18-Foucault's Lecture on Kant

Thesis Elevenhttp://the.sagepub.com Foucault's Lecture On Kant Juergen Habermas Thesis Eleven 1986; 14; 4 DOI: 10.1177/072551368601400102 The online version of this article can be found at: http://the.sagepub.com Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Thesis Eleven can be found at: Email Alerts: http://the.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://the.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Downloaded from http://the.sagepub.com by mohammad khiabani on November 16, 2007 © 1986 Thesis Eleven Pty, Ltd., SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Answering the ~uestion: What Is Enlightenment?&dquo. the death of the 57-year old man seems an untimely event affirthe power of facticity. At the time I knew nothing of a lecure Foucault was preparing on this very subject. in Foucault the stoic attitude of the observer who keeps his precise distance. And yet. prevails over the painstakingly constructed neaning of each human life. which resists easy -ategorization. Foucault . In March 1983. 2007 © 1986 Thesis Eleven Pty. . the experience of finiteness )ecame a philosophical incitement. Nell. was combined with the opposite element of passionate. subjectively excitable. All rights reserved. Even from a listance. He viewed the power contingency. SAGE Publications. morally sensitive inellectual. and perhaps I did not understand him can only relate what impressed me: the tension. Ltd. For Foucault. &dquo.com by mohammad khiabani on November 16.Foucault’s Lecture On Kant Juergen Habermas Foucault’s death came so unexpectedly and suddenly that one can carcely resist thinking that its circumstantiality and brutal contingency locument the life and teachings of the philosopher. vhich he ultimately identified with power per se. and. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.sagepub. more from a stoical perspective than from the Christian frame of reference. Naturally. I imagine that Foucault dug through archives with the dogged energy of a detective in hot pursuit of evidence. I understood iis invitation as a call for a discussion (together with Hubert Dreyfus. I met Foucault only last year. obsessed with objectivity.uggested that we meet with some American colleagues for a private conference in 1984 to discuss Kant’s 200-year-old essay.. the political ritality of the vulnerable. between the almost serene scientific reserve of the scholar thriving for objectivity on the one hand. I 4 Downloaded from http://the. on the other. ning the merciless power of time vithout sense or triumph. which. self-consuming participation in the reality of the historical - noment. SAGE Publications. as the first to break seriously with the metaphysical heritage.What is Enlightenment?&dquo. and Max Weber to Horkheimer and Adorno.Paul Rabinow.historical indicator&dquo. as is well known. with the question of whether the human race is steadily progressing. where Kant reflects on the events of the French Revolution. . The dispute between the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Law deals. However. but. withdrawing philosophy from the True and Eternal and instead concentrating on what philosophy until then had considered the meaningless and non-existent.moral tendency&dquo. Foucault adds himself to this tradition. Here we do not encounter the Kant familiar from Foucault’s The Order of Things. when an excerpt from his lecture was published. and.com by mohammad khiabani on November 16.sagepub. initiated modern philosophical discourse.pure practical - reason. 2007 © 1986 Thesis Eleven Pty. as I only realized in May of this year. indicating a disposition of human nature toward moral improvement .&dquo.based on a text which. (published fourteen years later). &dquo. Foucault sees in Kant’s answer to the question &dquo. not in the French Revolution itself. rather. the epistemologist whose analysis of finiteness forced open the gateway to the age of anthropological thought and human sciences (Humanwissenschaften). and Charles Taylor) of various interpretations of modernity .The Dispute of the Faculties&dquo. of course. All rights reserved. the origin of an &dquo. to show that they are actually supported by an historically observable &dquo.Kant as the predecessor of the Young Hegelians. leading through Hegel.for this event is too great. A republican constitution would guarantee the rule of law (Rechtzustand) internally as well as externally the autonomy of citizens under self-made laws as well as the elimination of war from the arena of international relations. in a sense.event of our time&dquo. too interwoven with the interests of mankind not to be remembered by the peoples of the world and not to stimulate renewed at5 Downloaded from http://the. Surprisingly.. the merely accidental and transitory. Richard Rorty. Nietzsche. he finds this &dquo. of the human race. this was not exactly Foucault’s intention in this proposal. Kant clarified the endpoint in relation to which such progress could be measured. In this lecture one meets a different Kant . In his Philosophy of Ethics (Rechtsphilosophie). Such a phenomenon.ontology of actuality&dquo. in the last sentence of his lecture. cannot be forgotten. in the openly expressed enthusiasm with which a broad public had fearlessly greeted these events as an attempt at a realization of principles of natural law. Kant believes. Foucault discovers in Kant the contemporary who transforms esoteric philosophy into a critique of the present to answer the challenge of the historical moment. He seeks an &dquo. