, "anything goes." As human beings in an imperfect world we have to struggle continuously toward a better understanding of ourselves and the make-up of this world. As individuals, we have to continue to debate and argue about ideas, facts, and the nature of knowledge. We have to present evidence, argue our case, and prepare to be contradicted as well as supported. This is not in question. Instead, what is involved here is recognition that there is no neutral asocial, acultural, or apolitical vantage point from we can judge the validity of one position over another. Foucault's work nurtures a healthy skepticism of those who claim to have found such a vantage point.Importantly, he rejected the idea that power is always repressive in its nature: working to silence, obscure, and suppress. Particularly in the modern era power is more characteristically productive. Its operations are bound up with the ever-multiplying discourses we produce about ourselves. While increasing scientific knowledge about the human condition appears to represent progress, listening to Foucault means coming to appreciate that things are a great deal more complex. The title of Lilleleht's paper reflects this. At [End Page 187] a time when there is a great deal of talk about "progress" in the area of mental health, her analysis is opportune. Unless we pay attention to the micropolitics of clinical encounters we are at some risk of simply endorsing new forms of professional power. In one light, the psychiatric rehabilitation approach of William Anthony and colleagues appears obviously progressive. It does not depend on the "medical model" and the use of medication and seems genuinely committed to the idea of empowerment. However, with the sort of sensibility engendered through an encounter with Foucault, other issues come into view. Beneath its focus on skills and training we see a very clear normative framework centered on the idea that the person with psychiatric problems should be guided and trained toward fitting in with "his or her particular environment." At stake here is the assumption that the deficit is in the patient. It is he or she who needs to change. Herein lies the issue of power: who is in control of the way in which... (shrink)

This paper offers a rereading of Foucault's much-disputed mid-career historiographical shift to genealogy from his earlier archaeological analytic. Disputing the usual view that this shift involves an abandonment of an archaeological method that was then replaced by a genealogical method, I show that this shift is better conceived as a historiographical expansion. Foucault's work subsequent to this shift should be understood as invoking both genealogy and archaeology. The metaphor of expansion is helpful in clarifying what was involved (...) in Foucault's historiographical shift. I describe two expansions at the heart of Foucault's move. First, Foucault went from analyzing singular isolable domains of practice (such as knowledge) to analyzing the interactions between multiple domains of practice (such as power/knowledge). Second, Foucault went from an analytic which relied on a single temporal category of rupture to an analytic which invoked the relations amongst multiple temporalities, including continuity alongside discontinuity in his subsequent analyses. (shrink)

This chapter looks at some of the ways Foucault remade history and rethought the relationship between history and philosophy. It looks at Foucault's rejection, not only of traditional philosophical history, but also of traditional empiricist approaches to history. Then it turns to his alternative view of history as the mapping of transformations of forms of thought. Finally, it considers the transformations his view undergoes, from the “archaeology” of the 1960s, and the “genealogy” of the 1970s, to the (...) “historical ontology of ourselves and our present” in the early 1980s, out of which emerges an understanding of philosophy in which historical reflection plays an integral part. Foucault's genealogical reformulation of his historical approach radicalizes the identification of difference. While archaeology historicizes frameworks of understanding, it imposes its own kind of unity on history. (shrink)

In the 1950s, long before his ascent to international renown, Michel Foucault published a scant few works. His early writings on psychology, psychopathology, and anthropology have been dismissed as immature. However, recently discovered manuscripts from the mid-1950s, when Foucault was a lecturer at the University of Lille, testify to the significance of the work that the philosopher produced in the years leading up to the “archaeological” project he launched with History of Madness. Elisabetta Basso offers a groundbreaking and in-depth (...) analysis of Foucault’s Lille manuscripts that sheds new light on the origins of his philosophical project. She considers the epistemological style and methodology of these writings as well as their philosophical context and the scholarly networks in which Foucault was active, foregrounding his relationship to existential psychiatry. Young Foucault blurs the boundaries between biography and theory, exploring the transformations—and, at times, contradictions—that characterize the intellectual trajectory of a philosopher who, as Foucault himself put it, “turned to psychology, and from psychology to history.” Retracing the first steps of the philosopher’s intellectual journey, Basso shows how Foucault’s early writings provide key insights into his archaeological work of the 1960s. Assembling a vast array of archival sources—including manuscripts, reading notes, notes for lectures and conferences, and correspondence—this book develops a new and deeper understanding of Foucault’s body of work. (shrink)

This collection of essays on the philosophy of Foucault assesses his various work from a variety of perspectives: his place in the history of philosophy; his style and method of philosophical expression; his notions of political power; his ethical thought; and his attitude to psychoanalysis.

Puts The Archaeology of Knowledge at the heart of Foucault's thoughtDavid Webb reveals the extent to which Foucault's approach to language in The Archaeology of Knowledge was influenced by the mathematical sciences, adopting a mode of thought indebted to thinkers in the scientific and epistemological traditions. By aligning his thought with the challenge to Kantian philosophy from mathematics and science in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, he shows how Foucault established his own perspective on the future (...) of critical philosophy. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics teaches that before detection, knowledge of particle position is, at best, probabilistic, and classical trajectories are seen as a feature of the macroscopic world. These comments refer to detected particles, but we are still free to consider the motions generated by the wave equation. Within hydrogen, the Schrodinger equation allows calculation of kinetic energy at any location, and if this is identified as the energy of the wave, then radial momentum, allowing for spherical harmonics, becomes available. The distance (...) across the real zone of radial momentum is found to match semi-integer wavelengths of the adjusted matter wave, consistent with what is expected from a standing wave condition. The approach is extended to include orbital motions, where it is established that the underlying wave, which has direction and wavelength at each location, forms a series of connected trajectories, which are shown to be ellipses orientated at various angles to the equatorial plane. This suggests that wave trajectories, rather than particle trajectories, are still a feature of the hydrogen atom. The finding allows the reason for the coincidence between energy results derived by Sommerfeld’s classical trajectories and the Schrodinger wave equation to be appreciated. The result has implications when the relativistic situation is considered, as Sommerfeld’s correct deduction of the relativistic energy levels of hydrogen well before Dirac derived his wave equation has long been somewhat puzzling. (shrink)

