So - perhaps one the greates antagonists of Michel Foucault is finally dead. (The other one was Roger Garaudy ,http://www.REVISIONISTS.com, a former French Communist leader, philosopher and recent convert to Revisionism and Islam.
Surely we must not forget Jurgen Habermas either.)
By antagonism I mean the two ways these men were understanding philosophy. Foucault was (post)structuralistic power-analyst, Ricoeur psychoanalytical-hermeneutical metaphor-analyst.
Foucault himself made it clear what he thought about Ricouer`s type of discourse: he despised it.
This is somewhat surprising to me because there was a certain kind of philosophical agreement/consensus among leading French structuralist thinkers (e.g. Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Kristeva, Kofman, later Baudrillard) about a metaphorical nature of language and thought from the sixties to the turn of the century.
However - the main difference between Ricoeur and Foucault probably was on their fundamental insight concerning what metaphors are for. For Foucault they were chaotic power/knowledge-play, for Ricoeur instead foundational symbols of narrative-creating what is pace Ricoeur our only, possible, thus - unique way of interpreting world and ourselves.
This is not so far from Foucault but that "one of the greatist pessimists" in history of philosophy (along with Hobbes) never saw metafors as means to organize for instance theological (thus: metaphysical) constructions as did Ricoeur who basically was a theologician - ex officio.
For Ricoeur metafors gave an "inner" meaning to life (raison d'etre), for Foucault metafors expressed the endless overlapping play of power=metafor=knowledge, that has no end or origin.
"Power comes from everywhere", wrote Foucault. But so does God. And God is(?) Oneness. The ensuing unavoidable question: actually what distuingishes oneness from chaotic pluralism - both logically and experimentally?
Perhaps the professor of cosmology - Kari Enqvist - "knows?" But I myself don`t have an idea - any.
However - my ironical suggestion is that we can make sense of Foucault`s "Power" as a modicafation of Neoplatonism, the metaphysical pre-ground also to such a different thinkers like Spinoza, Hegel, Schopenhauer - thus Nietzsche and Freud.
Oddly enough - about this ideahistorically very interesting linkage Foucault didn`t - not that I know of - publicly spoke a word.
Foucault once ironically nominated Wilhelm_Reich`s ,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich, theory of orgone energy pneumatic-like (splendid irony - indeed) but we can "strike back" and announce Foucault`s power to be at least as pneumatic en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneuma too.
What else can a phenomenon (herein: power) that is more like incessantly reorganizing energy (compare with sexuality) than a calculable variable be than a "spirit-like force-quality - some kind of 'moving air or breath'?"
It always goes down the drain like water we tries to catch into our palms - but no matter what - it exists because it momentarily has an effect on us!
As you can see - words and propositions are not enough anymore when talking about nietzschean-foucaultian power/knowledge.
So let`s ceaselessly observe "reality" by more and more exact experiments and after that invest a poem...sorry...a theory of The "entire WHole(y)ness" and it`s "living mechanics".
Said philosophical buffoon...
*
(To be continued, possibly).
1 comment:
Here a big collection of articles on Ricoeur:
articolifilosofici.blogspot.com
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