El presente artículo se propone analizar el debate que enfrentó a Jacques Derrida y Michel Foucault en torno a la Historia de la locura escrita por este último. En primer lugar, se ofrecerá una reconstrucción de las posiciones y argumentos sostenidos por cada autor, poniendo de relieve la problemática en torno a los modos de pensar y escribir la historia por parte de cada uno. En segundo lugar, se intentará aportar una respuesta diferente a la dada por (...) Foucault en 1972 al problema planteado por Derrida sobre la posibilidad de una historia crítica de la razón. En efecto, Foucault se centró en la discusión del texto cartesiano y en la importancia de las modificaciones al nivel del sujeto que, en dicho texto, implicaron la exclusión de la locura. En este artículo, sin embargo, aunque de manera complementaria, se retomará el acontecimiento del “Gran Encierro” atendiendo allí a las marcas de la conformación de una subjetividad moral. Se espera, a través de este análisis, poner de relieve la relación entre subjetividad e historia como eje de la historización crítica desarrollada por Foucault y atender a la objeción derridiana desde un enfoque distinto al planteado por el propio Foucault. (shrink)

In this paper, I’ll discuss the philosophical debate that took place between Michel Foucault and his student Jacques Derrida on Rene Descartes’ doctrine of cogito. In my exposition, I shall discuss Descartes’ contributions to modern philosophy in twofold manner, namely the central and the marginal doctrines. At the centre of Cartesian modernity, there is cogito and the emergence of human subjectivity, reason and rationalism, truth in terms of clearness and distinctness and the existence of God. On the (...) margins, we come across madness, deception, demon and so forth. These are the issues, which are subjected to rigorous criticism and rejection by Foucault on the one hand, and Derrida on the other. The debate tries to reallocate the central and the marginal themes by overemphasizing the marginal issues and thereby moving one step forward. However, in the process of doing that they have under-emphasized the central doctrines and have gone two steps backward. The ambition lies in paving the way for an internal departure from Cartesian modernity to Foucauldian–Derridean postmodernity. Instead of going to a critical reading of Derrida’s interpretation of the Cartesian text step by step and his debate with Foucault, the present paper hopes to provide some of the basic issues involved in Descartes and Foucauldian–Derridean reaction to those issues. In my attempt to articulate the debate, I shall furnish some clarifications, annotations and summations that may be useful for the limited end of preliminary acquaintance with Descartes on the one hand, and Foucault and Derrida on the other. (shrink)

본 논문은 데카르트의 회의라는 주제를 둘러싼 푸코와 데리다의 논쟁에 나오는 대립된 주장을 검토하고 그것의 철학적 의미를 규명하는 것을 목표로 한다. 데카르트에 대한 두 철학자의 독해는 논증의 구조를 중시하는 입장과 사유하는 주체의 실천적 태도를 중시하 는 입장으로 특징지을 수 있다. 먼저 푸코는 코기토를 확립함에 있어 성찰 의 기획이 갖 는 철학적 함의, 즉 억압적 성격을 비판한다. 광기의 위상과 관련해서 그는 데카르트가 코 기토를 정립하면서 광기를 이성의 영역 밖으로 완전히 배제시켰다는 점에서 데카르트를 비판한다. 이에 반해 데리다는 데카르트가 악령의 가설과 같은 형이상학적 회의를 (...) 구분해 서 사용하고 있음을 지적하면서 데카르트가 이런 형이상적 회의를 통해서 우리를 사유의 극한으로 혹은 형이상학적 광기로 이끈다고 주장한다. 이런 논쟁을 통해 우리는 데리다가 악령에 대한 철학적 성찰을 통해서 추적한 이성의 원천의 의미를 이해할 수 있을 것이다. 그리고 그의 이런 논증은 사유의 한계를 검토하게 할 뿐 아니라 어디에서 이성이 무의 침 묵에 저항해서 등장하는지를 이해하게 해준다. 우리는 이런 이성의 탄생에 대한 성찰을 통 해 역사적 구조에 기반한 사유와 구별되는 철학적 역사성을 발견할 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction, by Olivia Custer, Penelope Deutscher, and Samir Haddad -- Part I: Openings -- 1. The Foucault-Derrida Debate on the Argument Concerning Madness and Dreams, by Pierre Macherey -- 2. Looking Back at History of Madness, by Lynne Huffer -- 3. Violence and Hyperbole: From "Cogito and the History of Madness" to The Death Penalty, by Michael Naas -- Part II: Surviving the Philosophical Problem: History Crosses Transcendental Analysis.

