My basic interpretation of Foucault's genealogy is that he traces conceptual categories to moments of bifurcation in an effort to illuminate: 1) the pre-givenness of most or all of our concepts, and 2) the periodic moments of conceptual freedom that occur at the point of bifurcation or rupture.
Now that I am finally getting around to taking an in-depth look at Hegel, this is striking me as deeply Hegelian in its essence, although Foucault has an anti-humanist streak that is foreign to Hegel.
Consider the following excerpts from Hegel's essay "The Difference Between Fichte and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy":
"To sublimate such oppositions that have become fixed is the sole interest of reason. This interest does not mean that reason is against opposition and limitation in general; for necessary bifurcation is a factor of life which forms itself through eternal opposition, and totality is possible in the highest liveliness only through restoration out of the highest separation. Reason is only against the absolute fixation of bifurcation by the understanding.... When the power of unification disappears from the life of men and opposites have lost their living relation and reciprocity and gain independence, then the need for philosophy originates."
I don't claim to be an expert on either Foucault or Hegel, but this excerpt does seem to be extremely germaine to Foucault's philosophical project.
Now that I am finally getting around to taking an in-depth look at Hegel, this is striking me as deeply Hegelian in its essence, although Foucault has an anti-humanist streak that is foreign to Hegel.
Consider the following excerpts from Hegel's essay "The Difference Between Fichte and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy":
"To sublimate such oppositions that have become fixed is the sole interest of reason. This interest does not mean that reason is against opposition and limitation in general; for necessary bifurcation is a factor of life which forms itself through eternal opposition, and totality is possible in the highest liveliness only through restoration out of the highest separation. Reason is only against the absolute fixation of bifurcation by the understanding.... When the power of unification disappears from the life of men and opposites have lost their living relation and reciprocity and gain independence, then the need for philosophy originates."
I don't claim to be an expert on either Foucault or Hegel, but this excerpt does seem to be extremely germaine to Foucault's philosophical project.
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Mon, May 2, 2005 - 9:14 AMBarnaby,
Many of the French of that period wrote about Hegel insofar as they all took Kojeve's class on Hegel (which was given w/ a slightly marxist twist of course).
They either wrote against dialectics or through dialectics. So you may see strategic similarities (plus there are only so many strategic moves you can make).
IMHO Deleuze is one of the few post Hegelian, post Dialectical thinkers. I think he would suggest we not interpret Foucault back through Hegel, but get deeper into his difference. Deleueze's book on Foucault is a masterpiece. So too is Vincent Descombes' Modern French Philsophy, in which he covers Hegel's impact on the French. -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Mon, May 2, 2005 - 9:19 AMThanks Adrian. I haven't checked out Deleuze, but now I am inspired to do so. I was beginning to think it might not be possible in our epoch to conceptualize beyond the horizons Hegel delimited.
The Descombes book you mentioned looks excellent - do you think it does justice to Deleuze? -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Mon, May 2, 2005 - 6:31 PMDescombes doesn't do Deleuze - it's a very intro sort of book.
But for French Hegel, go to Kojeve himself, and Hippolyte's lovely reading of Hegel too.
You'll see where Sartre et al get it from. -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Mon, May 2, 2005 - 7:47 PMThe Descombes book I looked at on French Philosophy has a chapter on Deleuze and Derrida.
www.amazon.com/exec/obido...980-8859954 -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Wed, May 4, 2005 - 12:16 AMOh gosh, you're right, sorry, my mistake. Truth be told, I haven't looked at that book in over ten years... I shall check b4 posting next time. :) -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Wed, May 4, 2005 - 9:13 AMIt doesn't look like he spends much time on Deleuze, so it's understandable....
I'm not used to reading secondary material, but it seems like it can really help in getting the big picture. -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Thu, May 5, 2005 - 5:44 PMDescombes' book is one of my favorite all time phil books. But if you want inspired Deleuze intro, go to Michael Hardt's book on him.
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Thu, May 5, 2005 - 6:01 PMGood tips -- it would b nice to be free of him though, wouldnt it?! Hegel, I mean.. .
Hardt actually has a good section on the manner in which Deleuze is post-Hegelian, that being that for Deleuze, H's dialectic is a false movement and a bad way to start off, as it introduces contingency into the definition of identity.