The most accessible and exhaustive introduction to Foucault's thought to date, including every extant interview made by Foucault from the mid-60s until his death in 1984. Currently in its fourth printing, Foucault Live is the most accessible and exhaustive introduction to Foucault's thought to date. Composed of every extant interview made by Foucault from the mid-60s until his death in 1984, Foucault Live sheds new light on the philosopher's ideas about friendship, the intent behind his classical studies, while (...) clarifying many of the professional and popular misinterpretations of his ideas over the course of his career. As Gilles Deleuze noted, "the interviews in this book go much further than anything Foucault ever wrote, and they are indispensable in understanding his life work." Most notably, Foucault Live includes interviews he made with the gay underground press during his stays in America during the 1970s. In them, Foucault suggests that homosexuality presents a new paradigm for ways of living beyond the predictable, binary couple. All of the philosopher's interests, from madness and delinquency to film and sexuality, and their resultant writings, are probed by knowledgeable critics and journalists. After reading this book, the reader can explore key notions such as episteme, savoir and connaissance, archeology, and archive, without the knitted brow that plagued Foucault's public when he was alive. This is the guide to Foucault's life as an agent provocateur in the world of philosophy and scholarship. (shrink)

What is philosophical genealogy? What is its purpose? How does genealogy achieve this purpose? These are the three essential questions to ask when thinking about philosophical genealogy. Although there has been an upswell of articles in the secondary literature exploring these questions in the last decade or two, the answers provided are unsatisfactory. Why do replies to these questions leave scholars wanting? Why is the question, “What is philosophical genealogy?” still being asked? There are two broad reasons, (...) I think. First, on the substantive side, the problem is that genealogical models will get certain features of the method right but ignore others. The models proffered to answer the first question are too restrictive. The second reason is that the three essential questions to ask regarding the nature of genealogy are run together when they should be treated separately. In the following paper, I address these problems by attempting to reconstruct genealogy from the ground up. I provide what I hope is an ecumenical position on genealogy that will accommodate a wide variety of genealogical thinkers, from Hobbes to Nietzsche, rather than a select few. Therefore, I examine two of the three questions above: What is philosophical genealogy and its purpose? I argue there are seven main features of genealogy and that these features may be used as a yardstick to compare how one genealogist stacks up to another along the seven aspects I outline in the paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article: This essay begins by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the developmental strategy adopted in my Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morality” in relation to the contrasting approaches of Conway, Hatab, and Janaway in their studies of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. It then turns to take up a topic that, in the light of the readings of Conway, Hatab, Janaway, and myself, I now take to be much more (...) central than any of us has adequately acknowledged, namely, the relationship of GM to the Hellenistic conception of philosophy. I sketch this argument and explore its implications through Janaway’s and Hatab’s different (but not incompatible) reflections on perspectivism, before finally providing an illustration of how Nietzsche’s indebtedness to the themes of freedom and slavery in ancient philosophy illuminates our understanding of the slave revolt in morals, the psychology of the priest, and the interpretation of the sovereign individual. Given the complexity of the rhetorical and argumentative structure of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, any author presumptuousness enough to offer a study of this text needs to have a clear (and defensible) strategy for approaching it.1 Such strategies may be various, and in the cases under consideration, this is the case. Both Larry Hatab and Dan Conway offer textualist interpretations, with Hatab seeking to communicate the intensely radical character of GM by focusing strongly on the agonistic dimensions of its argument and rhetoric, while Conway reads GM as a Bildungsroman and so seeks to track and explicate Nietzsche’s efforts to guide his readers from innocence to experience. (Such readings need not be incompatible since it could be, for example, that it is through his efforts to construct an internal agon within the reader that Nietzsche seeks to overcome their innocence.) By contrast, both Chris Janaway and I offer more contextualist accounts. Janaway’s strategy is to take Nietzsche at his word and to offer a close reading of the argument of GM in relation to the two philosophical figures—Paul Rée and Arthur Schopenhauer—that Nietzsche identifies as his representative opponents. My own strategy is to adopt a developmental approach to considering GM, one that seeks to reconstruct the reasons—internal to his project of reevaluation—that lead Nietzsche to require a genealogical investigation of morality and to use this reconstruction as a way of orienting the analysis of this text. (And obviously there is some overlap here given Nietzsche’s varied relationships to Schopenhauer and Rée in the course of his philosophical development.) Although my own methodological commitments favor a contextualist approach, it is wise to avoid dogmatism on this issue—not least because one might reasonably note that Ridley’s Nietzsche’s Conscience, perhaps the most widely admired recent analysis of GM and one to which all of the authors considered here are indebted, is thoroughly textualist in its strategy of focusing on the central characters of GM.2 In what follows, I will briefly review my reasons for favoring a developmental form of contextualist account and what I take the strength and limitations of this approach (and of my performance of it) to be. I will then turn to consider what I now see as a central issue for understanding GM—namely, Nietzsche’s relationship to ancient philosophy—that has emerged in the light of further reflection on the arguments presented in these four works. I conclude by briefly reconsidering the nature of Nietzsche’s genealogical enterprise. (shrink)

This article examined the warning against evil companions in Proverbs 1:8-19 and the role of the church in addressing the involvement of Tiv youths in crime in Benue State and its implications for actions. Wicked people were zealous in seducing others into the paths of destruction. Would young people shun temporal and eternal ruin? This was the reason for Solomon's instruction in Proverbs 1:8-19. He admonished his son with the caption 'hear,' which presented the son with a choice. However, Solomon (...) implored the child to refuse to take any step in destructive paths of evildoers. The persuasive nature of the pericope was important in addressing the growing crime rate amongst Tiv youths in Benue State. Most youths in Tiv communities were being enticed into joining criminal gangs, secret cults and rituals in order to make quick wealth. Unfortunately, the number of youths in these immoral acts such as YahooYahoo amongst Tiv youths kept on increasing in the midst of the growing number of churches in most Tiv societies. Rhetoric analysis was used as the methodology. As part of recommendations, parents should instruct, discipline and stop their children from engaging in acts that lead to death. The youths should also avoid evil companions to avoid falling into trouble.CONTRIBUTION: Youths are the leaders of tomorrow, which makes admonition to youths a necessity for the growth of the Tiv Society. Proverbs 1:8-19 provides roadmaps that Tiv leaders and the church could adopt in preserving morality among Tiv youths. (shrink)