Foucault and Derrida react in two different ways to the new paradigm imposed by structuralism. Foucault uses structuralism to overcome phenomenology, in fact structuralism shows the naivety of phenomenology, in its claim to rely on conscience to constitute meaning. Instead, Derrida on the contrary immediately nurtures a certain distrust of structuralism, especially in its philosophical ambitions and uses the resources of phenomenology to criticize it, showing the metaphysical implications operating in it. We want to show how (...) this opposing position is generated by the specific way in which the two philosophers have responded to the open problems and bequeathed by Husserlian phenomenology. In particular, the theme of “passive genesis,” which was raised in the French debate by Tran-Duc-Thao and Merleau-Ponty, is central. In the first writings it emerges how Foucault has received Merleau-Ponty’s theses and it is precisely to overcome them that he inaugurates an archaeological analysis to try to distance himself from the normalizing anthropological discourse present in the passive synthesis. Derrida reads passive genesis in a radically different way from Merleau-Ponty (and therefore Foucault): the radical nature of Husserl’s phenomenology has opened a space to question the transcendental genesis of philosophical discourse and its possibility of transcending its historical, social and psychological genesis and therefore the sciences that preside over these dimensions. Consequently, showing the naivety of structuralism, Derrida’s research of the sixties is configured as post-structuralist. (shrink)

"One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy." -- J. Hillis Miller, Yale University Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty (...) years later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable. (shrink)

This volume reflects Derrida's engagement in the late 1970s with French political debates on the teaching of philosophy and the reform of the French university system. While addressing specific contemporary political issues, the essays deal mainly with much broader concerns. With his typical rigor and spark, Derrida investigates the genealogy of several central concepts which any debate about teaching and the university must confront. Thus there are essays on the 'teaching body', both the faculty corps and the (...) strange interplay in the French tradition between the mind and body of the professor; on the question of age in teaching, analyzed through a famous letter of Hegel; on the class, the classroom, and the socio-economic concept of class in education; on language, especially so-called 'natural languages' like French; and on the legacy of the revolutionary tradition, the Estates General, in the university. (shrink)

Explores the biographical, historical and philosophical connections between Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault Derrida and Foucault are unquestionably two of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Both share a similar motivation to challenge our fundamental structures of meaning - in texts, political structures, and epistemic and discursive practices - in order to inspire new ways of thinking. Between Foucault and Derridaexplores the notorious Cogito debate and includes: the central articles, an important piece (...) by Jean-Marie Beyssade, along with a letter Foucault wrote to Beyssade in response - both these pieces available for the first time in English translation. In the second part of the book, 10 essays written by some of the most well-known scholars working in contemporary continental philosophy address the various philosophical intersections and divergences of these two profoundly important thinkers. The first collection of the central essays involved in the Cogitodebate between Foucault and Derrida Includes the first English translations of Jean-Marie Beyssade's important 1973 article on the debate and Foucault's letter in response to it Some of the best-known scholars working in continental philosophy today examine where Foucault and Derrida converge and diverge, and how they ultimately shaped each other's projects Contributors Amy Allen * Ellen Armour * Yubraj Aryal * Jean-Marie Beyssade * Vernon W. Cisney * Jacques Derrida * Fred Evans * Michele Foucault * Peter Gratton * Leonard Lawlor * Edward McGushin * Nicolae Morar * Jeff Nealon * Christopher Penfield * Arkady Plotnitsk * Paul Rekret * Alan Schrift. (shrink)

Prodigiously influential, Jacques Derrida gave rise to a comprehensive rethinking of the basic concepts and categories of Western philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, with writings central to our understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethics and values. In 1993, a conference was organized around the question, 'Whither Marxism?’, and Derrida was invited to open the proceedings. His plenary address, 'Specters of Marx', delivered in two parts, forms the basis of this book. Hotly debated when it (...) was first published, a rapidly changing world and world politics have scarcely dented the relevance of this book. (shrink)

Prodigiously influential, Jacques Derrida gave rise to a comprehensive rethinking of the basic concepts and categories of Western philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, with writings central to our understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethics and values. In 1993, a conference was organized around the question, 'Whither Marxism?’, and Derrida was invited to open the proceedings. His plenary address, 'Specters of Marx', delivered in two parts, forms the basis of this book. Hotly debated when it (...) was first published, a rapidly changing world and world politics have scarcely dented the relevance of this book. (shrink)

" De quoi demain sera-t-il fait? " interroge Victor Hugo. Un philosophe, une historienne répondent au long d'un dialogue serré, exigeant. Pourquoi ont-ils choisi de faire ce livre ensemble? En raison d'une longue amitié, au nom d'une histoire commune, en vertu de la qualité d'un débat qui n'a jamais cessé entre eux depuis qu'à la fin des années soixante la jeune étudiante découvrit l'importance de ce penseur de quinze ans son aîné qui, avec d'autres, réveillait l'esprit critique de toute une (...) génération. Si les points de vue sont différents, l'héritage intellectuel est commun. Et c'est cet héritage qu'ils s'attachent à inventorier avant de circonscrire des enjeux majeurs de notre temps : comment penser la différence dans l'universel? La famille a-t-elle encore un avenir? La liberté se réduira-t-elle demain pour l'homme à l'intelligibilité des contraintes qui pèsent sur lui, ou le désir et l'imprévisible auront-ils encore leur place? Que nous dit la souffrance des animaux que nous massacrons? La page de la révolution est-elle définitivement tournée après l'échec du communisme? Est-il envisageable d'en finir une fois pour toutes avec la peine de mort? Quelles seront demain les formes nouvelles de l'antisémitisme et comment les combattre? L'échange s'achève sur un éloge de la psychanalyse, référence commune tout au long du dialogue. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo consiste en un comentario del ensayo Ser justo con Freud: La historia de la locura en la era del psicoanálisis de Derrida con el objeto de rastrear lo que no puede ser reapropiado por la presuposición del marco del debate entre Derrida y Foucault. Al analizar la pregunta “¿quién anuncia el no-recurso?”, exploraré la forma en que la escritura de Derrida es afectada por la necesidad e imposibilidad de no reprimir la sinrazón. (...) Argumentaré que Derrida compulsivamente escribe los efectos de dicha resistencia a no reprimir la sinrazón a través de la repetición de la búsqueda Foucaultiana de un más allá de la razón. Esta “compulsión de repetición’ no solamente reabre una y otra vez el debate, sino que desencadena el retorno de la sinrazón en la forma de un desarreglo de los principios de identidad y tiempo lineal, desestabilizando todo forma de autoría sobre la historia de la locura en general y cada una de sus críticas. Este artículo se aproxima a los intercambios entre Derrida y Foucault deconstruyendo la premisa de la posibilidad de un debate sobre la historia de la locura. (shrink)