Deleuze turn's H upside down. Identity should be founded on difference, rather than the other way around. -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Thu, May 5, 2005 - 8:56 PM> Identity should be founded on difference, rather than the other way around.
IMHO we should leap clear of both the one and the many. Both are conceptual imputations. But as a practical matter, if nothing else, I think both approaches have a certain therapeutic value. Bringing identity to differance unites disjunction, while bringing difference to identity liberates identity from conceptual grasping.
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Fri, May 6, 2005 - 3:09 PMFreedom from Hegel?
There's a fantasy?
Caught, we are, between Hegel and Kant. I quite like it here... -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Wed, May 11, 2005 - 10:33 AMKojeve's commentary on Hegel, as I recall, was the "commentary". Escape from Hegel? We are all Hegelians even if we are "anti-Hegelians" said one of my good friends. I think he had a point.
Gilton
Working through Descartes, Kant, Hegel is like working through modern physics. You need them in order to understand all the "good" stuff. : ] -
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Difference in itself
Thu, May 12, 2005 - 6:04 PMHuck Fegel!
ok, this from chapter 5 of V Descombes' superb volume "Modern French Philosophy:"
"Hegel had said that difference is contradictory in itself. But the question now is to pave the way for a non-contradictory, non-dialectical consideration of difference, which would not envisage it as the simple contrary of identity, nor be obliged to see itself as 'dialectically' identical with identity. In tackling this difficulty, French philosophy — in the form of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida — at last approaches the crux of the matter. We come finally to that remarkable point of modern metaphysics which all preceding discourse had indicated like a flickering compass. ..."
--Adrian -
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Re: Difference in itself
Thu, May 12, 2005 - 10:59 PMHuck Fegel? Regel hules! -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Difference in itself
Fri, October 7, 2005 - 5:09 PMI had a Hegel professor in college that claimed Hegel subsumed all philosophy since. He was kind of a nut. Wore a cape to class sometimes. He would play this game with us where we would name a particular idea that we found in another thinker's work, and he would find a passage from Hegel that said basically the same thing. I have to admit, we rarely stumped him. Derrida passages could stump him, but somehow that feels like cheating... Hegel certainly doesn't always reach the same conclusions as the other thinkers, but an aweful lot of the concepts were worked out by him. So, as much as I don't like his overall system, I have to admit, as a thinker, re hules. -
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Re: Difference in itself
Fri, October 7, 2005 - 8:03 PMhegel was the hardest philosophy class I took in college . . .
now i get drunque instead . . .
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Re: Difference in itself
Fri, January 5, 2007 - 8:22 AMyes, but did hegel say anything original? or did he simply write a history of philosophy -- culminating, naturally, in him and in the German Spirit <barf>
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Fri, January 27, 2006 - 6:20 AMTHere is some sense that both seem to be concerned with emancipatory practives. But I would disagree that they should be lumped together at all really. For hegel history eventually resolves its contradictions and comes to an end of some sort. For Foucault this isnt so. You never get outside of power knowledge realtions. There is no articualtion of freedom outside of realtions of power. You never get "free" in the liberal sense of the term. -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Fri, January 27, 2006 - 3:44 PMI read Foucault as strongly believing in moments of freedom - they simply doesn' t occur as the outcome of historical unfoldings. But it does seem to me that the bifurcation itself is a moment of freedom, and one Foucault wants to bring about by tracing it back to its origin.
I also wouldn't say that the fact their views are dissimilar in some ways doesn't mean they are dissimilar in all ways. It may be that in some regards they may be 'lumped together'. -
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Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Sat, January 6, 2007 - 12:50 PM> yes, but did hegel say anything original? or did he simply write a history of philosophy
Personally, I would say, yes, he made many profound original and contributions. And,love him or hate him, writing a history of philosophy was itself a monumental contribution to philosophy. Before Hegel, history of philosophy was not taught in philosophy departments. These days, it's most of what is taught.
This is a revolutionary insight - that philosophy is wed to the processes of history, and is not mere abstraction.
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Unsu...
Re: Foucault's Genealogy: Hegelian?
Sat, January 6, 2007 - 4:20 PM(i wish history of philosophy was taught in philosophy departments. it seems to me, at least in the us, most philosophy departments have analytic leanings). sigh. :)
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