• Log In

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Subscribe on Android Spotify Google Podcasts audible patreon
  • Home
  • Podcast
    • PEL Network Episodes
    • Publicly Available PEL Episodes
    • Paywalled and Ad-Free Episodes
    • PEL Episodes by Topic
    • Nightcap
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Pretty Much Pop
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • (sub)Text
    • Phi Fic Podcast
    • Combat & Classics
    • Constellary Tales
  • Blog
  • About
    • PEL FAQ
    • Meet PEL
    • About Pretty Much Pop
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • Meet Phi Fic
    • Listener Feedback
    • Links
  • Join
    • Become a Citizen
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Log In
  • Donate
  • Store
    • Episodes
    • Swag
    • Everything Else
    • Cart
    • Checkout
    • My Account
  • Contact
  • Mailing List

Foucault and Heidegger

January 17, 2012 by Seth Paskin 9 Comments

Scientia potentia est
Superman at the blackboard from learning3pointzero.com

So there was a longish (8 minutes) bit that I cut from the episode where I asked Katie whether Foucault's notions of Power and Knowledge correlated in some way with Heidegger's notions of Being and Truth.  I was incoherent and Katie understandably treated the question as the nonsense that it was.  She has since addressed the Heidegger/Foucault connection in the comments on the episode here.  One of the papers she links to by Dreyfus is precisely on this topic:  Being and Power: Heidegger and Foucault.

In his usual straightforward style, Dreyfus sets the stage:

At the heart of Heidegger's thought is the notion of being, and the same could be said of power in the works of Foucault. The history of being gives Heidegger a perspective from which to understand how in our modern world things have been turned into objects. Foucault transforms Heidegger's focus on things to a focus on selves and how they became subjects.   [You should read the paper, it's fun]

His stated goal in the paper is to push the correlation between the two as far as he can and see where it goes.  He hits upon that in which I was interested in section II. Seinsgeschichte and Genealogy.  Here Dreyfus shows the parallels between Heidegger's History of Being and Foucault's Genealogy of regimes of power.  Dreyfus is concerned to show the structural similarities in the accounts, how they deal with historical epochs and then how that leads each thinker to their criticisms of the modern notion of subjectivity and human being.

What I wanted to know was whether the similarity in the two mechanisms - Seinsgeschichte and Genealogy of Power - result in a corresponding similar function of Truth for Heidegger and Knowledge for Foucault.  I was very struck by Foucault's assertion that the advent of Discipline (as he characterizes it) essentially produced the knowledge structure of the psychological and human social sciences.  His claim in the book is that the shift from punishment of the body of the criminal to discipline of the self required the creation of fields of knowledge of the self, i.e. psychology, criminology, etc.

I understand Foucault's claim to be that Power manifested in such a way as to necessitate the kind of knowledge that would support its perpetuation.  A different paradigm of Power would presumably require different types of knowledge to support it and we can conceive - in fact the historical epochs show that different knowledge structures have in fact been in play as Power structures have changed over time.

Since Knowledge sets the boundaries for what is considered 'fact' and what is true or false, I thought of how Heidegger uses Truth in connection with Being when considering what Foucault proposes.  Heidegger's was critical of the correspondence theory of truth and dismissed knowledge structures built on correspondence (or coherence) theories.  His notion of Truth owes something to the Greek idea of alētheia, which he characterizes as 'disclosure'.

For Heidegger, what is disclosed is the world.  Disclosed here means 'given', but not as an object of knowledge, rather as an intelligible totality in which things can be conceptualized as objects or encountered as ready-to-hand, etc.  Our possible ways of conceiving of things and our selves is made possible by how the world is disclosed to us.  Heidegger's History of Being is therefore also a history of world disclosure - of possible ways of self- and other-conception.

Truth in this world-disclosure functions to reveal and conceal things simultaneously.  If we are revealed to ourselves as Cartesian subjects, our being as ens creatum (the Medieval conception of self, if you will) is concealed.  This does not mean that we can't talk about other conceptions or think about them, but we do not experience ourselves in the world that way.  Our 'truth' is being as subjects, which is determined by the way the world discloses itself to us.  Our Truth then determines how we order knowledge, what we think is knowable and how.  [The enterprise of Being and Time was to try and kick-start a world disclosure in which we didn't see ourselves as subjects.]