"Ce qui s'écrit ici différance marque l'étrange mouvement, l'unité irréductiblement impure d'un différer (détour, délai, délégation, division, inégalité, espacement) dont l'économie excède les ressources déclarées du logos classique. C'est ce mouvement qui donne unité aux essais ici enchaînés. Qu'ils questionnent l'écriture littéraire ou le motif structuraliste (dans les champs de la critique, des “sciences de l'homme” ou de la philosophie), que par une lecture configurante ils en appellent à Nietzsche ou à Freud, à Husserl ou à Heidegger, à Artaud, Bataille, (...) Blanchot, Foucault, Jabès, Levinas, ils n'ont qu'un lieu d'insistance : le point d'articulation dérobée entre l'écriture et la différence. A peser sur cette articulation, ils tentent de déplacer les deux termes."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

In 1968, Michel Foucault agreed to a series of interviews with critic Claude Bonnefoy, which were to be published in book form. Bonnefoy wanted a dialogue with Foucault about his relationship to writing rather than about the content of his books. The project was abandoned, but a transcript of the initial interview survived and is now being published for the first time in English. In this brief and lively exchange, Foucault reflects on how he approached the written (...) word throughout his life, from his school days to his discovery of the pleasure of writing. Wide ranging, characteristically insightful, and unexpectedly autobiographical, the discussion is revelatory of Foucault's intellectual development, his aims as a writer, his clinical methodology ("let's say I'm a diagnostician"), and his interest in other authors, including Raymond Roussel and Antonin Artaud. Foucault discloses, in ways he never had previously, details about his home life, his family history, and the profound sense of obligation he feels to the act of writing. In his Introduction, Philippe Artieres investigates Foucault's engagement in various forms of oral discourse--lectures, speeches, debates, press conferences, and interviews--and their place in his work. Speech Begins after Death shows Foucault adopting a new language, an innovative autobiographical communication that is neither conversation nor monologue, and is one of his most personal statements about his life and writing. (shrink)

In this essay and the next, on Foucault, Derrida reencounters two thinkers to whom he had earlier devoted important essays, which precipitated stormy discussions and numerous divisions within the intellectual milieus influenced by their ...

Explores the biographical, historical and philosophical connections between Jacques Derrida and Michel FoucaultBetween Foucault and Derrida explores the notorious Cogito debate and includes: the central articles, an important piece by Jean-Marie Beyssade, along with a letter Foucault wrote to Beyssade in response both these pieces available for the first time in English translation. In the second part of the book, 10 essays written by some of the most well-known scholars working in contemporary continental philosophy address (...) the various philosophical intersections and divergences of these two profoundly important thinkers.Key FeaturesThe first collection of the central essays involved in the Cogito debate between Foucault and DerridaIncludes the first English translations of Jean-Marie Beyssades important 1973 article on the debate and Foucault's letter in responseSome of the best-known scholars working in continental philosophy today examine where Foucault and Derrida converge and diverge, and how they ultimately shaped each others projectsContributorsAmy Allen, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA.Ellen Armour, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Tennessee, USA. Yubraj Aryal, University of Montreal, Canada and New York University, USA. Jean-Marie Beyssade, University of Paris IV, France.Vernon W. Cisney, Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, USA.Fred Evans, Duquesne University, Pennsylvania, USA.Peter Gratton, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.Leonard Lawlor, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA.Edward McGushin, Stonehill College, Massachusetts, USA.Nicolae Morar, University of Oregon, Oregon, USA. Jeff Nealon, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA.Christopher Penfield, Purdue University, Indiana, USA.Arkady Plotnitsky, Purdue University, Indiana, USA. Paul Rekret, Richmond, The American International University in London, UK. Alan Schrift, Grinnell College, Iowa, USA. (shrink)

Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene; influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Both Rortian pragmatism, which draws the consequences of post-war developments in Anglo-American philosophy, and Derridian deconstruction, which extends and troubles the phonomenological and Heideggerian influence on the Continental tradition, have hitherto generally been viewed as mutually exclusive philosophical language games. The purpose of this volume is to bring deconstruction and pragmatism into critical confrontation (...) with one another through staging a debate between Derrida and Rorty, itself based on discussions that took place at the College International de Philosophie in Paris in 1993. The ground for this debate is layed out in introductory papers by Simon Critchley and Ernesto Laclau, and the remainder of the volume records Derrida's and Rorty's responses to each other's work. Chantal Mouffe gives an overview of the stakes of this debate in a helpful preface. (shrink)

" Ce livre est un livre sur l'héritage, bien qu'il ne doive pas s'enfermer avec des "fils de Marx". C'est plus précisément un livre sur ce que "hériter" peut non pas vouloir-dire, de façon univoque, mais, peut-être, enjoindre de façon contradictoire et contradictoirement obligatoire. Comment répondre, comment se sentir responsable d'un héritage qui vous lègue des ordres contradictoires? " Avec Marx & Sons, Jacques Derrida nous livre sa contribution au débat suscité par son Spectres de Marx, paru chez Galilée (...) en 1993. Dans ce texte, qui répond aux questions et objections formulées par une dizaine d'intellectuels, en majorité des marxistes de langue anglaise, il affronte dans son ensemble la question de la signification historique du marxisme. (shrink)

'There is nothing outside the text.' Possibly no single statement has caused such a storm in critical theory as this famous observation by the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. While it is often misunderstood as meaning that nothing is real and that political actions are therefore pointless, Debating Derrida demonstrates that Derrida's philosophy does not lack political conviction. Niall Lucy examines three key terms - text, writing and differance - as they are used in three famous debates: (...) class='Hi'>Derrida's disputes over speech-acts with John R. Searle, over discourse with Michel Foucault and over apartheid. Lucy also takes up the issue of Derrida's relationship to postmodernism and questions the 'political imperative' of the need to justify philosophy and the humanities in general according to a notion of their 'usefulness'. Debating Derrida decisively shows that instead of disagreeing with Derrida, we should rather be defending him. (shrink)

Rassemble 15 textes de J. Derrida consacrés à la mort et au deuil, souvent à l'occasion de la mort de ses amis : Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Blanchot, etc..... P.-A. Brault et M. Naas analysent la logique des textes et élaborent la question d'une politique du deuil.

This is the first book to consider the debate between two of the most prominent philosophers and social theorists of the 20th century: Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas. It presents a unique collection of articles by the two figures and by those who have written about them, and includes pieces published in English for the first time.The book will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in the implications of Derrida's deconstruction and Habermas's critical (...) theory for issues such as international relations, Europe, tolerance, rights, multiculturalism and identity politics, and the nature of philosophy.Including an introduction to the differences and affinities between Derrida's and Habermas's works, introductions to each text, suggestions for further reading, and a bibliography, this book is the ideal starting point for students and scholars wishing to understand the relationship between these two great thinkers.Key Features: *Unique - the first Reader to consider the Habermas-Derrida debate*Features pieces by Habermas and Derrida published in English for the first time*Includes primary and secondary texts*Provides introductions to the debate and to each text, and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

Foucault's previously unpublished doctoral dissertation on Kant offers the definitive statement of his relationship to Kant and to the critical tradition of philosophy. This introduction and commentary to Kant's least discussed work, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, is the dissertation that Michel Foucault presented in 1961 as his doctoral thesis. It has remained unpublished, in any language, until now. In his exegesis and critical interpretation of Kant's Anthropology, Foucault raises the question of the relation between (...) psychology and anthropology, and how they are affected by time. Though a Kantian “critique of the anthropological slumber,” Foucault warns against the dangers of treating psychology as a new metaphysics, explores the possibilities of studying man empirically, and reflects on the nature of time, art and technique, self-perception, and language. Extending Kant's suggestion that any empirical knowledge of man is inextricably tied up with language, Foucault asserts that man is a world citizen insofar as he speaks. For both Kant and Foucault, anthropology concerns not the human animal or self-consciousness but, rather, involves the questioning of the limits of human knowledge and concrete existence. This long-unknown text is a valuable contribution not only to a scholarly appreciation of Kant's work but as the first outline of what would later become Foucault's own frame of reference within the history of philosophy. It is thus a definitive statement of Foucault's relation to Kant as well as Foucault's relation to the critical tradition of philosophy. By going to the heart of the debate on structuralist anthropology and the status of the human sciences in relation to finitude, Foucault also creates something of a prologue to his foundational The Order of Things. Michel Foucault is widely considered to be one of the most important academic voices of the twentieth century and has proven influential across disciplines. (shrink)

