Foucault - Chomsky #4
The debate then turns directly into the question of the justification of the proletariate revolution in terms of either justice or anti-power. (Sorry, didn't mean to load the issue, "justification" was the only applicable term that came to mind.)
In the purest sense of what i take to be the claim of the Marxist revolution i would have to say that Foucault makes a very good point. The rationalizations that we use in support of the class struggle are themselves products of the power structure which is meant to be destroyed. A too devout adherence to such ideas, then, is an indication that the revolution at hand is not the Marxist revolution.
Conversely, the attempt toward a value-less revolution seems to me paramont to a claim of faith ... a "teleological suspension of the ethical" to use a Kierkegaardian term, except that Kierkegaard at least believed that a direct personal access to the godhead was possible. The structure announced by Foucault seems more akin to the irrational Knight of Faith that does not have even a personal reason for turning against the world, much less an explicable reason.
Chomsky notes that we need not have an idea of perfect justice to move forward, which is good because we cannot have such an idea. I'm not sure the same does not hold for the idea of the end of class power, or of power in general (i think Foucault would consider them one in the same).
Do we move forward as-if the process will gain for us the knowledge? ... or do we move forward on the limited knowledge we have (knowing it make take many revolutions to come nearer perfection of the ideas)? I am uncertain how Foucault would actually state the former case, or even if he would accept the task of so doing. He stands out, though, in my mind in seeming to believe something of this kind. One encounters such reasoning, but usually in religious terms, be it like SK above, or in Eastern mysticism or American shamanism ... there is something inexplicable but personally knowable that drives the devotee.
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An aside from the world of developmental psychology and neuroscience ...
It appears the the notion of justice that we do have, from the best evidence currently available, is hard-wired in the manner that linguistic capability probably is. The timing under which the human child develops the notion of of right and wrong, along with the notions of punishment and digust, comes together so completely in so little time under degraded conditions of input ... it is hard to imagine a scientific explanation other than a hard-coding of the capacity to learn social right and wrong.
I think of "justice" in relation to this learned right and wrong ... a higher order (new brain) re-calculation of the earliest learned value system.
Anyway ... for our discussion ...i say hard-wired, but not our particulary value system is hard-wired, only the notion of having one. If we could tear down all the power structures during a revolution and then raise a new generation of children, it is hard to say what their value system would be like (from this vantage it is hard to say) ... but it is unlikely that it would be value-less. The concern that a value-less revolution (to avoid class ideas) would lead to a value-less society and world (which we think of as probably violent and laking good) is likely a misguided notions. The post revolutionary child would still pick up a value system, just one unknown to us at this time.
Sadly, though, disgust, judgement and punishment also are tightly tied into this stage of human development. I don't know that we an say that these things can be thrown off, or just appended to a different, hopefully better, class of ideas.
In the purest sense of what i take to be the claim of the Marxist revolution i would have to say that Foucault makes a very good point. The rationalizations that we use in support of the class struggle are themselves products of the power structure which is meant to be destroyed. A too devout adherence to such ideas, then, is an indication that the revolution at hand is not the Marxist revolution.
Conversely, the attempt toward a value-less revolution seems to me paramont to a claim of faith ... a "teleological suspension of the ethical" to use a Kierkegaardian term, except that Kierkegaard at least believed that a direct personal access to the godhead was possible. The structure announced by Foucault seems more akin to the irrational Knight of Faith that does not have even a personal reason for turning against the world, much less an explicable reason.
Chomsky notes that we need not have an idea of perfect justice to move forward, which is good because we cannot have such an idea. I'm not sure the same does not hold for the idea of the end of class power, or of power in general (i think Foucault would consider them one in the same).
Do we move forward as-if the process will gain for us the knowledge? ... or do we move forward on the limited knowledge we have (knowing it make take many revolutions to come nearer perfection of the ideas)? I am uncertain how Foucault would actually state the former case, or even if he would accept the task of so doing. He stands out, though, in my mind in seeming to believe something of this kind. One encounters such reasoning, but usually in religious terms, be it like SK above, or in Eastern mysticism or American shamanism ... there is something inexplicable but personally knowable that drives the devotee.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An aside from the world of developmental psychology and neuroscience ...
It appears the the notion of justice that we do have, from the best evidence currently available, is hard-wired in the manner that linguistic capability probably is. The timing under which the human child develops the notion of of right and wrong, along with the notions of punishment and digust, comes together so completely in so little time under degraded conditions of input ... it is hard to imagine a scientific explanation other than a hard-coding of the capacity to learn social right and wrong.
I think of "justice" in relation to this learned right and wrong ... a higher order (new brain) re-calculation of the earliest learned value system.
Anyway ... for our discussion ...i say hard-wired, but not our particulary value system is hard-wired, only the notion of having one. If we could tear down all the power structures during a revolution and then raise a new generation of children, it is hard to say what their value system would be like (from this vantage it is hard to say) ... but it is unlikely that it would be value-less. The concern that a value-less revolution (to avoid class ideas) would lead to a value-less society and world (which we think of as probably violent and laking good) is likely a misguided notions. The post revolutionary child would still pick up a value system, just one unknown to us at this time.
Sadly, though, disgust, judgement and punishment also are tightly tied into this stage of human development. I don't know that we an say that these things can be thrown off, or just appended to a different, hopefully better, class of ideas.
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 11:09 PM
1 Comments:
I like these points. I think the reason Foucault focuses on power rather than justice is precisely because the value system is inevitable (you said "hard-wired"), but the particular values are contingent and always culturally determined. Justice itself is not biological, but culturally determined because it is presupposed by contingent values.
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