Michel Foucault and the question of

1
Michel Foucault and the question of What is
Enlightenment?

• The critical ontology of ourselves has to be
  considered not, certainly, as a theory, a
  doctrine, nor even a permanent body of knowledge
  that is accumulating it has to be considered an
  attitude, an ethos, a philosophical critique of
  what we are is at one and the same time the
  historical limits that are imposed on us and an
  experiment with the possibility of going beyond
  them
• Michel Foucault, What is Enlightenment? 50

2
Foucault and Kant Part I

• Foucault interprets Kant as suggesting that the
  process of enlightenmentthe move from
  self-imposed tutelage of immaturityas a way
  out (34).
• A way out from what, however?
• For Foucault, the call to make use of ones own
  reasonSapere Audeis to subject the present to
  critique, a possible way out of the present.

3
Foucault and modernity

• What is modernity?
• For Foucault, modernity is neither a period nor
  an achieved state.
• Here think about the process of enlightenment,
  can it be accomplished once and for all?
• For Foucault, modernity consists in an attitude
  marked by Kants critical attitude of using ones
  own reason (38).

4
Foucault and modernity

• The attitude of modernity does not treat the
  passing moment as sacred in order to maintain or
  perpetuate it. For the attitude of modernity,
  the high value of the present is indissociable
  from a desperate eagerness to imagine it
  otherwise than it is, and to transform it not by
  destroying it but by grasping it in what it is
  (40-41).

5
Foucault and modernity

• Individuals adopt a certain relation to the
  present We see ourselves as both belonging to
  the present as well as the possibility of
  departing from it.
• The relation that one adopts to the present the
  pays attention to the present but also confronts
  it with a practice which simultaneously respects
  and violates the present (41).
• This practice is an expression of our autonomy.

6
Foucault and modernity

• For Foucault, the critical attitude commits us to
  critically engage history.
• Our relation to history, to social reality, is
  always one of complex difficult elaboration
  (41).
• Social reality for us is not established
  once-and-for-all the presentwho we are, what we
  areis always in flux.
• We are constantly working on social reality,
  possibly making it anew, including ourselves.

7
Implications of the attitude to modernity

• A possible objection to Foucault since you are
  criticizing modernity, arent you committed to
  rejecting all that is modernity? Either one is
  for modernity or one is against it, according to
  this objection.
• Foucault calls this objection the Blackmail of
  Enlightenment
• He rejects the dichotomy of either you are for or
  against modernity because it is a false
  dichotomy. Why?

8
Foucault the blackmail of enlightenment

• Foucault diagnoses the motivation behind the
  blackmail of enlightenment is the false
  identification of enlightenment with an
  endorsement of humanism
• Humanism is a vague term, trying to capture
  many themes under one description.
• For Foucault, these themes should be separated to
  yield different varieties of humanisms (44).

9
Foucault the blackmail of enlightenment

• Not all of the varieties of humanisms are worthy
  of endorsement, e.g. Nazism billed itself as a
  humanism.
• For Foucault, we should engage the different
  humanist themes critically, to oppose them by
  the principle of a critique and a permanent
  creation of ourselves in our autonomy (44).
• Foucault calls the exercise of a permanent
  creation of ourselves in our autonomy a project
  of critical ontology

10
Foucault and Kant Part II

• Unlike Kants goal for critique, the task of
  critical ontology does not aim at a philosophical
  system.
• The task for critical ontology is not that of
  making a metaphysics possible. It will not
  seek to identify the universal structures of all
  knowledge or of all possible moral action. 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 (46).

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Critical Ontology

• Foucaults project is not theoretical, but
  practical.
• It is directed to potentially problematic areas
  of what we do and think, in general who we are.
• We need to honour the present yet at the same
  time seek out where change is both possible and
  desirable and to determine the form of this
  possible change
• The changes are experimental. Why experimental?

12
Critical Ontology

• We are not all-knowing we arent omniscient.
• We cant assume a position which can grasp the
  problematic areas all at once and offer solutions
  to them for all eternity (47).
• Changes have to be provisional and targeted at
  specific issues.
• However, local and provisional do not mean that
  we do not pay attention to possible complications
  from wider concerns.

13
Critical Ontology

• Indeed, Foucault invites us to reflect on the
  dangers with those proposals who have claimed to
  offer a solution to all our ills (46).
• Foucault favours the concrete results achieved
  by, for example, womens and gay liberation.
• These examples are ongoing processes for there is
  still much to be done.

14
Critical Ontology

• Objection If we limit ourselves to this type of
  always partial and local test, do we not turn
  the task of letting ourselves be determined by
  more general structures of which we may well not
  be conscious, and over which we may have no
  control (47).
• Response this objection is based on the claim
  that we have assess to knowledge of such general
  structures it is based on us being all-knowing

15
Critical Ontology

• For Foucault, the fact that we are not omniscient
  does not mean that change is impossible.
• For him, one of the more pressing areas for
  change is the effects of modern power relations.
• Recall modern power in contrast to sovereign
  power is not top-down but is deeply connected to
  knowledge of ourselves at a variety of levels, as
  individuals and as a population

16
Critical Ontology

• For Foucault, such knowledge increase our
  capacities to make achievements but it comes with
  constraints of being more and more directed by
  power relations
• Examples
• The aim is to disentangle the growth of
  capabilities from the intensification of power
  relations (47).

17
Critical Ontology

• These investigations and tests are not assumed to
  be for all times. Hence, the critical ontology
  of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly,
  as a theory, a doctrine, nor even a permanent
  body of knowledge that is accumulating it has to
  be considered an attitude, an ethos, a
  philosophical critique of what we are is at one
  and the same time the historical limits that are
  imposed on us and an experiment with the
  possibility of going beyond them (50).

18
Foucault and critical theory

• How is critical ontology different from the
  emancipatory projects of Marcuse or Habermas?