"In this newest installment in Chicagos series of Jacques Derridas seminars, the renowned philosopher attempts one of his most ambitious goals: the first truly philosophical argument against the death penalty. While much has been written against the death penalty, Derrida contends that Western philosophy is massively, if not always overtly, complicit with a logic in which a sovereign state has the right to take a life. Haunted by this notion, he turns to the key places where such logic has (...) been established - and to the place it has been most effectively challenged: literature. With his signature genius and patient yet dazzling readings of an impressive breadth of texts, Derrida examines everything from the Bible to Plato to Camus to Jean Genet, with special attention to Kant and postWorld War II juridical texts, to draw the landscape of death penalty discourses. Keeping clearly in view the death rows and execution chambers of the United States, he shows how arguments surrounding cruel and unusual punishment depend on what he calls an 'anesthesial logic, ' which has also driven the development of death penalty technology from the French guillotine to lethal injection. Confronting a demand for philosophical rigor, he pursues provocative analyses of the shortcomings of abolitionist discourse. Above all, he argues that the death penalty and its attendant technologies are products of a desire to put an end to one of the most fundamental qualities of our finite existence: the radical uncertainty of when we will die. Arriving at a critical juncture in history - especially in the United States, one of the last Christian-inspired democracies to resist abolition - The Death Penalty is both a timely response to an important ethical debate and a timeless addition to Derridas esteemed body of work"--Unedited summary from book jacket. (shrink)

« "...le mot qu'Aristote avoit tres-familier : 'O mes amis, il n'y a nul amy'." (Montaigne, De l'amitié.)Dernier mot, dernière volonté, cette sentence testamentaire nous vient du fond des temps. Sourdement soupirée, transmise et traduite, transférée aussi en tant de langues. Mais l'apostrophe appelle peut-être une science nouvelle, comme si elle ne consentait à se laisser aimer, au prix d'une philologie singulière, que pour une philosophie encore à venir.À méditer inlassablement l'aporie d'une telle adresse, on s'enfonce dans le labyrinthe de (...) sa provenance mais aussi de son avenir.Par provision, voici un fil d'Ariane, justement, un seul fil, tenu de main de femme, de fille, de sœur : où chemine la politique de ce "mot"? Ouvertement ou en secret, une architecture de la cité ou de l'État n'aurait-elle pas orienté cette provocation? Une généalogie du politique ne s'est-elle pas liée, dans notre tradition, au couple ami/ennemi et, en lui, au concept canonique et dominant de l'amitié?L'analyse ici proposée serait aussi une contre-généalogie. Elle inquiète en effet le motif généalogique lui-même, un certain ordre de la filiation, à savoir le schème familial et phallocentrique de la fraternité, la figure du frère (plutôt que de la sœur), la virilité de la vertu dont l'autorité reste si souvent incontestée dans notre culture de l'amitié et dans les modèles accrédités de la démocratie.À l'horizon de toutes ces questions, celle de la vertu, donc, dans une démocratie à venir. La vertu, est-ce une chose du passé? Oui et non.Le mot ainsi prêté à Aristote, qui ne l'a pas cité? Une fois infléchi ou orchestré, jusque dans sa grammaire, par un concert d'interprètes somnambules, vigilants et automatiques, voici qu'il traverse en rêvant, récitation psalmodiée d'une immense rumeur, le grand jour de notre mémoire : de Montaigne à Kant, par exemple, de Nietzsche à Blanchot, oui, Blanchot, l'ami de Bataille et des penseurs de ce temps, le penseur de L'Amitié ("...tandis que je me remémore la parole attribuée par Diogène Laërce à Aristote : 'O mes amis, il n'y a pas d'ami'", ce sont aussi les derniers mots d'un autre livre de Blanchot, Foucault tel que je l'imagine).Mais l'avenir de "ce mot qu'Aristote avoit tres-familier" vient encore sur nous. Déjà là, c'est comme s'il ne nous était pas encore arrivé, tenant en réserve, dans l'un de ses plis, une promesse de démocratie encore impensée, encore impossible, toujours à venir : la promesse même. »J. D.SOMMAIRE : Avant-proposOligarchies : nommer, énumérer, dénombrerAimer d'amitié : peut-être - le nom et l'adverbeCette « vérité » folle : le juste nom d'amitiéL'ami revenant (au nom de la « démocratie »)De l'hostilité absolue. La cause de la philosophie et le spectre du politiqueSerment, conjuration, fraternisation - ou la question « armée »Celui qui m'accompagneReplis« En langue d'homme, la fraternité »« Pour la première fois dans l'histoire de l'humanité »L'Oreille de HeideggerPhilopolémologie (Geschlecht IV)Portées de voix. Rhétorique de l'amitiéL'avoir, l'être et l'autre : tendre l'oreille, accorder ce qu'on n'a pasQuelques-uns (Le mariage du ciel et de l'enfer)Tautologie, monologie, otologie. Le sacrifice de Heidegger. (shrink)