So for Foucault, Power orders the world and for Heidegger, Being discloses it.  In both cases, the order/disclosure creates the horizon (boundaries, structure) in which Knowledge/Truth (with a capital "K" and "T") is possible.  This possibility then shapes the methodologies and areas of knowledge (with a little "k").  In both cases, the thesis is that knowledge is historically determined.

I see how this thesis makes some sense when applied to both philosophy and the social or human sciences.  And as everyone knows, I'm sympathetic to Heidegger's quasi-mystical History of Being though I can get on board with Foucault and get something similar but more empirical and 'academic'.  What I'm wondering is whether the thesis that knowledge is determined by historically contingent power structures or world-disclosure can be said to apply to knowledge that we consider to be ahistorical such as truths of math and science.

In our philosophy of physics episode, we covered Heisenberg's extensive review of the Pre-Socratics.  It is popular to ascribe to them the initial inklings of atomic theory.  We are told that Hero of Alexandria experimented with steam power.  The Greeks did extensive development in geometry.  And yet it was hundreds or thousands of years before we got quantum mechanics, steam engines and calculus.  A conventional view would be to trace the development of ideas and technology to get from the ancient ideas and inventions to modern ones, but I am tempted to ask whether something more is at work here:  whether the limits of their conception of what was knowable and worth knowing put a limit on what they could do with these facts and objects.

So, the world had to disclose itself (power had to be ordered) differently for humans to see steam as source of power for machines for commerce.  The world-historical change started with the move out of a Medieval conception of self into Cartesian subjectivity.  If you buy this thesis, then subjectivity in some way as a symptom of a change in Power/Being made modern math and science possible.  These fields of knowledge, which we idealize as 'True' (with a capital "T"), are historically contingent - at least in their development.  People tend to think that scientific method is absolute and scientific knowledge supersedes other types of knowledge of the world.  There is the possibility, however, that a change in Power/Being might render our current conception of science as an artifact of a bygone epoch.

Bacon is credited with saying, "Knowledge is Power", but it was Hobbes who said 'the end of knowledge is power'.  My high school motto (Severna Park Falcons!) was 'Knowledge is the key to the Future'.  Really knowledge is not a means - it is knowledge that is the end of power and it is a key only to the present - what is true to us now and how we experience it.  And that can certainly change.

--seth

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Filed Under: Misc. Philosophical Musings Tagged With: Hubert Dreyfus, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, philosophy blog

Comments

  1. dmf says

    January 17, 2012 at 12:58 pm

    this is tricky as Dreyfus has a pretty pragmatist reading of Heidegger that works well with Foucault and Rorty’s reading of him via Kuhn/Davidson but I would think that Heidegger would reject Foucault’s work as “mere” anthropology. John Caputo has been pushing a pro-science Heidegger as part of his campaign for a hyper-realist Derrida which he wrote about here:
    http://www.jcrt.org/archives/01.3/caputo.shtml
    and gave an online available talk at the Slought foundation.

    Reply
  2. dmf says

    January 17, 2012 at 1:05 pm

    Lee Braver is also working these materials with his own slant:
    http://hiram.academia.edu/LeeBraver/Papers

    Reply
  3. David Buchanan says

    January 17, 2012 at 11:19 pm

    Just before the conclusion, Dreyfus gives us a section on the possibility of resisting the existing power structure. In Antiquity, Foucault thought, “it was a matter of knowing how to govern one’s own life in order to give it the most beautiful form possible.” He [Foucault] proposes “opposing to categories of the ‘law’ and of ‘prohibition’ those of the ‘art of living,’ ‘techniques of self,’ and ‘stylization of existence.’” Foucault grounds resistance in these “practices of creativity.”

    I’d like to know a lot more about the practices of creativity. I suppose it would be like setting up another set of laws and prohibitions if his offerings were very specific. I mean, it would defeat the purpose to be too systematic about our creative practices. And if Heidegger’s concern about our technological mode of being is well placed, then some kind of creative practice seems to be the right prescription again. I hope it’s true. We aren’t all doomed to live a paint-by-numbers life, are we?

    And how deep is the water here, exactly? I can’t see the bottom.