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Kant searches for an empirical foothold to ground these postulates of &dquo. Foucault relates the text of 1784 to &dquo. Ltd. Thus. Kant leaves behind the classical dispute over the exemplary preeminence of the ancients and the comparable stature of the moderns. an archer who aims his arrow at the heart of the most actual features of the present and so opens the discourse of modernity. Even in retrospect. Marx and the Young Hegelians.What is Enlightenment?&dquo. Holderlin and the young Hegel.’ with the relationship of modernity to itself. the question &dquo.sagepub. Philosophy is successfully merged with thinking stimulated by contemporary historical actuality.. Kant emphasized that revolution can never produce that &dquo. which. A philosophy now engaged with actuality is concerned with the &dquo.&dquo.com by mohammad khiabani on November 16. he emerges out of the anonymity of an impersonal endeavour and reveals himself as a flesh-and-blood human being toward whom every clinical investigation of each individual contemporary period that confronts him must be directed. the period of Enlightenment is still presented by the description it gave itself: it designates the entry into a kind of modernity which sees itself condemned to creating its self-awareness and its norms out of itself. emerges precisely in the enthusiasm for the revolution that had since taken place. Bataille and the Surrealists. The outlook schooled in eternal truths submerges in the detail of the given moment. All rights reserved. . Ltd. Lukacs. not least of all.tempts of this kind whenever conditions are propitious. MerleauPonty. In the earlier text on the Enlightenment.desire for doing moral good. From this perspective.&dquo. merges with the question &dquo. The philosopher turns contemporary . on his own part. the precursors of Western Marxism in general.rapport ’sagittal a propre actualite.&dquo.. fit with Foucault’s unyielding criticism of - possibilities. Foucault relates the two texts in such a way that a synopsis emerges. and. If this is even a paraphrase of Foucault’s own train of thought. Foucault himself all contribute to the honing of that modern consciousness of contemporary which made its appearance in philosophy with the question &dquo. always directed to our own actuality and imprinted in the here-and-now.What does this revolution mean for us?&dquo. 2007 © 1986 Thesis Eleven Pty. SAGE Publications.true reform in thinking&dquo. which is pregnant with decision and bursting under the pressure of anticipated as the first philosopher. Baudelaire and Nietzsche. Foucault discovers Kant 6 Downloaded from http://the.The Dispute of the Faculties. Foucault cites the famous sentences not entirely without. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.What is Enlightenment?&dquo. &dquo. Instead he involves diagnostic thought in that turbulent process of which acquires for him a new function self-assurance that forms the horizon of a new historical consciousness which has kept modernity in constant motion until the present. as he asserts in &dquo.&dquo. the question arises: how does such a singularly affirmative understanding of modern philosophizing. must not each line provoke the scorn of Foucault. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. in no way resolved. Foucault explicitly (if only parenthetically) establishes 7 Downloaded from http://the. the theoretician of power? Hasn’t history. which inaugurates modernity. about world-citizenship and eternal peace. claims is a dangerous facade of universally valid knowledge behind which in reality is hidden the facticity of domination of knowledge rooted in the will to power. under what appears as the cynical gaze of the genealogist Foucault. A subject. thus structurally strained to the limits. is enmeshed in an anthropocentric mode of knowledge. .modernity? How can Foucault’s self-understanding as a thinker in the tradition of the Enlightenment be compatible with his unmistakable criticism of this very form of knowledge of modernity? Kant’s philosophy of history. is the view of his friend Paul Veyne. we note certain precautionary measures against all-toostriking contradictions. rises out of the ruins of metaphysics in order to take on. in full awareness of its finite powers. the Enlightenment. To be sure. Only in the wake of this boundless will to knowledge arise the subjectivity and self-consciousness with which Kant begins. what it has achieved with its pretentious. a project that would demand unlimited power.