In 1980, Michel Foucault began a vast project of research on the relationship between subjectivity and truth, an examination of conscience, confession, and truth-telling that would become a crucial feature of his life-long work on the relationship between knowledge, power, and the self. The lectures published here offer one of the clearest pathways into this project, contrasting Greco-Roman techniques of the self with those of early Christian monastic culture in order to uncover, in the latter, the historical origin of (...) many of the features that still characterize the modern subject. They are accompanied by a public discussion and debate as well as by an interview with Michael Bess, all of which took place at the University of California, Berkeley, where Foucault delivered an earlier and slightly different version of these lectures. Foucault analyzes the practices of self-examination and confession in Greco-Roman antiquity and in the first centuries of Christianity in order to highlight a radical transformation from the ancient Delphic principle of “know thyself” to the monastic precept of “confess all of your thoughts to your spiritual guide.” His aim in doing so is to retrace the genealogy of the modern subject, which is inextricably tied to the emergence of the “hermeneutics of the self”—the necessity to explore one’s own thoughts and feelings and to confess them to a spiritual director—in early Christianity. According to Foucault, since some features of this Christian hermeneutics of the subject still determine our contemporary “gnoseologic” self, then the genealogy of the modern subject is both an ethical and a political enterprise, aiming to show that the “self” is nothing but the historical correlate of a series of technologies built into our history. Thus, from Foucault’s perspective, our main problem today is not to discover what “the self” is, but to try to analyze and change these technologies in order to change its form. (shrink)

In this newest installment in Chicago’s series of Jacques Derrida’s seminars, the renowned philosopher attempts one of his most ambitious goals: the first truly philosophical argument against the death penalty. While much has been written against the death penalty, Derrida contends that Western philosophy is massively, if not always overtly, complicit with a logic in which a sovereign state has the right to take a life. Haunted by this notion, he turns to the key places where such logic (...) has been established—and to the place it has been most effectively challenged: literature. With his signature genius and patient yet dazzling readings of an impressive breadth of texts, Derrida examines everything from the Bible to Plato to Camus to Jean Genet, with special attention to Kant and post–World War II juridical texts, to draw the landscape of death penalty discourses. Keeping clearly in view the death rows and execution chambers of the United States, he shows how arguments surrounding cruel and unusual punishment depend on what he calls an “anesthesial logic,” which has also driven the development of death penalty technology from the French guillotine to lethal injection. Confronting a demand for philosophical rigor, he pursues provocative analyses of the shortcomings of abolitionist discourse. Above all, he argues that the death penalty and its attendant technologies are products of a desire to put an end to one of the most fundamental qualities of our finite existence: the radical uncertainty of when we will die. Arriving at a critical juncture in history—especially in the United States, one of the last Christian-inspired democracies to resist abolition—The Death Penalty is both a timely response to an important ethical debate and a timeless addition to Derrida’s esteemed body of work. (shrink)

The article examines the inter-implication between Foucault's and Derrida's representations of one another's work in the debate over Histoire de la folie and discovers a chiasmic structure between them, an inverted mirroring of each in the other, in which philosophy and historicity alternately encompass and exceed one another. At the heart of this is a problem of language (and the reason that accompanies it), which defines the limitations of the historian's work.

The Biopolitics of Punishment marks a new chapter in the long-standing debate between Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. The essays collected in this volume chart the undertheorized dialogue between the two philosophers on questions of life, death, punishment, power, and resistance.

English summary: In November 1980, Michel Foucault gives in English, at Dartmouth College, two lectures entitled "Truth and Subjectivity" and "Christianity and Confession". In these lectures, through the study of the techniques of the self, including the examination of conscience and confession in Greco-Roman antiquity and early Christianity, Foucault traces the genealogy of the modern subject and the hermeneutics of the self that characterizes us today. This edition presents for the first time the French translation of conferences at (...) Dartmouth College, with variants of the version given by Foucault the previous month at the University of California at Berkeley. It also presents two new unedited interventions, contemporary to these conferences: a public debate held at Berkeley and an interview where Foucault responds to questions about his research, where he is brought to discuss the values that guide his work. French description: En novembre 1980, Michel Foucault prononce en anglais, a Dartmouth College, deux conferences intitulees Truth and Subjectivity et Christianity and Confession. Dans ces conferences, a travers l'etude des techniques de soi, et notamment de l'examen de conscience et de l'aveu, dans l'Antiquite greco-romaine et le christianisme primitif, Foucault retrace la genealogie du sujet moderne et de l'hermeneutique de soi qui nous caracterise encore aujourd'hui. Cette edition presente pour la premiere fois la traduction francaise des conferences de Dartmouth College, avec les variantes de la version prononcee par Foucault le mois precedent a l'Universite de Californie a Berkeley. Elle presente egalement deux interventions inedites, contemporaines de ces conferences : un debat public qui s'est tenu a Berkeley et une interview, ou Foucault repond a des questions sur ses recherches et est amene a preciser quelles sont les valeurs qui guident son travail. (shrink)

This book makes available, for the first time in English, lectures and interviews that Foucault gave in Japan in 1978, reconstructing their context, and isolating the question of their singular relevance for us today. In these forgotten lectures, in a free and often informal style, Foucault explores, together with his Japanese interlocutors, what it would mean to take up, from outside Europe, the questions he was raising at the time about Revolution and Enlightenment in the traditions of European (...) critical thought. In a series of wide-ranging discussions, on sexuality and its history, non-Christian forms of spirituality, new forms of political movements, and the role of knowledge, power, and truth in them, Foucault examines these questions in relationship to Asia. He had hoped these questions, very much debated at the time in post-war Japan, would be the start of new forms of translation, publication and exchange. At heart of the Lectures is thus a search for the creation of a new sort of transnational collaboration, recasting the history of European colonialism and opening to a philosophy, no longer simply Western, yet to come. The Japan Lectures thus contribute to the new scholarship in Asian and in translation studies which have long since moved away from earlier 'Area Studies'; at the same time, they participate in the new scholarship about Foucault's own work and itinerary, following the publication of an extraordinary wealth of materials left unfinished or unpublished by his untimely death. In these ways, The Japan Lectures help us to better see the implications of Foucault's work for philosophy in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

