Archaeology of Knowledge

In the old days, my favorite text of Foucault was the beginning of the Archaeology of Knowledge (online here), revised from his “Réponse au Cercle d’épistémologie”, published summer 1968 (o pregnant time!) in Cahiers pour L’Analyse, the original of which is separately translated in Essential Works vol. 1. There is a nice summary of the original and its historical context here.

At this time, Foucault and Althusser were both working toward what has been called a rationalist philosophy of the Concept related to the work of Jean Cavaillés and Georges Canguilhem, in contrast to then popular existential/phenomenological philosophies of the Subject. (See Knox Peden, Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavaillés to Deleuze.)

The Epistemological Circle that Foucault was responding to was a group of Althusser’s students interested in the philosophy and history of science, as well as structural Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, who had asked Foucault a series of methodological questions. Althusser was something like the dean of France’s most prestigious university. He had actually written his dissertation (which I have still not seen) on the Concept in Hegel. By this time he was in high anti-Hegelian mode, as was Foucault.

Foucault himself acknowledged considerable debt to his Hegelian mentor Jean Hyppolite, who translated the Phenomenology to French. Hyppolite read Hegel as focused more on discourse than on subjectivity. His 1952 Language and Existence, referred to by Foucault as “one of the great books of our time”, argued strongly for the importance of language in Hegel. (It was also very favorably reviewed by the young Deleuze.) Foucault had written a thesis on “The Constitution of a Historical Transcendental in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit” under Hyppolite in 1949.

There is more good historical background in James Muldoon, “Foucault’s Forgotten Hegelianism”. While I don’t endorse, e.g., Muldoon’s remarks on Hegel and free will, his suggestion that an identification with certain specifics of Hyppolite’s reading of Hegel — particularly the attribution of a strong “totalizing” impulse — contributed significantly to the anti-Hegelian turn of Foucault and others is quite interesting.

Though I don’t recall this from his translated works, Hyppolite apparently both saw a strong element of totalization in Hegel and strongly rejected it, while continuing to identify as a Hegelian. (Previously, in absence of more specific evidence I had surmised it was mainly a reaction against Alexandre Kojève’s reading that drove the French anti-Hegelian turn. Muldoon also says Hyppolite’s reading was initially welcomed as a contrast to Jean Wahl’s more phenomenologically oriented 1929 book on the unhappy consciousness, which apparently also contributed to French perceptions of Hegel as subject-centered.)

In any case, the Hegel whom Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze and others famously rejected in the 1960s was identified as the proponent of a totalizing historical teleology of the Subject. Each of the three components of this was independently strongly rejected — the subject-centeredness, the historical teleology, and the totalization. I still agree today that these are all serious errors that should be rejected.

However, Hegel read in a broadly Brandomian way is utterly untouched by this criticism. There is no historical teleology at all in what Brandom calls Hegelian genealogy (so a fortiori not a totalizing one), and there is no subject-centeredness in the analysis of conceptual content. Subjectivity is never invoked as an unexplained explainer. Brandom’s exposition of the Hegelian critique of Mastery offers us a Hegel utterly opposed to the kind of totalization attributed to him by Foucault, Althusser, and Deleuze.

Foucault presented a long list of forms of discontinuity that should be attended to in the history of ideas. Each of these could be analyzed in Brandomian/Hegelian terms as a determinate negation.

I agree with Foucault that it is very important not to take the simple continuity of a tradition for granted. In principle, such things need to be shown. However, I still think defeasible assertions about “traditions” and other such unities that should be questioned can play a useful role in historical discussion. (See also Ricoeur on Foucault; Structuralism; Structure, Potentiality; Difference; Identity, Isomorphism; Univocity; Historiography; Genealogy.)

Lucretius

Previously, I objected to Althusser’s invocation of the clinamen (the mythical swerve of the atoms) in Lucretius when talking about historical contingency. (He, Deleuze, and the young Marx all seem to have fixated on what seems to me this most dubious — even if charming — aspect of Epicurean thought. I’m enough of a Leibnizian to believe in the principle of sufficient reason. I just don’t think that all determination takes the form of univocal causality.)