This article examined the warning against evil companions in Proverbs 1:8–19 and the role of the church in addressing the involvement of Tiv youths in crime in Benue State and its implications for actions. Wicked people were zealous in seducing others into the paths of destruction. Would young people shun temporal and eternal ruin? This was the reason for Solomon’s instruction in Proverbs 1:8–19. He admonished his son with the caption ‘hear,’ which presented the son with a choice. However, Solomon (...) implored the child to refuse to take any step in destructive paths of evildoers. The persuasive nature of the pericope was important in addressing the growing crime rate amongst Tiv youths in Benue State. Most youths in Tiv communities were being enticed into joining criminal gangs, secret cults and rituals in order to make quick wealth. Unfortunately, the number of youths in these immoral acts such as YahooYahoo amongst Tiv youths kept on increasing in the midst of the growing number of churches in most Tiv societies. Rhetoric analysis was used as the methodology. As part of recommendations, parents should instruct, discipline and stop their children from engaging in acts that lead to death. The youths should also avoid evil companions to avoid falling into trouble. Contribution: Youths are the leaders of tomorrow, which makes admonition to youths a necessity for the growth of the Tiv Society. Proverbs 1:8–19 provides roadmaps that Tiv leaders and the church could adopt in preserving morality among Tiv youths. (shrink)

Michel Foucault (1926–84) invented a new practice of philosophy. His books trace the emergence of some of the concepts, institutions, and techniques of government which delineate the peculiar shape of modern European culture. They include a history of madness, an account of the birth of clinical medicine at the end of the eighteenth century, an archaeology of the modern sciences of language, life, and labor, a genealogy of the modern form of punishment, and fragments of a history of sexuality. (...) These are all historical studies by virtue of the kinds of claim advanced and the documentary evidence adduced to illustrate and support them, but they do not conform to established rules of historiographical method and often invent new objects of historical research. The title chosen by Foucault for the chair he occupied at the Collège de France provides a clue to the distinctive nature of his research: professor of the history of systems of thought. By “thought” he means firstly the forms of theoretical and conceptual reflection developed within philosophy and the human sciences. His early work deals with the history of psychopathology and clinical medicine in a manner which owes much to the approach of French philosopher‐historians of science such as Bachelard and Canguilhem. However, by “thought” Foucault also means the forms of rationality embedded in the everyday practice of administrators, doctors, priests, and private individuals, and expressed in technical manuals, projects for institutional reform, and the writings of moralists. His work on madness, criminal punishment, and sexuality exposes the historical singularity of forms of experience which involve thought in both of these senses. The history of systems of thought thus defines an approach to the workings of a culture rather than a specific level within a given culture. (shrink)

This article recounts Foucault’s critical reevaluation of Thomas Hobbes in his 1975-76 lecture course, published as Society Must Be Defended (2003). In probing Hobbes’ pivotal role in the foundation of the modern nation-state, Foucault delineates the ”philosophico-juridical” discourse of Leviathan from the ”historico-political” discourses of the English insurrectionists whose uncompromising demands were ultimately paved over by the more conventional seventeenth century debate between royalists and parliamentarians. In his most sustained engagement with political philosophy proper, Foucault effectively severs the two (...) co-constitutive terms, enumerating the damning consequences of thinking politics apart from history and philosophy apart from the laws and codes that had been “born in the mud and blood of battles.” Displacing himself in the archive, Foucault doubles the Levellers and Diggers’ efforts to restage the violent conquests that undergird our seemingly calm governmental regimes. This doubling, I argue, evinces the profound influence of Deleuze’s innovative ontology of time on Foucault’s genealogical method. Foucault’s research strategy takes a fundamental turn towards specific techniques of cultural memory in the wake of his colleague’s radical reconceptualization of virtuality, difference, and repetition. To this end, I take up Foucault’s review essay ”Theatrum Philosophicum” and his comments on method in ”Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” in order to draw an analogy between what he does in 1976 and what the Levellers and Diggers were doing in 1651. In the final analysis, genealogy means war, and, in this war, it is the very being of the virtual itself that is at stake. (shrink)

Context: Non-dualist philosophy is no longer novel. Arguing against the distinctions between thought and action, theory and practice, language and objects has been a staple of the debate for decades, and Josef Mitterer offers another approach to the problem. Problem: Non-dualist philosophy is beset by a problem: it is trying to argue against a separation of “ideas” from the life-world while staying exclusively on the side of ideas. They offer a philosophy seminar argument against the bread and butter (...) of philosophy seminars. Results: The paper argues that non-dualism in practice is best represented not by philosophers but by everyday life sociologists; not by those who argue against theory and idealisms but by those who simply ignore them. Non-dualism, however, is a practical tool when theorists have to be confronted practically; this, I argue, is their value, and in this debate, they are welcome. It is, however, a value that should not be overstated. (shrink)

This article challenges the scholarly consensus on Willem Jacob 's Gravesande’s philosophy, namely the view that it was predominantly influenced by Newton, Locke, and Descartes. More generally, it opposes the tendency to read the work of eighteenth-century natural philosophers as being part of well-defined strands of Newtonianism. I argue that we will understand the intellectual history of the early eighteenth century better if we let go of essentialist taxonomic views and instead pay attention to the historical trajectories of various actors (...) and ideas. In the case of 's Gravesande (1688–1742), it has often been assumed that he used a particular form of Newtonianism to combat rationalist metaphysics, particularly Spinozism. Here I show that this view is not tenable when we take account of 's Gravesande’s metaphysical writings. On topics such as liberty, necessity, and theodicy, these writings deviate from what Newtonianism is usually taken to stand for. Instead, 's Gravesande’s views on such matters correspond more closely to certain interpretations of Leibniz’s Théodicée. (shrink)

An examination of the relation between war and politics, by one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers From 1971 until 1984 at the College de France, Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures ranging freely and conversationally over the range of his research. In Society Must Be Defended , Foucault deals with the emergence in the early seventeenth century of a new understanding of war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power, a hidden presence within society (...) that could be deciphered by an historical analysis. Tracing this development, Foucault outlines the genealogy of power and knowledge that had become his dominant concern. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study to explore the relationship between archaeology and modern thought, showing how philosophical ideas that developed in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries still dominate our approach to the material remains of ancient societies. It discusses the modern emphasis on method rather than ethics or meaning, our understanding of change in history and nature, the role of the nation-state in forming our views of the past, and contemporary notions of human individuality, the mind, (...) and materiality. Julian Thomas also addresses the modern preoccupation with depth, which enables archaeology to be used as a metaphor in other disciplines. The book concludes by advocating a "counter-modern" archaeology that refuses to separate material evidence from political, moral, rhetorical, and aesthetic concerns, as well as meaning. (shrink)

