Enlightenment, Method, and Power/Knowledge/Subjectivity

Let me first excuse myself for my inability to post over the last couple of weeks, due to an incredibly large amount of work. Looking back over the readings, these weeks have been extremely important for me in terms of seeing the connections between Foucault's writings and the currents that run through all of the selections we have read this quarter. In particular, I would like to focus on the text, "What is Enlightenment?" which was really the most significant for my understanding.

In this text, Foucault tries to establish the relation of his philosophy to the Enlightenment. He does so, not surprisingly, by first trying to get us to see this question from an entirely new angle. This new angle is the "philosophical ethos" of the Enlightenment, which is more of an attitude than anything else. It involves a continual critique of the limits within which we are placed. However, this is where Foucault inverts Kant's form of the critique. Instead of searching for universal limits of reason, we now must take what are supposed to be fundamental truths and discover what is contingent about them. Instead of establishing limits, as he says, we must discover where it is possible to transcend supposed ones. Now, with regard to the question posed in class of whether Foucault effectively traces himself back to Kant and the Enlightenment: it seems fairly clear that he has isolated a common drive and mindset, which is the critique of knowledge. This seems to be the important thing, because he calls attention to a similar starting problem and common task, which nevertheless is answered very differently. However, this characterization seems almost irrelevant because one could say (especially regarding Foucault's stance on thought itself) that Kant's problematic is inescapable, and he cannot avoid being influenced by it. Therefore, the common drive would lose its importance as a distinguishing characteristic, and the differences in theory would show a larger gap than Foucault would want to admit.

What I found even more significant about this article was the way in which it outlined so much of Foucault's methodology, purpose, and themes. The fact that Foucault wants to examine the limits that determine a possible range for thought and action is no surprise. However, looking back on this I now see one essential point that I repeatedly missed: the idea of looking to areas of resistance that have proven possible and learning from them, to apply the theory in an "experimental" manner. I know this came up in the last class, and it definitely came up sometime before that. It really clarifies a lot for me, especially in terms of how Foucault expects us to critique our bounds, and then apply that critique (which I had brought up doubts about in the last class, as being too vague). This essay is also saturated with the problems of power, knowledge, and the subject, which are essential to his ideas, yet I found hard to relate at some points. It shows his complex characterization of power and how to resist it, in the posing of the idea that capability and freedom do not go together, so we must figure out another way to alter power relations without augmenting them. It then also explains his intent to study the constitution of subjects within a study of problematization. These three areas also kept coming up in the last class, and also help to put a lot of his writings in perspective.

I would also briefly like to examine the connections between this reading and the ones on Care of the Self. It is easy to see how Foucault's concern with subjectification (or subjectivation, or whatever) carries over to his analysis of moral codes--he makes that clear in "Morality and Practice of the Self," in which he places emphasis on examining how the subject relates to moral codes instead of simply the codes themselves. This is also clear in his analysis of the mode of life involved with the mindset of the epimeleia heautou. However, I was interested in the relation of the care of the self to Foucault's characterization of the modern aestheticism and Baudelaire. It seems as if this modern mindset has some of the same characteristics of close attention and ascetic exercise, but I am not grasping at the moment how these two forms may relate. He talks in the second hour of Care of the Self about the reappearance of this idea in the 19th century, but does he relate his own conception to this trend?