Foucault: A Critical Reader

by David Couzens Hoy (Editor)

This collection of articles on Michel Foucault confirms his position as one of the most influential thinkers in this last quarter of the century, and simultaneously demonstrates the current ambivalence among philosophers and social scientists about the actual grounds for such an assessment.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory

255 pages, Paperback

First published October 23, 1986

About the author

David Couzens Hoy is Distinguished Professor of Philosphy Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Reviews

[Mohammad · Rating 3 out of 5]

با ترجمه پیام یزدانجو خواندم

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS BY A VARIETY OF ACADEMICS

This 1986 collection of critical essays contains essays by philosophers such as Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Jürgen Habermas, etc. Editor David Couzens Hoy said in his Introduction, “Early plans for this collection called for critical essays ranging from quarrels over particular claims to attacks on his entire position… Combating misunderstandings of Foucault’s sometimes difficult texts and accounting for his apparent changes are, of course, necessary first steps in interpreting him fairly. Beyond questions in interpretation, however, are questions about the validity of his ideas and the coherence of his position. The idea for this reader was to gather essays representing careful counterarguments to Foucault’s own theses, or assessments of his thought by other contemporary thinkers with their own visions.”

Ian Hacking states, “Foucault is denying that the human sciences have a genuine object to talk about. Luckily, he informs us, Man is on the way out. Discourse is coming in, pure discourse without the knowing subject who utters the words.” (Pg. 3) He concludes his essay, “‘What is man?’ asked Kant. Nothing, says Foucault. ‘For what may we hope?’ asked Kant. Does Foucault give the same ‘nothing’ in reply? To think so is to misunderstand Foucault’s reply to the question about Man. Foucault said that the concept Hope is all wrong. The hopes attributed to Marx or Rousseau are perhaps part of that very concept Man, and they are a sorry basis for optimism. Optimism, pessimism, nihilism, and the like are all concepts that make sense only within the idea of a transcendental or enduring subject. Foucault is not in the least incoherent about all this. If we’re not satisfied, it should not be because he is pessimistic. IT is because he has given no surrogate for whatever it is that springs eternal in the human breast.” (Pg. 39-40)

Richard Rorty says, “In presenting Foucault’s Nietzschean attitude I am not commending it. I have no wish to do so, since much of Foucault’s so-called ‘anarchism’ seems to me self-indulgent radical chic.” (Pg. 47)

Michael Walzer begins his essay with the statement, “My concern here is not primarily with Michel Foucault’s political positions, the statements he has made, the articles he has written, his response to ‘events’---May ’68, the prison revolts of the early seventies, the Iranian revolution, the prison revolts of the early seventies, the Iranian revolution, and so on. Though he insists that he doesn’t have a political position and doesn’t want to be situated on the chessboard of available positions… he does indeed respond to events, and his statements and articles have a fairly consistent character. They are of the sort I was taught to call, in the political world where I grew up and learned to talk, ‘infantile leftism,’ that is, less an endorsement than an outrunning of the most radical argument in any political struggle. Bu Foucault’s infantile leftism is not my main concern.” (Pg. 51)

Later, Walzer adds, “Foucault… is more a theorist than a historian, and the materials out of which he constructs his books consist mostly of the written projects and proposals for these sites, the architectural plans, the handbooks of rules and regulations, rarely of actual accounts of practices and experiences.” (Pg. 58)

Habermas observes, “the question arises: how does such a singularly affirmative understanding of modern philosophizing, always directed to our own actuality and imprinted in the here-and-now, fir with Foucault’s unyielding criticism of 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?” (Pg. 106)

Mark Poster asserts, “Volumes 2-4 of ‘The History of Sexuality,’ on the contrary, might appear to some to be an exercise in paraphraxis, a string of banal summaries of well-known texts, a succession of unimaginative readings of the classics by someone who is hardly versed in the field. Moreover the magnificent writing of the earlier books, it might be argued, writing that continually surprised and delighted the reader with rhetorical devices and conceptual twists, becomes in the new books flat, straightforward, even unimaginative.” (Pg. 206-207)

For those looking for critiques of Foucault, this volume will be of great interest.