    Reply
    • dmf says

      January 18, 2012 at 8:07 am

      maybe someday the crew here will take on Rorty’s quite readable Contingency, Irony,and Solidarity where he raises these very issues.
      Dreyfus tried to go pop with his take on these matters with his and SDKelly’s All Things Shining, but neither Dreyfus or Rorty really take into account the implications of quasi-marxist systems related questions of how free are we really to shape our own lives in meaningful ways. tho Rorty was at least thinking about it.
      http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/titles/against-bosses-against-oligarchies-conversation-richard-rorty

      Reply
      • David Buchanan says

        January 18, 2012 at 10:50 am

        The classical pragmatists put a lot of emphasis on creative practices too. David Granger’s fairly recent book, “John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living,” looks at it from an educator’s point of view. (I suppose Foucault’s use of the phrase “art of living” jumped out at me because of Granger’s title.)

        http://www.amazon.com/John-Dewey-Robert-Pirsig-Living/dp/1403974020

        David Granger’s book is relatively expensive but one can read a chapter for free at robertpirsig.org.

        Reply
  4. dmf says

    January 19, 2012 at 12:13 pm

    MF on the culture of the self:

    Reply
  5. dmf says

    February 7, 2012 at 9:57 am

    http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v014/14.1.bourgault.html
    Putting Bullshit on Trial:
    The Closing Chapter of Michel Foucault’s Voyage to Antiquity

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Episode #87 – Post-Business School: The Things They Never Tell You says:
    February 15, 2013 at 5:34 am

    […] The Partially Examined Life Podcast […]

    Reply
  2. TMBA 097 (LBP87) – Post-Business School: The Things They Never Tell You says:
    November 7, 2013 at 9:08 am

    […] The Partially Examined Life Podcast […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

PEL Live Show 2023

Brothers K Live Show

Citizenship has its Benefits

Become a PEL Citizen
Become a PEL Citizen, and get access to all paywalled episodes, early and ad-free, including exclusive Part 2's for episodes starting September 2020; our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally; a community of fellow learners, and more.

Rate and Review

Nightcap

Listen to Nightcap
On Nightcap, listen to the guys respond to listener email and chat more casually about their lives, the making of the show, current events and politics, and anything else that happens to come up.

Subscribe to Email Updates

Select list(s):

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Support PEL

Buy stuff through Amazon and send a few shekels our way at no extra cost to you.

Tweets by PartiallyExLife

Recent Comments

  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 302: Erasmus Praises Foolishness (Part Two)
  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 308: Moore’s Proof of Mind-Independent Reality (Part Two for Supporters)
  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 201: Marcus Aurelius’s Stoicism with Ryan Holiday (Citizen Edition)
  • MartinK on Ep. 201: Marcus Aurelius’s Stoicism with Ryan Holiday (Citizen Edition)
  • Wayne Barr on Ep. 308: Moore’s Proof of Mind-Independent Reality (Part Two for Supporters)

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

Become a PEL Citizen!

As a PEL Citizen, you’ll have access to a private social community of philosophers, thinkers, and other partial examiners where you can join or initiate discussion groups dedicated to particular readings, participate in lively forums, arrange online meet-ups for impromptu seminars, and more. PEL Citizens also have free access to podcast transcripts, guided readings, episode guides, PEL music, and other citizen-exclusive material. Click here to join.

Blog Post Categories

  • (sub)Text
  • Aftershow
  • Announcements
  • Audiobook
  • Book Excerpts
  • Citizen Content
  • Citizen Document
  • Citizen News
  • Close Reading
  • Combat and Classics
  • Constellary Tales
  • Exclude from Newsletter
  • Featured Ad-Free
  • Featured Article
  • General Announcements
  • Interview
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Misc. Philosophical Musings
  • Nakedly Examined Music Podcast
  • Nakedly Self-Examined Music
  • NEM Bonus
  • Not School Recording
  • Not School Report
  • Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts
  • PEL Music
  • PEL Nightcap
  • PEL's Notes
  • Personal Philosophies
  • Phi Fic Podcast
  • Philosophy vs. Improv
  • Podcast Episode (Citizen)
  • Podcast Episodes
  • Pretty Much Pop
  • Reviewage
  • Song Self-Exam
  • Supporter Exclusive
  • Things to Watch
  • Vintage Episode (Citizen)
  • Web Detritus

Follow:

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Apple Podcasts

Copyright © 2009 - 2023 · The Partially Examined Life, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Copyright Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in