In his renowned courses at the Collège de France from 1982 to 1984, Michel Foucault devoted his lectures to meticulous readings and interpretations of the works of Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, among others. In this his aim was not, Edward F. McGushin contends, to develop a new knowledge of the history of philosophy; rather, it was to let himself be transformed by the very activity of thinking. Thus, this work shows us Foucault in the last phase (...) of his life in the act of becoming a philosopher. Here we see how his encounter with ancient philosophy allowed him to experience the practice of philosophy as, to paraphrase Nietzsche, a way of becoming who one is: the work of self-formation that the Greeks called _askésis_. Through a detailed study of Foucault's last courses, McGushin demonstrates that this new way of practicing philosophical _askésis_ evokes Foucault's ethical resistance to modern relations of power and knowledge. In order to understand Foucault's later project, then, it is necessary to see it within the context of his earlier work. If his earlier projects represented an attempt to bring to light the relations of power and knowledge that narrowed and limited freedom, then this last project represents his effort to take back that freedom by redefining it in terms of care of the self. Foucault always stressed that modern power functions by producing individual subjects. This book shows how his excavation of ancient philosophical practices gave him the tools to counter this function-with a practice of self-formation, an _askésis. _. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 43-69 [Access article in PDF] Tracing Ricoeur Dudley Andrew François Dosse. Paul Ricoeur: Les Sens D'une Vie. Paris: La Découverte, 1997. [PR] The Time of the Tortoise Gilles Deleuze chose not to see the end of the century that Michel Foucault claimed would be named after him, a century that began just as philosophy registered the aftershocks caused by the work of his closest progenitors, Nietzsche (...) and Bergson. Amplifying the waves they made with tempests of his own, Deleuze tried to capsize the flat-bottom boat of academic philosophy by insisting that it look beyond its own discourse for both the life and the vocabulary to account for life that should be its only mission. Scanning French philosophy for what it might contribute to art, fiction, and cinema, I invoke the stirring character of Deleuze, but I do so to deflect attention to another figure, Paul Ricoeur, whom Deleuze conveniently sets off by contrast.Less than a decade since his death, Deleuze is in danger of having ceded his claim to Ricoeur, the real long-distance runner, who is now pressing his publications into the new century, moving relentlessly beyond his exhausted reviewers. Last year, a fanfare of publicity greeted La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli, another magisterial tome appearing too late to be included in François Dosse's intellectual biography or in my overview here, which lifts off from that biography. Ricoeur, destined to keep writing--unable to conclude his conversation with philosophy--has outlasted Deleuze, whose notoriety derives from the radical break he makes with the thought of our times, for his abrupt deviations and more abrupt conclusions. Ricoeur's reputation rests seldom on anything conclusive but instead on his persistent interaction with and deployment of so much of that thought. By accident or by savvy design, Ricoeur's trajectory (initiated in the phenomenological atmosphere of the prewar era) has taken him through myth criticism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, language philosophy, analytic philosophy, deconstruction, poetics, historiography, ethics, and epistemology. He carries his learning forward to each new endeavor, not believing in "the radical break" or the prefix post-.François Dosse tracks Ricoeur in a magnificent account that places its subject in relation to each of these movements. But Parisian academic fashion forms only one facet of a life whose brilliance is refracted as well by theology, politics, and a remarkable social network. The thickness of his life evidently provides Ricoeur the necessary ballast to maintain his orientation on the stormy seas of intellectual debate. In fact, across a span of seventy years of uninterrupted reading and writing, he has anticipated, invoked, or debated virtually every important school of French thought, doing so in a way that both establishes their value and serves his own agenda. Ricoeur profits from the productive tension that results, even--indeed, especially--when this brings about a dislocation of his views. These exchanges inevitably leave his own ideas clearer, more defensible, and invulnerable to charges of parochialism. Although Ricoeur concludes his three-volume Time and Narrative with an aggressive chapter explicitly asking, [End Page 43] "Should We Renounce Hegel?," there is something deeply Hegelian about this strategy of taking on, then managing to assimilate, all comers so as to emerge stronger. Ricoeur may not share Hegel's limitless arrogance (literally arrogating everything to himself), but his humility is equally ambitious.There was never any question for Deleuze about renouncing Hegel. His antipathy to this "philosophe de l'État" was immediate, total, and itself completely arrogant. As for Ricoeur, Deleuze apparently avoided the man Dosse dubs "philosophe de la Cité," at least before 1986. Then, he links their names after each had just published a multivolume treatise on temporality and fabulation, Deleuze's cinema books picking up the notion of "bifurcated time" that Ricoeur had just developed in Time and Narrative. Proust was explicitly a key source for both of their studies. But apparently, and outwardly, it gets no closer than this. In concatenating these two French philosophers, I follow the lead of Olivier Mongin, who finds them both to be supreme philosophers of time, yet incompatible on... (shrink)

Kitcher's philosophical approach has moved from the reflection on the nature of mathematical knowledge to an explicit social concern about science, because he considers seriously the relevance of democratic values to scientific activity. Focal issues in this trajectory - from the internal perspective to the external - have been naturalism and scientific progress, which includes studies of the uses of scientific findings in the social milieu. Within this intellectual context, the chapter pays particular attention to (...) his epistemological and methodological evolution. The analysis of Philip Kitcher's contents on progress begins with mathematics, a conception that follows a naturalist perspective. Thereafter, the growth of science comes to the front line, an advancement that he views according to realism and cognitive naturalism. Later, the social concern about science receives a visible consideration, when his vision of scientific undertaking is characterized following modest realism and social naturalism. After these four steps (philosophical context, progress in mathematics, the growth in science, and the social concern about science), there is an analysis of his philosophical-methodological framework in retrospective. This is continued by the presentation of the origins of this book and the bibliography related to this thinker. (shrink)

This essay explores whether, and how, genealogy might remain critical within anti-foundationalist philosophical contexts. While adherents of genealogy often presume that genealogy simply is inherently critical in any context, adherents of historicized forms of anti-foundationalist philosophy might rightly wonder whether genealogy can continue to serve any critical purpose whatsoever. Is genealogy a form of historical inquiry that can be done away with once a shift has been made towards historicized forms of anti-foundationalist philosophy? Why continue to do genealogies once (...) certain generalizeable insights have been learned from genealogy? This essay argues that there remains a critical role for genealogy, understood as a particular form of historical inquiry, within anti-foundationalist modes of reasoning. By exploring this critical role for genealogy, our understanding of anti-foundationalist modes of reasoning is enriched, and some clarity is gained into the philosophical foundations of genealogical critique. (shrink)

