Amy Allen, "Foucault and Enlightenment: A Critical Reappraisal"

This week, we discussed Amy Allen’s piece “Foucault and Enlightenment: A Critical Reappraisal.” As usual, we started with some questions:

 

-       What is the relation between the theory of the subject suggested in this piece, and philosophical anthropology? Does the former require the latter?

-       What is subjectivity for Foucault?

-       How can we situate the Foucauldian distinction between Enlightenment-as-attitude vs. doctrine in this piece?

-       Does the text shed light on Foucault’s relationship with Heidegger, especially considering their different understanding of Enlightenment? 

-       What do we thinking about the distinctions made between archaeology and genealogy (p.194)? Is the binary of outside and inside of episteme a precise description of their difference?

-       Is there one or two Kants in this piece?

-       What is meant by Critical transformation (190) in this piece, especially given that the critical transformation of Kant is understood as “Working from within the Kantian project” (192)?

-       What do we think about Foucault’s uptake of a more “marginal” work of Kant: Is there something intrinsically important about it, and can it be related to Foucault’s methodology?

 

We started our conversation with assessing Allen’s argument about the relation between Foucault and Kant. Allen suggests that there is a certain “radicalization” of Kant that both Foucault and Habermas are engaged in (192). We discussed the possible implications of this word, especially in relation to Foucault’s expressed hesitation about radical projects in “What is Enlightenment.” We also explored the implications of the idea of Foucault being “within” the tradition of Kant. There might be some ways that one could argue that Foucault is outside of that tradition at the same time, depending of how one defines and uses the words “tradition” and “inside”.  This might be especially important given the tensions between Foucault’s and Kant’s thinking, for example, when it comes to their understanding of relation between history and philosophy.We also talked about the question whether being a Kantian is something that is imposed on all of us in the sense that we are all in the “modern episteme”, as Foucault suggests in The Order of Things. So, one might want to draw a distinction between different forms of being a Kantian, maybe a weaker form and a stronger one (which would be not simply a condition but a choice).We also explored the possible implications of Foucault’s relation to Nietzsche for this discussion. One could possibly argue that it was through Nietzsche’s work that Foucault could transform some of the Kantian tools, and not only through an immanent critique of Kant himself. We discussed Foucault’s idea of normativity as an idea that might be more indebted to Nietzsche than Kant. Our group also paid particular attention to Foucault’s understanding of the subject, and discussed the Nietzschean influences in that context. Foucault’s understanding of subjectivity is committed to studying the historical and empirical reality, and is not merely an a priori account (although it might have a priori elements to it).Despite these non-Kantian elements, it is clear that the Kantian project is central to Foucault’s thinking, especially given that his work is one concerned with the study of conditions of possibility (albeit those are not understood as transcendental, as in Kant). It seems that the absolute rejection of Kant is not possible without falling into either naïve realism/dogmatic science or shallow forms of postmodernism.

We ended our discussion by exploring the importance of the philosophical attitude for Foucault’s work, especially given that it seems not a central topic in most discussions in the secondary literature. This brought us back to our discussion about meta-philosophy from last week, which we explored further with a focus on the Kantian project.