I actually enjoy Lucretius, and also found the strangely titled book about him, The Birth of Physics by Michel Serres, quite interesting. Lucretius is full of poetic descriptions of hydrodynamic phenomena. Serres argues that Lucretius considered the conceptual norm for matter in general to be liquid rather than solid; that he wanted to use hydrodynamic phenomena to model aggregate behavior of the atoms, always considering them in aggregate; and that this has widespread implications for thought. It is a not-so-atomistic atomism.

Interpretive Charity

Critical thinking and interpretive charity are both essential components of a rational response to anything. What a complete appropriate response looks like depends on the details of the matter at hand. Being appropriately critical does not mean turning off our charity, nor does being appropriately charitable mean turning off our brains. We aim for an Aristotelian mean. This applies just as much to ordinary social interaction as it does to the evaluation of theoretical claims. See also Reasonableness; Affirmation; Honesty, Kindness; Intellectual Virtue, Love.

Affirmation

Nietzschean affirmation used to be a very important thing for me. Something like it still is. At root, this just means judging particular goods on intrinsic/situational criteria, from a stance that embraces life without the poison of ressentiment (holding on to reactive, negative emotion). Nietzsche’s poetic images of Zarathustra coming down from the mountain, being friends with the earth, and embracing the eternal return were significant moments of my youth. (See also Genealogy; Honesty, Kindness; Intellectual Virtue, Love; Interpretive Charity.)

Later, I came to think that Spinoza had in a way already said what I most valued in Nietzsche. (Many have recognized the affirmative character of Spinoza’s thought.)

Still later, I came to think that Aristotle had already expressed the affirmative kernel I valued most in Spinoza, and much more.

I have been reading the core ethical message of Brandom’s Spirit of Trust in a related light. (See Index for many posts on Aristotle and Brandom.)

History of Philosophy

Philosophy is best conceived as a dialogue with the best insights of our fellow rational animals over the centuries. It is something far more valuable than just views or opinions — a sustained rational development aimed at progressive improvement in distinguishing the better from the worse.

Hegel wrote that the history of philosophy is inseparable from philosophy itself, and I find that to be very true. He was actually the first major philosopher to write explicitly about the history of philosophy. Medieval scholasticism had treated the history of philosophy as a valuable repository of possible opinions and arguments, but was little concerned with issues of historical interpretation. Early modernity largely ignored the history of philosophy and wanted to start over, every man for himself. Anti-scholastic prejudice ran so high that apart from Leibniz, no major modern philosopher until Hegel treated Aristotle as anything more than a straw man. But since the 19th century and especially since the later 20th century, innumerable rich and sophisticated contributions to the historically informed interpretation of individual philosophers have been made, along with many excellent analyses of periods and trends.

I find it useful to alternate between consideration of a small number of essential reference points among the greatest of the great, and a much broader scope including many “minor” figures. (See History of Philosophy and Historiography sections.)

Brandom and Kant

Besides offering a clear and nonvoluntarist account of Kantian freedom, Brandom strongly puts forward the idea that the formation of unities of apperception is an ethical task for Kant. This was new to me when I encountered it in Reason in Philosophy, and very exciting. Kant suddenly made a whole lot more sense, and began to look much less unattractive.

I have not had the opportunity to confirm whether this is just what Kant should have said by Brandom’s reconstruction, or whether he actually did say it somewhere. (In my early readings uninformed by secondary literature, I had taken Kant to be asserting that the synthesis of unities of apperception was something that just necessarily happened for any subject, qua subject. This seemed like an unattractive, failed attempt to establish objectivity on a subjectivist foundation.)

Secondary literature on Kant is vast, and much of it is outstanding in quality. Leading interpreters have deep differences, and this is as it should be. A mark of great philosophy is that it encourages creativity and spawns ever new interpretations.