This article aims to elucidate the relationship between Agamben’s notion of messianism and his project of philosophical archaeology. Whereas the former relates to political and ethical aspects of Agamben’s philosophy, the latter belongs to the domain of methodology of philosophical research itself. The main thesis of the paper argues that these two components rely on each other and constitute one and the same project. The author demonstrates that Agamben’s notion of messianic action and scholarly activity of (...) class='Hi'>philosophical archaeology overlap, which leads to a problematization of political dimension of Agamben’s messianism. The orientation towards the past in Agamben’s understanding of the messianic is its crucial presupposition that imposes limits on its applicability to the realm of politics. This thesis is substantiated by an investigation of the problem of relation between theory and practice in Agamben’s thought and by a close reading of the ‘Mystery of Anomia’ section in The Time that Remains. Beginning with the problem of the possibility of a transition from the tragic narrative elaborated in the Homo Sacer project to the messianic state of lawlessness, the author demonstrates that in Agamben’s thought this transition is made possible only by means of an archaeological inquiry. (shrink)

In his private life, as well as in his work and political attitudes, Michel Foucault often stood in contradiction to himself, especially when his expansive ideas collided with the institutions in which he worked. In Francois Caillat's provocative collection of essays and interviews based on his French documentary of the same name, leading contemporary critics and philosophers reframe Foucault's legacy in an effort to build new ways of thinking about his struggle against society's mechanisms of domination, demonstrating how conflict (...) within the self lies at the heart of Foucault's life and work. (shrink)

Taking as its starting-point the interest in archaeological metaphors evinced by Freud and by Jung, this paper considers the project of analytical psychology under the rubric of the recently discussed term, ‘philosophical archaeology’. Noting the shared methodological assumptions and procedures between these two areas, the paper goes on to examine the extent to which Jung’s project can legitimately be considered as an archaeological pursuit in respect of two key aspects: its humanism, and its hermeneutics. In this second case, (...) the paper concludes, we can learn much from Jung’s recently published Red Book, sections of which may be profitably read through the lens of his seminal paper, ‘The Aims of Psychotherapy’. What emerges from this discussion is a clearer appreciation of the role of the archaic in Jung’s thought, an insight into the analytic consulting-room (as a place of the archetypal) as a third instance of the site of philosophical archaeology in addition to the archive (as a place of statement or l’énoncé) and the museum (as a place of expression), and a confirmation of Heidegger’s assertion that ‘the authenticity and greatness of historical knowledge reside in an understanding of the mysterious character of the beginning’. (shrink)

Although progress, no matter how small, has been made by scholars who examined different aspects of the Mkpuru Mmiri [methamphetamine or crystal meth] drug crisis in Nigerian Igbo communities, literature is yet to approach the study from the perspective of Proverbs 22 of the Old Testament. In this study, literature was extended to examining the Mkpuru Mmiri crisis from the lens of Proverbs 22. Today, many youths in Igbo communities are addicted to Mkpuru Mmiri, a stimulant drug. (...) As part of the findings, it was discovered that the effects of Mkpuru Mmiri include paranoia, hallucinations, delinquency and other behaviours inimical to social well-being and even death. Addiction to Mkpuru Mmiri is seen in the increasing number of unstable young people on the streets of the various states in Igbo communities. The author of the book of Proverbs teaches how youths are to live responsible and happy lives. According to Proverbs, evil conduct will always result in divine vengeance and punishment during a person’s earthly life. The themes include ‘home and personal training (vv. 1–6)’, ‘consequences of one’s actions (vv. 4–23)’ and the ‘reasons to avoid bad company (vv. 24–29)’.Contribution: Addiction to Mkpuru Mmiri has no recognised cure. This may be seen in the growing number of unruly young people on the streets of Nigeria’s south-east states. Practical theology is one of the disciplines implicated. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the emergence of the concept of the “historical a priori” at the origin of Foucault’s archeology. I emphasize the methodological function of this concept within Foucault’s archaeology, and I maintain that despite the different thesis it entails as compared to its philosophical sources, it pertains to one of the main issues of phenomenology, that is, the problematization of the relation between reality as it appears in its historicity, and transcendentality. I start (...) class='Hi'>from the interest of the young Foucault in existential psychiatry, and I focus on the French philosophical context in which Foucault’s Introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s “Dream and Existence” (1954) was conceived. My aim is to show that the first “phenomenological” phase of Foucault’s work is coherent, from a methodological point of view, with the development of archaeology intended as “historical epistemology.” I conclude by arguing that Foucault’s archaeology is methodologically linked to Canguilhem’s epistemology, in that the latter presents itself as an important attempt at linking together historicity and transcendentality. (shrink)

Newly published lectures by Foucault on madness, literature, and structuralism. Perceiving an enigmatic relationship between madness, language, and literature, French philosopher Michel Foucault developed ideas during the 1960s that are less explicit in his later, more well-known writings. Collected here, these previously unpublished texts reveal a Foucault who undertakes an analysis of language and experience detached from their historical constraints. Three issues predominate: the experience of madness across societies; madness and language in Artaud, Roussel, and Baroque theater; and structuralist (...) literary criticism. Not only do these texts pursue concepts unique to this period such as the “extra-linguistic,” but they also reveal a far more complex relationship between structuralism and Foucault than has typically been acknowledged. (shrink)

