Week 3 (10/12/18) Notes

CGC Week 3 (10/12/18)

Wrong-doing Truth-Telling - Inaugural Lecture

Questions

   1)   2 Forms of critical philosophy – compare with 3 questions about truth on p.10 from Subjectivity & Truth.

   2)  What is “counter-positivism”? (p.21)

   3) Avowal to whom? Master-discipline relation.

   4)  Status of speech with relation to avowal? Is avowal always verbal? Avowal as written?

   5)  What kinds of subjects/agents can avow?

   6)  Language games – Wittgenstein? (p.18) – games of truth/falsehood (p.20)

   7)  Avowal/power/subjectivity – truth playing role of knowledge (as in knw/pwr/sbjctvty) - (pp.16-17)?

   8) “Binding/tying” pp.17-20

   9)  Lecture series between 1970s and mid 1980s

   10) What is the relation between avowal and techniques?

Discussion

Editors claim this lecture series (and others during this period) provides element for seamlessly explaining connection between F’s genealogical inquires in 70s & his ethical inquires in mid 80s

Always power dynamics and others to whom you are confessing/avowing (p.17)

Power through avowal produces forms of subjectivity – productive capacity of power/institutions that creates a subjectivity that then has place for agency

Not always have mediation of institutions?

What is going on in avowal? One’s relationship to oneself – accept that truth, produce the truth, or submit to it (from Subj. & Truth) – avowal has all three of those elements

Avowal – has to be something that was not known in an obvious or clear way – distinction between the untold and the told? Untold not necessarily unknowable? Seeking a confirmation?

How does the idea that there’s a costliness in avowal make it different from other types of statements? If anything about truth involves a system of obligations, what’s so unique about avowal?

Relationship between obligation & avowal? Subject submits to avow? Desires to avow? Blurring of force & desire

Truth as veridiction (p.20) – versus truth as conditions under which there can be true statements – subject not just asserting a truth or taking on a commitment, but avowal transforms the subject – transformation of the subject from the unspoken to the spoken – are you conscious of this true realm when you say it?

Person who is avowing also has power over the person to whom they are avowing

4 features of avowal on pp.15-17 –

p.20 – two types of critical philosophy – 1) Kant/Plato way – asks under what conditions (formal or transcendental) there can be true statements. 2) investigates the forms of veridiction, the different forms of truth-telling

-       #2 as F’s method for investigating the historical problem

Distinction between truth and avowal? – truth as system of obligations – avowal – saying what is true – classifying different types of truth-telling. Maybe some bear different kinds of obligations – what’s so special about avowal in the context of truth-telling?

Avowal = one mode of veridiction among many – cost of enunciation (patient, criminal, confessor) – there’s a cost in avowing. Where is the cost coming from? Preceding the contract of the avowal? Is the cost the same for the criminal as it is for the patient?

Foucault familiar with Searle and Austin (“speech act”) – p.14

Counter-positivism – not the opposite of positivism but its counterpoint (21) – see also Subj. & Truth – p. 237 (ontological wonder vs. epistemological astonishment/surprise)