If I could hazard a generalization, though, it seems that subjectivist readings of Kant are more and more challenged these days. To mention but one example, Frederick Beiser’s recent history of German idealism before Hegel is entitled German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism. Young Karl Marx’s 1844 essay on Hegel’s Phenomenology, which reduced Hegel (and arguably Kant as well) to a bad subjectivist cartoon of Fichte, is profoundly misleading. (See also Copernican.)

Aristotle and Kant

Kant and Aristotle are both very concerned to develop a thick, discursive concept of rationality, which goes far beyond the merely logical to address many questions of what is right.

Nancy Sherman and others have substantially softened the traditional contrast between Kantian and Aristotelian ethics. Kant’s critique of eudaimonism (pursuit of happiness as an ethical criterion) was mainly aimed at the British utilitarians, who really did make subjective happiness into a criterion of sorts. It would be very wrong to think this applies to the Aristotelian notion. Sherman makes a strong case that in less familiar works dealing with moral anthropology, Kant recovers something like an Aristotelian notion of character. Kant’s extended development of the concept of judgment in the third Critique also recovers something like Aristotelian practical judgment or phronesis. (See also Freedom Through Deliberation?)

Aristotle and Kant have similarly thick notions of experience. In neither case is experience something immediate, as it was with the British empiricists. For Aristotle, it is as when we say someone is “experienced”. For Kant, it involves synthesis and extensive use of concepts, which themselves have complex derivation. Properly understood, Aristotelian “metaphysics” was concerned with higher-order interpretation of experience, and thus consistent with Kantian scruples. (See also Pure Reason, Metaphysics?)

Plato and Aristotle’s strong insistence on the autonomy of reason was largely submerged in the later tradition until Kant recovered it. (See also The Word “Rationalism”.)

Some of the argument of the paralogisms of pure reason is strongly reminiscent of things Aristotle said about the soul. Aristotle and Kant are equally opposed to Augustinian/Cartesian notions of reflexive constitutive immediacy. (See also God and the Soul; Modernity, Again.)

The main target of Kant’s attacks on dogmatism was the Wolffian school in Germany. He was not much concerned with the history of philosophy, and some of his language was overly sweeping.

We should forgivingly take this into account in assessing the relation of the Critical philosophy to what I have called the epistemic modesty of Plato and Aristotle. (As Hegel recognized, Plato and Aristotle were not at all dogmatic. Plato doubted the deliverances of sense, and rejected opinion outright. Aristotle’s more optimistic, proto-pragmatist stance was elaborated in thoughtful response to that questioning. Neither of them was a simplistic realist. Moreover, the two of them were the original pioneers of rational inquiry in ethics.)

Nonetheless, neither Plato nor Aristotle anticipated the very substantial detail and development of Kant’s argument. The explicit concepts of the transcendental/empirical distinction and of unities of apperception are distinctly Kantian, as is a finer-grained analysis of processes of synthesis. Kant also more explicitly treated normativity as an outer frame around all other considerations. It is to him that we owe the notion of the primacy of practical reason. A stronger emphasis on ethical universality through the categorical imperative was another Kantian innovation. (See also Copernican; Brandom and Kant; Hegelian Genealogy.)

Hegelian Genealogy

[The title above was conceived as an initial answer to the question posed below about the main ways Hegel extends Aristotle, but the article then wanders away from Hegelian genealogy in further pursuit of that question.]

Hegel was at the same time deeply Aristotelian, deeply Kantian, and highly original. Across numerous posts, I have been pointing out Hegel’s connections with Aristotle. This implicitly poses the question, how should we summarize the aspects of Hegel’s contributions that go beyond Aristotle?

What Brandom has called Hegel’s genealogy captures most of this at a high level. A Hegelian genealogy is a recollective making more explicit of our current best self-understanding in terms of a backward projection of part of that current understanding onto what we take to be its historic roots, in order to then trace a sequence of its development into our full current understanding. I would note that this sort of understanding involves the kind of interweaving of history and creative fiction that has been discussed at length by Paul Ricoeur.