In his final interview Foucault surprised many a reader by stating that the whole of his philosophical development had been influenced by his reading of Heidegger. Until now this Foucault /Heidegger relation has been left largely unexplored, and the few articles that discussed it, took first and foremost an interest in finding parallels between the works of these thinkers. Our title, however, indicates that a different, non-doxographical approach is at stake here : the move from Foucault to (...) Heidegger for which we argue is motivated by the aporia into which Foucault's project worked itself by aspiring to be not only a genealogy but also a critique. In our first section Foucault's peculiar type of framework relativism is shown to have made it impossible for him both to stick to his most interesting philosophical concept (“order”) and to derive a critique from it which would differ from an expression of his personal whims. It is suggested, however, that this aporia is due not to the concept of "order" itself, but to the type of critique Foucault wanted to derive from it. In the remainder of the article we look for a way to reinscribe this concept into the project of a critique of objectivism. We therefore turn to Heidegger. At first a parallel between alètheia and Foucaultian “truth” is sketched. But our interest evidently lies not in the parallel as such, but in the differences that become hightlighted by the attempt to find as strict a parallel as possible. Furthermore, our questioning does not restrict itself to differences between Foucault and Heidegger, but focuses on the fissures in the work of each of them (for this reason we refer to their works by putting their author's name in quotation marks, e. g. "Foucault", thereby suggesting that their texts involve various parallellograms of forces). Thus, to prepare for the critique of objectivism we were unable to find in “Foucault”, the article goes on to outline a deconstruction of “Heidegger”. We touch on Heidegger's anti-epistemologism, on his resistance to mimesis, and on the latent subject-phobia which seems to have crept into his writing after the “Turning”. It is suggested that these problems call for a new reading of “Heidegger”, and that such a reading would not only throw an unexpected light on authenticity, both in Being and Time and in the later Heidegger, but would also enable us to analyse technological “enframing” as the highest danger in a way which may be still Heideggerian, but which differs from the argument Heidegger himself offers in The Memorial Address and The Principle of Reason. This way of problematizing the “order” or technology twists us out of Foucault's aporia, by opening up a domain which is no longer that of a politics but of an ethics of truth. (shrink)

“What characterizes the act of justice is not resort to a court and to judges; it is not the intervention of magistrates (even if they had to be simple mediators or arbitrators). What characterizes the juridical act, the process or the procedure in the broad sense, is the regulated development of a dispute. And the intervention of judges, their opinion or decision, is only ever an episode in this development. What defines the juridical order is the way in which one (...) confronts one another, the way in which one struggles. The rule and the struggle, the rule in the struggle, this is the juridical.” - Michel Foucault Penal Theories and Institutions is the title Michel Foucault gave to the lectures he delivered at the Collège de France from November 1971 to March 1972. In these lectures Michel Foucault presents for the first time his approach to the question of power that will be the focus of his research up to the writing of Discipline and Punish (1975) and beyond. His analysis starts with a detailed account of Richelieu’s repression of the Nu-pieds revolt (1639-1640) and then goes on to show how the apparatus of power developed by the monarchy on this occasion breaks with the system of juridical and judicial institutions of the Middle Ages and opens out onto a “judicial State apparatus”, a “repressive system”, whose function is focused on the confinement of those who challenge its order. Michel Foucault systemizes the approach of a history of truth on the basis of the study of “juridico-political matrices” that he had begun in the previous year’s lectures (Lectures on the Will to Know) and which is at the heart of the notion of “knowledge-power”. In these lectures Foucault develops his theory of justice and penal law. The appearance of this volume marks the end of the publication of the series Foucault’s courses at the Collège de France (the first volume of which was published in 1997). (shrink)

Freedom and the subject were guiding themes for Michel Foucault throughout his philosophical career. In this clear and comprehensive analysis of his thought, Johanna Oksala identifies the different interpretations of freedom in his philosophy and examines three major divisions of it: the archaeological, the genealogical, and the ethical. She shows convincingly that in order to appreciate Foucault's project fully we must understand his complex relationship to phenomenology, and she discusses Foucault's treatment of the body in relation to recent (...) feminist work on this topic. Her sophisticated but lucid book illuminates the possibilities that Foucault's philosophy opens up for us in thinking about freedom. (shrink)

The book shows how Agamben's political concerns emerged and evolved as Agamben responded to contemporary events and new intellectual influences while striving to remain true to his deepest intuitions. Kotsko reveals the trajectory of Agamben's work and shows us what it means to practice philosophy as a living, responsive discipline.

Foucault contra Habermas is an incisive examination of, and a comprehensive introduction to, the debate between Foucault and Habermas over the meaning of enlightenment and modernity. It reprises the key issues in the argument between critical theory and genealogy and is organised around three complementary themes: defining the context of the debate; examining the theoretical and conceptual tools used; and discussing the implications for politics and criticism. In a detailed reply to Habermas' Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, this volume explains (...) the difference between Habermas' philosophical practice and Foucault's between the analytics of truth and the politics of truth. Many of the most difficult arguments in the exchange are subject to a detailed critical analysis. This examination also includes discussion of the ethics of dialogue; the practice of criticism; the politics of recognition, and the function of civil society and democracy. (shrink)

Peter Sloterdijk turns his keen eye to the history of western thought, conducting colorful readings of the lives and ideas of the world's most influential intellectuals. Featuring nineteen vignettes rich in personal characterizations and theoretical analysis, Sloterdijk's companionable volume casts the development of philosophical thinking not as a buildup of compelling books and arguments but as a lifelong, intimate struggle with intellectual and spiritual movements, filled with as many pitfalls and derailments as transcendent breakthroughs. Sloterdijk delves into the work (...) and times of Aristotle, Augustine, Bruno, Descartes, Foucault, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, Kant, Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Marx, Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato, Sartre, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Wittgenstein. He provocatively juxtaposes Plato against shamanism and Marx against Gnosticism, revealing both the vital external influences shaping these intellectuals' thought and the excitement and wonder generated by the application of their thinking in the real world. The philosophical "temperament" as conceived by Sloterdijk represents the uniquely creative encounter between the mind and a diverse array of cultures. It marks these philosophers' singular achievements and the special dynamic at play in philosophy as a whole. Creston Davis's introduction details Sloterdijk's own temperament, surveying the celebrated thinker's intellectual context, rhetorical style, and philosophical persona. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In “Il faut défendre la société”, Foucault attempted to historicize and criticize Nietzsche’s equating of the social with struggle. In order to do so, Foucault produced a descriptive discursive history of his genealogical project by deploying the method of the critical archaeology. Foucault realized thereinafter that his archaeological exposition of the genealogical discourse in fact laid bare a close historical and conceptual bond between genealogy and modern racial discourses. In the first lectures, Foucault, unearthed the (...) class='Hi'>genealogical discourse hidden in the literature written by the nobility as they attempted to resist the centralisation of royal power. In the latter part of his lectures, he described a discursive interplay between genealogy-as-struggle and the biopolitical practices of the modern state. As such, he gave a tentatively description how the modern state inherited and extensively applied the notion of struggle in its biopolitical control on its populations. The immoral and historical consequences of this affinity, resulting in the biopolitics of genocide, warranted Foucault to distance himself from Nietzsche’s concept, which in effect resulted in rethinking the social within the framework of gouvernmentalité, in which struggle was a modality rather than the prime mover of society. (shrink)