&dquo. .com by mohammad khiabani on November 16.sagepub. under the stoic gaze of the archaeologist Foucault.sciences of man.. at least. didn’t Foucault reveal in The Order of Things the peculiar dynamic of that will to truth which is stimulated anew by each frustration to an increased and in turn failed production of knowledge? The form of knowledge of modernity is characterized by the following aporia: the cognitive subject. However. As Foucault demonstrates.progress toward betterment&dquo. SAGE Publications. a senseless back-and-forth of anonymous processes of subjugation in which power and nothing but power appears in ever-changing guises? Using Kant as an example. 2007 © 1986 Thesis Eleven Pty. In any case. he reinterprets the limits of our finite apparatus of cognition into the transcendental conditions for infinitely progressing knowledge. have a much different dynamic than the actualizing thinking of modernity cares to acknowledge . If we return to the text of Foucault’s lecture with these considerations in mind. which Foucault perceives as an insidiously operating disciplinary power. having become self-referential. Kant transforms this aporia into the structural principle of his epistemology.namely. All rights reserved. does not imply for us just an arbitrary period in the history of ideas. And this whole field is now occupied by the &dquo. frozen into an iceberg covered with the crystals of arbitrary formations of discourse? (This. Foucault explicitly warns against the pious attitude of those who are out merely to preserve the remains of the Enlightenment. Ltd. the interpretation of revolutionary enthusiasm as a sign of historical &dquo.) Doesn’t this iceberg. the speculation about a state of freedom. com by mohammad khiabani on November 16. They repeat that fundamental diagnostic question. . it can no longer be task to maintain Enlightenment and revolution as ideal models. Foucault rejects those thinkers who. the challenge of the Kant texts he has chosen is to decode that will once contained in the enthusiasm for the French Revolution.analysis of truth&dquo. Despite these precautions. Equally instructive is another contradiction in which Foucault becomes enmeshed. not least of all because of the seriousness with which he perseveres under productive contradictions. Now.analysis (A nalytik) of truth. which the &dquo.&dquo. one is surprised that Foucault presents those subversive thinkers who try to interpret their own contermporaneity as the legitimate heirs of Kantian critique.sagepub. Up to now. the will to knowledge. SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Only a complex thinking produces instructive contradictions. assisted by David Levin.. Within the circle of the philosophers of my generation who diagnose our times. first posed by Kant. in such a fashion that the former becomes deprived of the normative yardsticks that it would have to borrow from the latter. of a modernity in search of self-assurance. Perhaps the force of this contradiction caught up with Foucault in this last of his texts. Kant entangled himself in an instructive contradiction when he declared revolutionary enthusiasm to be an historical indicator that reveals an intelligible arrangement of mankind in the world of phenomena. they are captives of an &dquo. as the critical impulse worthy of preservation and in need of renewal. Foucault has most lastingly influenced the Zeitgeist. still in search of the universal conditions by which propositions can be really true or false. 2007 © 1986 Thesis Eleven Pty. in pursuit of an abstract order. He contrasts his critique of power with the &dquo. however. drawing him again into the circle of the philosophical discourse of modernity which he thought he could explode.analysis of truth&dquo. Foucault sees himself as carrying on this tradition. Ltd. own Translated by Sigrid Brauner & Robert Brown. under the altered conditions of their own time. he notes. he presents it in a completely different light. Ths connects his our thinking to the beginnings of modernity. proceed from Kant’s epistemological question. Foucault traced this will to knowledge in modern power-formations only to denounce it. Today. was unwilling to concede. Much more important is an investigation into the particular historical motivating forces which have simultaneously prevailed and concealed themselves in universalistic thought since the late eighteenth century. 8 Downloaded from http://the.the connection to earlier analyses. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. For Foucault. namely.