Hegel is at one with Aristotle in recognizing that the end goal of a process is emergent rather than pre-established from the beginning, as someone like Leibniz or Plotinus might suggest. He does not mean to literally assert, e.g., that Socrates already explicitly thought in terms of German Idealist concepts like Subjectivity and Freedom. In part, he is deliberately using anachronistic terms as a sort of pedagogy for a contemporary audience. More significantly, he is making a historical claim based on current understanding that the roots of German Idealism go all the way back to Socrates.

On the other hand, while Aristotle and Hegel are both very concerned with development and take a retrospective perspective on it, Aristotle does not explicitly address the development of large cultural formations or development over long periods as Hegel does. Aristotle takes large formations in a mostly synchronic way.

On a small scale, while Aristotle makes heavy use of both material incompatibility and material consequence, he does not tightly combine these as Hegel does.

Aristotle recognizes that a concern for error and its rectification is integral to the pursuit of truth, but does not apply this to whole social formations or historical periods the way Hegel does. He does not have Hegel’s positive vision of the necessity of error for learning, and of a path to greater rationality that can only be achieved through the successive resolution of errors.

Aristotle treats mutual recognition as an important part of the description of the key ethical goal of friendship or love. Hegel further develops the idea of mutual recognition, makes it more primary, broadens its applicability, and also uses it to explain how normativity is socially and historically constituted.

Hegel also takes over Kant’s idea that normativity forms an outer frame around all other concerns. (See also Aristotle and Kant; Brandom and Kant; History of Philosophy; Edifying Semantics; Mutual Recognition.)

Hylomorphism

Hylomorphism refers to the fact that Aristotelian form and matter are found in a pair, are only analytically distinguishable, and have no separate existence. This is utterly different from a dualism such as the Augustinian one between a separately constituted soul and body, or the Cartesian one between mind and matter. Form and matter — an active way of being and its contingent situatedness — are so deeply interwoven that one cannot be empirically picked out from the other. I think something similar applies to substance and accident. At the end of the day, the distinction is only analytical. (See also Purpose, Contingency.)

Form

[This early skeletal note is preserved in its original form. For a somewhat more expansive treatment, see Form Revisited; Form as Value; Form, Substance; Form vs Action.]

The expressive metaconcept of form has multiple levels of meaning in Aristotle. A theme common to these various senses is that depending on the context, form is a way of being, or a way of being and doing.

A way of being and doing can be understood as constituted by a counterfactually robust effective orientation with respect to ends. The ends in question may belong either to whatever is considered as “having” the form, or to an intelligence that discerns the form, but in either case, the effective orientation that is form is attributed to the “thing” that “has” the form.

Thinking in terms of form is thinking in terms of a sort of primarily adverbial, richly modal, differential-consequential pragmatic determination rather than in terms of objects and extensional identity. That mouthful notwithstanding, it is often actually simpler than life in the kingdom of nouns.

The first sense is close to what Brandom would call a concept. (See also Conceptual, Representational.)

Then there is a hylomorphic biological one where psyche or “soul” is said to be the “form” or first actuality of the body, which seems to include its capacity for nutrition and self-movement and what we might call its elemental desire.

Things having to do with second nature or second actuality, such as character or intellect in a human, constitute a further level grounded in sociality and language.

Yet another is associated with the complete actualization of a thing, which includes not only actuality but its interweaving with material contingency and structured potentiality. It is at this level that we can speak of form as a counterfactually robust effective orientation in some delimited context, fusing potentiality and actuality together.

The complex functional role of form in Aristotle has a relatively close analogue in the role of mediation in Hegel. (See also

Substance; Mutation of Meaning; Concept, Form, Species; Aristotelian Dialectic; Structure, Potentiality; Meant Realities; Difference; More Difference, Less Conflict.)