The second volume in an unprecedented publishing event: the complete College de France lectures of one of the most influential thinkers of the last century Michel Foucault remains among the towering intellectual figures of postmodern philosophy. His works on sexuality, madness, the prison, and medicine are classics his example continues to challenge and inspire. From 1971 until his death in 1984, Foucault gave public lectures at the world-famous College de France. These lectures were seminal events. Attended by thousands, they (...) created benchmarks for contemporary critical inquiry. The lectures comprising Abnormal begin by examining the role of psychiatry in modern criminal justice, and its method of categorizing individuals who "resemble their crime before they commit it." Building on the themes of societal self-defense in the first volume of this series, Foucault shows how and why defining "abnormality" and "normality" were prerogatives of power in the nineteenth century, shaping the institutions--from the prison system to the family--meant to deal in particular with “monstrosity,” whether sexual, phsyical, or spiritual. The College de France lectures add immeasurably to our appreciation of Foucault's thought, and offer a unique window on his singular worldview. (shrink)

“What characterizes the act of justice is not resort to a court and to judges; it is not the intervention of magistrates. What characterizes the juridical act, the process or the procedure in the broad sense, is the regulated development of a dispute. And the intervention of judges, their opinion or decision, is only ever an episode in this development. What defines the juridical order is the way in which one confronts one another, the way in which one struggles. The (...) rule and the struggle, the rule in the struggle, this is the juridical.” - Michel Foucault Penal Theories and Institutions is the title Michel Foucault gave to the lectures he delivered at the Collège de France from November 1971 to March 1972. In these lectures Michel Foucault presents for the first time his approach to the question of power that will be the focus of his research up to the writing of Discipline and Punish and beyond. His analysis starts with a detailed account of Richelieu’s repression of the Nu-pieds revolt and then goes on to show how the apparatus of power developed by the monarchy on this occasion breaks with the system of juridical and judicial institutions of the Middle Ages and opens out onto a “judicial State apparatus”, a “repressive system”, whose function is focused on the confinement of those who challenge its order. Michel Foucault systemizes the approach of a history of truth on the basis of the study of “juridico-political matrices” that he had begun in the previous year’s lectures and which is at the heart of the notion of “knowledge-power”. In these lectures Foucault develops his theory of justice and penal law. The appearance of this volume marks the end of the publication of the series Foucault’s courses at the Collège de France. (shrink)

Michel Foucault was an energetic activist, yet his bleak depiction of totalizing power and his refusal to make normative claims have led many to judge that Discipline and Punish (1975) did not sustain a positive political project. This article offers a new, contextualist account of Foucault’s political purposes by reading Discipline and Punish as a tool for coalition building through historical worldmaking. Addressing the division and marginalization of movements on France’s “alternative left” like feminism and gay liberation, Foucault wove together (...) their differentiated concerns into a shared historical world. His apparently demoralizing identification of the same forms of power everywhere in fact revealed new possibilities for alliance. Focusing on Foucault’s unifying historical narratives reveals a positive project beyond the negative, denaturalizing “critique of power” we usually associate with his political thought. Foucault’s coalitional work of worldmaking may offer a model for genealogical political theory today. (shrink)

This article offers the outlines of a historically-informed conception of critical inquiry herein named genealogical pragmatism. This conception of critical inquiry combines the genealogical emphasis on problematization featured in Michel Foucault's work with the pragmatist emphasis on reconstruction featured in John Dewey's work. The two forms of critical inquiry featured by these thinkers are not opposed, as is too commonly supposed. Genealogical problematization and pragmatist reconstruction fit together for reason of their mutual emphasis on the importance of (...) history for philosophy. In so fitting together they repair crucial deficits in both traditions as they currently stand on their own. The resulting conception of critical inquiry as simultaneously problematizational and reconstructive is offered as a first step toward a crucial philosophical task we face today: articulating normativity without foundations. (shrink)

According to Mary Midgley, philosophy is like plumbing: like the invisible entrails of an elaborate plumbing system, philosophical ideas respond to basic needs that are fundamental to human life. Melioristic projects in philosophy attempt to fix or reroute this plumbing. An obstacle to melioristic projects is that the sheer familiarity of the underlying philosophical ideas renders the plumbing invisible. Philosophical genealogies aim to overcome this by looking at the origins of our current concepts. We discuss philosophical (...) concepts developed in Indigenous cultures as a source of inspiration for melioristic genealogy. Examining the philosophical concepts of these communities is useful because it gives us a better idea of the range of ethical, political, and metaphysical approaches that exist in the world. Members of western societies do not get a clear view of this range, in part because living in large groups presents its own constraints and challenges, which limit philosophical options. We argue that features of Indigenous philosophies, such as egalitarianism and care for one's natural environment, are not inevitable byproducts of Native material conditions and lifestyles, but that they are deliberate forms of conceptual engineering. We propose that comparative philosophy is an integral part of the genealogical project. -/- . (shrink)

In this 1966 interview, published here in English translation for the first time, Michel Foucault positions himself as a representative of a ‘generation’ of French thinkers who turned towards the analysis of ‘structures’ and away from the phenomenological approaches that had previously dominated French philosophy. In this, Foucault claims inspiration not only from older French scholars—namely Georges Dumézil, Jacques Lacan, and Claude Lévi-Strauss—but also from the science of genetics.

