Elena: This text on Foucault and others seems strongly related to what I've been talking about in relation to the possibility of letting go of our "programming" and developing our own self. It must be clear of course that this is not my idea but an idea in the fourth way system, a so called "esoteric" idea that seems to have become an exoteric idea.
What I find interesting about these writers is the way they so beautifully circumvent the ideas without actually formulating them as simply and directly as the System does. The System is supposed to come from conscious knowledge while these are the socially accepted philosophers. These socially accepted philosophers have something wonderful about them because they don't just "know" the ideas, they kind of "sculpt" them out of their lives.
“The Undefined Work of Freedom”
From 1978 until his death in 1984, Foucault repeatedly referred back to Kant’s essay ‚What is
Enlightenment?‛ Kant’s essay famously begins with the definition of Enlightenment as
‚man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage,‛16 and follows up with a definition of ‚tute-
lage‛: ‚Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from
another.‛17 ‚Have the courage to use your own reason!‛18 is thus the first motto of the Enligh-
tenment. Kant insists on human beings’ potential to actively make use of their own reason;
Enlightenment is defined as human beings’ release from the incapacity to do so. At the same
time, however, the term Enlightenment refers to a historical period, a present to which human
beings are passively exposed. It refers, in other words, not only to an enlightened act but also
to an enlightened age. Kant addresses this double-sidedness—human beings’ active and pas-
sive relation to the Enlightenment—towards the end of his essay, when he raises the question:
‚Do we now live in an enlightened age?‛19 His answer is, unambiguously, ‚No.‛ ‚*B+ut we
do live in an age of enlightenment,‛20 he continues. With this shift from ‚an enlightened age‛ to
‚an age of enlightenment,‛ Kant manages to combine the active and passive aspects of the
Enlightenment: he evokes a historical period that is produced through human beings’ actions.
Thus, it is not so much the age that is enlightened, and that as such guarantees one’s En-
14
See Leland de la Durantaye, Giorgio Agamben: A Critical Introduction (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2009).
15
See Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3., trans. Robert Hurley (New York:
Vintage, 1988).
16
Immanuel Kant, ‚What is Enlightenment?,‛ in Sylvère Lotringer (ed.), The Politics of Truth, trans. Lysa
Hochroth and Catherine Porter (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007), 29.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid., 35.
20
Ibid.
De Boever: The Allegory of the Cage
12
lightenment, but one’s Enlightenment that produces the age. The final responsibility remains
ours.
Although Foucault’s essay ‚What is Enlightenment?‛ is no doubt the best known of his
many engagements with Kant’s text, Sylvère Lotringer has recently collected a number of the
others in a volume titled The Politics of Truth. Since then, Foucault’s 1983 lectures on Kant’s
text have also been published, in both French and English. From these different publications,
it appears that for Foucault, the question of the Enlightenment was one that could not be
settled. Its answer never quite actualizes in his lectures and his writings. Instead, it is per-
petually deferred, like a potentiality that is reactivated in each instance in which it is addres-
sed. It is not difficult to see how this feature of Foucault’s engagement with the Enlighten-
ment—specifically, the tension between the actual and the potential that characterizes it—is in
fact a central component of his answer to the question of the Enlightenment.
Indeed, the tension between the potential and the actual around which Agamben’s
entire oeuvre revolves is equally central to ‚What is Enlightenment?‛ Towards the end of the
essay, Foucault summarizes the two arguments that he has been trying to make. On the one
hand, he has tried to:
emphasize the extent to which a type of philosophical interrogation—one that simultane-
ously problematizes man’s relation to the present, man’s historical mode of being, and the
constitution of the self as an autonomous subject—is rooted in the Enlightenment.21
On the other hand, he has tried to emphasize that what connects ‚us‛ (Foucault and his
audience, his readers) to the:
Enlightenment is not a faithfulness to doctrinal elements but rather the permanent reactiva-
tion of an attitude—that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent
critique of our historical era.22
If the first argument could be rephrased as an argument about the human being’s simultane-
ously ‚passive‛ relation to history and its constitution as an autonomous subject, the second
pushes the latter aspect of that argument into an investigation of a more ‚active‛ ‚attitude.‛23
Tying this attitude back to the first part of the first argument, it is described earlier on in the
essay as:
a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; a
way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same
time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what
the Greeks called an ethos.24
21
Michel Foucault, ‚What is Enlightenment?‛ in Sylvère Lotringer (ed.), The Politics of Truth, trans. Lysa
Hochroth and Catherine Porter (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007), 109.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid., 105.
24
Ibid.
Foucault Studies, No. 10, pp. 7-22.
13
In the closing paragraphs of the essay, Foucault also refers to this attitude as a ‚philosophical
life.‛25 What connects ‚us‛ to the Enlightenment is the permanent reactivation of this life.
But how is one to understand this ‚reactivation‛ exactly, given the obvious tension
between the active and the passive, and specifically the actual and the potential, that haunts
Foucault’s essay? What is certain is that Foucault pitches his understanding of this ‚reactiva-
tion‛ against Kant. One might suspect that he is attempting to ‚enlighten‛ Kant here about
something that he considers Kant’s essay to be missing (or perhaps better, that he considers
Kant to be missing—for Kant’s text puts one on the track of it, even though Kant himself might
be missing it). Foucault reveals that he wants to transform Kant’s enlightened interest in the
limits of reason into an investigation of transgression. He is interested in how one can ‚trans-
form the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that
takes the form of a possible transgression.‛26 Foucault points out that such a critique would be
both archeological in the sense that it will seek ‚to treat the instances of discourse that
articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events‛ as well as genealogical in
the sense that: ‚it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the
possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think.‛27
Elena:
This possibility of not being what we are programmed to be is no other than the idea that we can stop becoming identified with our imaginary picture and become the self of our own choice in "the
constitution of the self as an autonomous subject".
"Enlightenment is not a faithfulness to doctrinal elements but rather the permanent reactiva-
tion of an attitude—that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent
critique of our historical era" Foucault
This sentence could be understood as nothing other than the act of self-remembering and what is so beautiful about it is that he puts it to use not only in the social context but in the individual context. In relation to the permanent critique of our historical era, it is closely connected to what I've been talking about recently related to how each generation is confronted with the older generation and must necessarily revitalize itself to revitalize it's own times.
"Foucault points out that such a critique would be
both archeological in the sense that it will seek ‚to treat the instances of discourse that
articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events‛ as well as genealogical in
the sense that: ‚it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the
possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think.‛27"
This difference between "archeological" and "genealogical" is interesting but I am not sure that I understand it as they actually put it, that is, the language is different. The way I've been presenting a similar idea is also social, historical as the force that "sculpts" and "programs" individuals and what he terms genealogical I've talked as being, the forces and dimensions within that allow for the individual to actualize his own reality in the outside world.
Looking at it carefully I do believe we mean the same thing but there it is said so very beautifully, it is a pleasure to find these people!
No comments:
Post a Comment