Title: Michel Foucault: Knowledge has not been made for understanding, but for
1- Michel Foucault Knowledge has not been made for
understanding, but for cutting
2My Goals for this class
- At the end of the course, you should be able to
- Identify and outline main traditions and authors
within Western political theory, as well as main
relations between them. - Use these ideas and authors to trace beliefs that
are dominant within contemporary American society
and your own thinking.
3Roots of the West
- Ebenstein Ebenstein
- Ch. 1
4Why Western Political Theory?What is the
West?
- Ebenstein Ebenstein
- The West is not a geographical place.
- The West is not Western Origins in the
Mediterranean Sea - Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, Byzantium, Paris,
London, New York Los Angeles Where else? - Worldwide expansion
- Geographical Mobility of the West
5Ebenstein Ebenstein The West is defined by
- -A set of fundamental, universal ideas
- (Greek) Reason
- (Jewish) Ethics
- (Christian) Love
6Heritage
- Belief in reason (Ancient Greece) 6th century
B.C. The Greek civilization produced an original
culture. - 2. Monotheism and concern with Justice (Judaism).
First society organized around the concept of an
only God. - ? consistency between beliefs and practical
morality. - Whereas the supreme Greek ideal was to think
clearly, the supreme Jewish aspiration was to act
justly.(5) - 3. Love. Christianity incorporated the
rationalist Greek tradition and the (Jewish)
concern with being morally and religiously
consistent. With Jesus Paul, it added the idea
that love founds the relationship between God and
humans and thus it should found the relationships
between humans themselves.
7Sources
Greeks Greek history, society, thought, and art between 6th B.C. to 3 A.D.
Jewish Old Testament the Prophets Talmud
Christian New Testament Augustine Aquinas Luther Calvin
8Can
- Principles such as
- Reason
- Ethics, and
- Love
- Be all embodied at the same time?
Ebenstein Ebenstein judge Nazism a
renunciation of western values and communism
frequently a perversion and distortion of
western ideas and ideals (4). Do you agree with
them? Why? What should be said about racism and
slavery?
9Greek Thought
- Plato Aristotle represent a decaying Greece
- (Trend in history? Cicero also represents a
decaying Rome, and major historical periods do
not necessarily produce major theoristsex the
French Revolution) - http//www.wadsworth.com/philosophy_d/special_feat
ures/timeline/ptimeline.html
10Birth of Western Philosophy/Science
- 6th Century B.C Pre-Socratic Thought
- Ionian communities
- Miletus (Tales, Anaximander, Anaximenes)
- No written works of the Milesian School were
preserved
5th B.C. Greek Empire? hundreds of city-states
11Greek Discovery concept of Nature
- (Physis)
- Revolutionary break with Animist conceptions
that freed reason. Nature can be understood) - Xenophanes vs. Homer
- Laws
- Empiricism
- Laymen as Intellectuals
12Pre-Socratic Thought( Sophists )
- Humanist (human beings are creative and rational
but fallible) - Empiricist (commitment with empirical observation
and discovery of natural laws). Knowledge is
provisory - Democratic (no permanent or absolute truth truth
must result from the confrontation of opinions) - Protagoras Democritus favored both science and
democracy (Why?)
13Intellectuals
- For the first time in history, in Greece a group
of individuals who were not priests, devoted
themselves systematically to thinking ( art) in
a way that could be linked to religion but was
also independent of it. - Led to the extreme, the development of critical
thinking produced a the critique of religion (ex.
Xenophanes) - Sophists (Protagoras) man is the measure of all
things ? - Humanism
- Realistic and tragic view of Humankind
- Life work of art
14Sophists (450-350 B.C.)
- Sophist skilled craftsman and wise and
prudent man. - Traveled giving lectures and teaching (for a fee)
mostly political skills (middle-classes) - Sophists
- Education for leadership, persuasion through
rhetoric - Realism (consideration of things as they are and
not as they should be). - Social Contract (Laws institutions are
conventions) - Democratic views (gvt. By consent, the majority
has a better right to decide than any enlightened
elite) - Derogatory connotations due to Platos criticisms
15From Tales onwards
- All of nature can be understood through Reason,
because it is - Governed by (rational) laws
- The laws of Nature express a divine rationality,
but the Gods themselves are subjected to those
laws. - The Greek Gods (? the Judeo-Chistian God) are not
above nature - All of them live together in the Polis
- (Universe)
16Athens
- 590 B.C. Solons (Democratic) Constitution
- 479 B.C. Defeat of the Persian Empire (peak of
Athens power). - 430 B.C. Pericles Our government is called a
democracy because it is in the hands of the many
and not of the few.()we regard a person who
takes no interest in public affairs, not as
quiet but as useless. - Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) Defeat
- 4th century B.C. 45,000-50,000 citizens (about
150,000 people) - Self-governed polity (Greek invention of gvt. by
popular assemblies) - Conquered in 338 B.C. by Macedon and reduced to a
province of the Roman Empire in 146 B.C.
17Philosophy
- Philosophy
- Thought (experimental) Science
- Process of Learning
18Socrates (469-399 B.C.)
- No written work
- Use of knowledge (philosophy) to discover the
path to human self-mastery. - Dialogues (questions and answers but no final
answers). Critical examination of all positions? - Dialectics (knowledge emerges from the very
process, in the movement of asking questions) - Beauty virtue wisdom If moral life depends
on knowledge, then virtue, or doing the good, and
philosophy, or knowing the good, become
identical. (14) - Socrates The unexamined life is not worth
living.
19The Dangers of Theory
- Socrates was judged and found guilty, and he
chose to drink poison before the prospects of
exile (Socrates defense is contained in the
Apology, written by Plato).
20Greek Inventions/Contributions
- Philosophy ( science) Rational examination of
nature and human nature - Physical phenomena are general, universal, and
predictable. - Materialism vs. idealism
- Secular (vs. priestly) civilization
- Politics
- (direct) Democracy
- Free thought and free speech
- (because) Truth is complex
21Plato a decaying Athens
- E E Far from being the culmination of Greek
civilization, Plato is the beginning of the end
(15) - Pessimism
- Thought control
- Anti-democratic
- Idealist
22Antigone
- What is destiny? How do power and fate relate to
each other? - What do Creon and Antigone respectively highlight
and overlook about power? - Who is right and who is wrong? Or, rather, how
are they right and wrong?