On May 27, 1978, Michel Foucault gave a lecture to the French Society of Philosophy where he redefines his entire philosophical project in light of Immanuel Kant's 1784 text, "What Is Enlightenment?" Foucault strikingly characterizes critique as the political and moral attitude consisting in the "art of not being governed in this particular way," one that performs the function of destabilizing power relations and creating the space for a new formation of the self within the "politics of truth." (...) This volume presents the first critical edition of this crucial lecture alongside a previously unpublished lecture about the culture of the self and three public debates with Foucault at the University of California, Berkeley in April 1983. There, for the first time, Foucault establishes a direct connection between his reflections on Enlightenment and his analyses of Greco-Roman antiquity. However, far from suggesting a return to the ancient culture of the self, Foucault invites his audience to build a "new ethics" that bypasses the traditional references to religion, law, and science. (shrink)

Les rapports de la pensee critique et de la reflexion anthropologique seront etudies dans un ouvrage ulterieur. C'est sur cette note que s'achevait la breve Notice historique que Michel Foucault avait place en tete de l'edition de sa traduction de l'Anthropologie de Kant (Vrin 1964). La note annoncait sans aucun doute l'ouvrage a venir, d'abord caracterise, des 1963, comme le livre sur les signes, et qui paraitra en avril 1966: Les mots et les choses, une archeologie des sciences humaines. (...) En realite, la courte notice historique, de trois pages, en ouverture de la traduction du texte de Kant ne proposait qu'un extrait fort reduit de ce qui avait constitue l'element principal de la These complementaire soutenue en Sorbonne le 20 mai 1961: Introduction a l'anthropologie de Kant, et dont Jean Hyppolite etait le rapporteur. Si la these complementaire, intitulee Genese et structure de l'anthropologie de Kant, etait restee inedite (a l'exception de la traduction de Kant), ce n'est pas que Foucault en eut ete insatisfait: suivant les conseils des membres du jury, il allait bientot, des l'automne 1963, en faire le materiau central de son grand livre a venir. D'ou l'interet considerable de la presente edition qui donne pour la premiere fois l'Introduction complete, Genese et structure de l'anthropologie de Kant, et qui permet ainsi au lecteur d'entrer dans l'atelier d'un penseur dont l'oeuvre entier aura ete nourri par un debat critique avec Kant: qu'est-ce que l'homme? Qui sommes-nous? Comment se constituent le sujet epistemique et le sujet ethique? (shrink)

This paper examines Foucault's reading of Plato and ancient philosophy as part of his continuing dialogue and debate with Derrida. It contends that this debate not only in part motivates Foucault's turn to antiquity, but also is directly revelatory of the most basic differences between Foucault's and Derrida's conceptions of philosophy.

La « querelle de la folie » a opposé Michel Foucault et Jacques Derrida. Cette « querelle » a déjà donné matière à plus d'un demi-siècle de débats. Et elle est toujours d'actualité. Pour l'auteure, il s'agit plutôt d'un différend, au sens où l'entend Jean-François Lyotard. Un différend à deux niveaux : celui de l'argument, émanant de la lecture que chaque philosophe a faite de la première méditation cartésienne, mais également, celui qui est tributaire de leur relation. Cet (...) ouvrage apporte, avec l'intégration du niveau relationnel, une nouvelle voie qui reprend la question classique des rapports entre la vie et l'oeuvre, la « biographie » et la « bibliographie » des philosophes. (shrink)

Containing the debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky on epistemology and politics, this book also features the most significant essays by the most important French thinkers who influenced and were influenced by Foucault. Foucault's teachers, colleagues, and collaborators take up his major claims, from his first to final works, and provide us with the authoritative context in which to understand Foucault's writings. This volume also includes several important works by Foucault previously unpublished in (...) English. The other contributors are Georges Canguilhem, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Hadot, Michel Serres, and Paul Veyne. Here for the first time is the French Foucault. This volume offers lucid and important texts that will appeal to students and professors at every level of study. It is essential reading for all scholars of twentieth-century philosophy and critical theory. (shrink)

What is the strange eros that haunts Foucault's writing? In this deeply original consideration of Foucault's erotic ethics, Lynne Huffer provocatively rewrites Foucault as a Sapphic poet. She uncovers eros as a mode of thought that erodes the interiority of the thinking subject. Focusing on the ethical implications of this mode of thought, Huffer shows how Foucault's poetic archival method offers a way to counter the disciplining of speech. At the heart of this method is a (...) conception of the archive as Sapphic: the past's remains are, like Sappho's verses, hole-ridden, scattered, and dissolved by time. Listening for eros across fragmented texts, Huffer stages a series of encounters within an archive of literary and theoretical readings: the eroticization of violence in works by Freud and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the historicity of madness in the Foucault-Derrida debate, the afterlives of Foucault's antiprison activism, and Monique Wittig's Sapphic materialism. Through these encounters, Foucault's Strange Eros conceives of ethics as experiments in living that work poetically to make the present strange. Crafting fragments that dissolve into Sapphic brackets, Huffer performs the ethics she describes in her own practice of experimental writing. Foucault's Strange Eros hints at the self-hollowing speech of an eros that opens a space for the strange. (shrink)