In 1968, Michel Foucault agreed to a series of interviews with critic Claude Bonnefoy, which were to be published in book form. Bonnefoy wanted a dialogue with Foucault about his relationship to writing rather than about the content of his books. The project was abandoned, but a transcript of the initial interview survived and is now being published for the first time in English. In this brief and lively exchange, Foucault reflects on how he approached the written word throughout his (...) life, from his school days to his discovery of the pleasure of writing. Wide ranging, characteristically insightful, and unexpectedly autobiographical, the discussion is revelatory of Foucault's intellectual development, his aims as a writer, his clinical methodology ("let's say I'm a diagnostician"), and his interest in other authors, including Raymond Roussel and Antonin Artaud. Foucault discloses, in ways he never had previously, details about his home life, his family history, and the profound sense of obligation he feels to the act of writing. In his Introduction, Philippe Artieres investigates Foucault's engagement in various forms of oral discourse--lectures, speeches, debates, press conferences, and interviews--and their place in his work. Speech Begins after Death shows Foucault adopting a new language, an innovative autobiographical communication that is neither conversation nor monologue, and is one of his most personal statements about his life and writing. (shrink)

“Larvatus prodeo,” “I go forth masked”: with these words does the young René Descartes - the year is 1619 and he is twenty-three years old - mark his entrance into philosophy. In an early text found among his papers and published under the title Praeambula, he writes the following: “Before going on stage, an actor dons a mask (persona) so as not to reveal the redness of his face. Likewise, as I make my appearance in the theater of the world, (...) where I have so far been only a spectator, I also go forth masked.”Here Descartes describes a practice that is far from his alone. When a philosopher appears upon the stage – whether in speech or in writing – he alters his tone and projects his voice. He no longer merely speaks; he declaims, and sometimes even takes an oracular stance. He uses the mask to hide his face and body and above all to transform his voice. What we hear is the voice of René Descartes, but it is transformed, amplified, deformed by the mask behind which he hides, by the persona of the philosopher he wants to be. These few lines of the Praeambula may be considered as a beginning, a very personal preface to his philosophical oeuvre as a whole, as the moment when he leaves behind his person to become a persona. Until now, Descartes has been a private person, answerable to no one, able to express himself just as he is, just as he thinks he is, without having to use a mask. Once he openly, officially chooses the life of the mind, a new “I'” is expressed through his mouth; from now on what he says will no longer be private but public. His role now is to speak the truth, even if it turns out in the end to be his truth alone. (shrink)

The new mobilities paradigm has yet to have the same impact on archaeology as it has in other disciplines in the social sciences - on geography, sociology and anthropology in particular - yet mobility is fundamental to archaeology: all people move. Moving away from archaeology’s traditional focus upon place or location, this volume treats mobility as a central theme in archaeology. The chapters are wide-ranging and methodological as well as theoretical, focusing on the flows of (...) people, ideas, objects and information in the past; they also focus on archaeology’s distinctiveness. (shrink)

Much of Michel Foucault's work involves complex and detailed studies of madness, the clinic, the prison, the human sciences, sexuality, etc. In addition to these studies, however, three major themes may be identified on his intellectual journey. These are the analysis of epistemes, or historical regions of discourse; the investigation of “regimes of truth”; and the study of “techniques of the self”. Foucault's problematic is linked to his general claim that explanation and language do not stand on a single ground (...) or origin which sustains them. Foucault proposes to investigate particular networks of discourses, where both regular and irregular patterns may be identified. His proposed method is both epistemological and archaeological. Genealogy develops the historical perspectivism opened up by archaeology and further supports Foucault's view that the presuppositions and norms governing particular cultures and periods are maintained by a mixture of ideologies and strategic factors of various kinds. (shrink)

Almost uniquely for someone whose thought has been so influential, Socrates wrote nothing himself, and our knowledge of his philosophical opinions and method is derived mainly from the engaging and infuriating figure who appears in Plato's dialogues. The philosophy of Socrates and Plato is therefore closely interconnected, and the most powerful elements of Plato's mature thought form the basis of an interpretation of knowledge, reality, and morality which is still held and debated by philosophers today. Aristotle's (...) class='Hi'>approach to these and other issues is in many ways directly opposed to that of Plato, and has been no less influential. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with the idea that Michel Foucault might be considered a theorist of epistemic injustice, and argue that his philosophical premises are incompatible with Miranda Fricker’s. Their main disagreement rests upon their divergent ways of conceiving the relationship between reason and power, giving rise to the contrasting forms of normativity that characterize their critical projects. This disagreement can be helpfully clarified by addressing the different use they make of the genealogical method. While Fricker’s (...) genealogy of Testimonial Justice aims to ground her claim that reason and power can be neatly pulled apart, thus avoiding the reductionist and relativist conclusions entailed by Foucault’s genealogies, I argue that Foucault’s mature, overlooked definition of genealogy is based on a sophisticated distinction between games and regimes of truth, and is thus not vulnerable to these criticisms. Consequently, Foucault’s genealogical inquiries prove helpful for understanding issues that normally fall under the umbrella of epistemic injustice in a new light, while also allowing us to avoid some of the main objections that threaten Fricker’s project. (shrink)

Foucault's previously unpublished doctoral dissertation on Kant offers the definitive statement of his relationship to Kant and to the critical tradition of philosophy. This introduction and commentary to Kant's least discussed work, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, is the dissertation that Michel Foucault presented in 1961 as his doctoral thesis. It has remained unpublished, in any language, until now. In his exegesis and critical interpretation of Kant's Anthropology, Foucault raises the question of the relation between psychology and (...) anthropology, and how they are affected by time. Though a Kantian “critique of the anthropological slumber,” Foucault warns against the dangers of treating psychology as a new metaphysics, explores the possibilities of studying man empirically, and reflects on the nature of time, art and technique, self-perception, and language. Extending Kant's suggestion that any empirical knowledge of man is inextricably tied up with language, Foucault asserts that man is a world citizen insofar as he speaks. For both Kant and Foucault, anthropology concerns not the human animal or self-consciousness but, rather, involves the questioning of the limits of human knowledge and concrete existence. This long-unknown text is a valuable contribution not only to a scholarly appreciation of Kant's work but as the first outline of what would later become Foucault's own frame of reference within the history of philosophy. It is thus a definitive statement of Foucault's relation to Kant as well as Foucault's relation to the critical tradition of philosophy. By going to the heart of the debate on structuralist anthropology and the status of the human sciences in relation to finitude, Foucault also creates something of a prologue to his foundational The Order of Things. Michel Foucault is widely considered to be one of the most important academic voices of the twentieth century and has proven influential across disciplines. (shrink)

Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997) was one of the preeminent figures in the philosophical movement of logical empiricism. He was a member of both the Berlin and Vienna circles, fled Germany in 1934 and finally settled in the US where he taught for many years in New York, Princeton, and Pittsburgh. The essays in this collection come from the early and late periods of Hempel's career and chart his intellectual odyssey from a rigorous commitment to logical positivism in (...) the 1930s (when Hempel allied himself closely with Carnap) to a more sociological approach close in spirit to the work of Neurath and Kuhn. The collection brings together essays which have up till now been difficult to find, four of which are appearing in English for the first time. Cumulatively they offer a fresh perspective on Hempel's intellectual development and on the rise and demise of logical empiricism. (shrink)