This paper examines the relevance of Foucault’s later work to debates in contemporary Continental philosophy concerning the problem of the subject. It shows that Foucault shifts attention away from the history of metaphysics and the metaphysics of the subject to an analysis of the concrete forms of institutional practice and embodiment that shape philosophical discourses. As a result, we are able to see this debate in a different light. In particular, we can grasp the deconstruction of the (...) subject, especially as it is articulated by Critchley and Derrida, in the context of a genealogy of philosophy as care of the self and spiritual exercise. The paper concludes by arguing that Foucault’s work forces us to understand philosophical concepts and problems - and the problem of the subject in particular - in light of the contexts of power, knowledge and subjectivity within which they function and against which they struggle. (shrink)

Foucault a souligné l’importance, pour la philosophie française du xx e siècle, des Méditations cartésiennes de Husserl, prononcées à la Sorbonne en 1929. Contrairement à Husserl, Foucault n’a pas réactivé le geste cartésien de l’auto-méditation et de la refondation du savoir philosophique sur des bases sûres. Mais il n’a cessé de revenir sur les Méditations métaphysiques de Descartes comme moment décisif pour l’apparition du sujet moderne – d’abord dans la fameuse lecture du « Mais quoi! ce sont des (...) fous » dans l’ Histoire de la folie. Mais Foucault ne s’en est pas tenu à cette interprétation, discutée par Derrida, qui reliait la construction du sujet rationnel à l’exclusion des fous. On trouve dans L’Herméneutique du sujet une nouvelle approche des Méditations métaphysiques, cette fois démarquée de Heidegger, qui les restitue dans l’histoire des « techniques de soi » et situe la rupture décisive au plan même de la dissociation entre technique spirituelle, accès à la connaissance et transformation éthique de soi. Cet article suit ainsi « la méditation cartésienne de Foucault » en mettant en lumière le constant débat sous-jacent avec les lectures de Descartes produites par la phénoménologie et la déconstruction de la métaphysique. (shrink)

Why does Bernard Stiegler speak of “this culture, which I have named, after Epictetus, my melete?” In the first part of this article, I elucidate Stiegler’s claims about both Stoic exercises of reading and writing and their significance for the interpretive questions he has adapted from Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. In particular, I address the relations among care for oneself and others, the use of material technologies, and resistance to subjection or “freedom.” In the second part, I (...) consider the merits and limitations of Stiegler’s comments about reading and writing in Stoicism, with particular attention to Epictetus. We will see that Stiegler’s interpretive frame-work casts considerable light on ancient texts and contexts, on the condition that it be combined with close reading of ancient texts and engagement with specialist scholarship. Finally, in the conclusion, I will suggest that the history of technology in Epictetus’s time contributes to a debate about Stiegler’s theories.Bernard Stiegler signale à plusieurs reprises l’importance des exercices stoïciens de lecture et d’écriture. Dans la première partie de cet article, j’essaye de clarifier ces assertions et d’expliquer leur lien aux oeuvres de Michel Foucault et de Jacques Derrida. Il s’agit en particulier des rapports entre le souci de soi et d’autrui, l’usage des techniques et des matériaux et la résistante à la soumission ou à la « liberté ». Dans la deuxième partie, je considère les mérites ainsi que les limites des remarques de Stiegler sur la lecture et l’écriture au sein du stoïcisme, en portant une attention particulière à Épictète. Le point du vue stieglerien donnera de nouvelles significations à quelques passages des oeuvres d’Épictète, à condition qu’il soit conjugué à une lecture attentive d’études spécialisées et de textes anciens. Je conclurai, dans la troisième partie, en proposant que l’histoire des techniques à l’époque d’Épictète pourrait alimenter un débat à l’égard des théories de Stiegler. (shrink)

This paper addresses the multiple readings that Foucault offers of Descartes’ Meditations during the whole span of his intellectual career. It thus rejects the (almost) exclusive focus of the literature on the few pages of the History of Madness dedicated to the Meditations and on the so-called Foucault/Derrida debate. First, it reconstructs Foucault’s interpretation of Descartes’ philosophy in a series of unpublished manuscripts written between 1966 and 1968, when Foucault was teaching at the University (...) of Tunis. It then addresses the important shifts that took place in Foucault’s thought at the beginning of the 1970s, which led him to elaborate a new approach to the Meditations in terms of ‘discursive events’. Finally, it argues that those shifts opened up to Foucault the possibility of developing an original reading of Descartes’ philosophy, surprisingly close to his own interest in ancient askē sis and the techniques of the self. (shrink)