From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 07 Jun 1996 11:05:01 +0100
Subject: Re: Truth quote




>from the claim that "F. really denied truth,  agency or intentionality," it 
>follows, you say, that we can use D&P as a cookery book. And I agree, 
>if only because from a contradiction you can logically draw any conclusion
>you like, for how can F. "really" deny truth, when truth is what is implied
>by the gramatical form of the assertion and denying truth is an assertion?

This sounds very Habermasian to me. I have no objections.

>but where does this claim, (which F. found so irritating, as your citation
shows )
>about what F. "really" says come from? 

I'm not sure which claim your alluding to now.

To begin 
>with, the vocabulary: what do people deny? What truths do people deny? Three 
>things mainly come to mind, crimes they allegedly commited, authorities
they reject
>and dogmas they do not hold; 

Oh but much more than this. Also, you have placed 'truth' in a dichotomous
frame wherein it sits in an uneasy relationship with 'untruth'. The point I
would want to stress is that the platonic distinction between doxa and
episteme is too extreme. There is no sharp separation. Some things are
simply more true than others: truth is a polyvalent, not a bivalent,
concept. I take it at face value that I am posting a reply to X person. if
someone asks if i sent an email to X today I know that my answer will be
'yes'. If I said 'no' this would not be true. However, you may actually be Y
masquerading as X, so the distinction between belief and knowledge is not so
clear cut, and knowledge is always potentailly revisable.


>I will assume for the moment that the closest thing to "denying truth" that
F. articulated
>was the statement that "truth is not outside power" which I cited earlier.
one could 
>understand  it, among other things, as an assertion of impurity, the
impurity of truth, 
>and ipso facto, one could claim, of intentionality, agency, self, etc. I
would even radicalise 
>that asserion and say that it refers to an essential impurity, not that
truth is contaminated 
>by some "fallen state" of our knowledge, this would be acceptable even to
Augustine, 
>but that truth is essentially contaminated, (which does not mean that all
contaminations 
>are equivalent to each other). 

See my other posting on this. Like F, I think you are confusing
epistemological issues with ontological ones.

Now, in as much as one can recall a philosopho-theological 
>tradition for which truth is that which is purest, most simple etc., such a
statement *can* 
>be translated to a "denial", a rephrasing in terms of orthodoxy; but this
is but one possibility, 
>another possibility would have been to translate the statement as a
"revision", i.e. in terms 
>of scientific inquiery about the attributes of an object. 

But why enact the revision if not to arrive at a better acount of the way
things are, even though there is no point at which we arrive at the truth?
Not least because as reality is potentially infinte and changing, then truth
too must be changing. I'm unclear as to how your actually using the word
truth now. Are you inferring that there is one metaphysical truth (a GTOE),
and this is what you are rejecting? 

>If Foucault denies truth, one could read D&P as a cookbook: An evocation of
choas, 
>total desintegration of the world. 

Er no. I didn't want to get so dramatic. I mean, using F as a cookbook might
produce some rather unappetising dishes, but total existential
disintegration? Er no. You're attempting to win the argument by myth-making,
as if the only argument against cognitive relativism is absolutism. I reject
both.  Still the fate of the world is not dependent upon our reading of F,
thankfully.

But this is hardly the first time that the spectre of 
>annihilation is exorcised in the gardens of knowledge:

Perhaps the spectre of annihilation is exorcised in the very fact of our
existence and in the fact of the way 'our' truths allow us to get by in the
world. I can't help but be reminded of Margolis's phrase, 'We can't
seriously think that science totally misrepresents the world, nor can we
determine the fit.' (this may be paraphrased)
 
>From the unbelievingly innocuous claim that context is instrumental in
determining
>a correct translation of a word, More deduced that "one may translate the
world into a 
>football"; 

More, was obviously a dullard then. But this in no way relates to some
readings of F, as I think you are suggesting. On some readings of F agency,
truth and subjectivity are denied, thus making it possible to use him as a
cookbook. Nor should this be dramatically construed as the dogmatists fear
of the sceptic, but rather, the simple reply to the contradictions inherent
in such denials. You weave a nice story, but the substance is thin.

 But the translation of the Bible into English didn't ruin the world, nor 
>did it enable anyone to make a football out of it. At most, it was
instrumental in the 
>demise of the catholic hegemony. What connects our two cases of heresy is
the relation 
>between purity, universality, and the fear of annihilation: the purity of a
word's meaning 
>and the universality of the catholic church, the purity of the idea of
truth and the universality 
>which, after a labour of almost half a millenium, came to hegemony in the
church's stead. 

You'll have to do much better than this. You are reading into my position
all manner of things which I do not subscribe to. I have no fear of
epistemolgical relativism, I embrace it. I have no illusions about the ease
or otherwise of gaining access to truth. None of the aforementioned,
however, negates the existence of such a thing.


>In the relation between politics and science we come, so it seems, so close
to the religious
>kernel of modern secular thought, 

How? Scientific truths can proved, disproved, contested, changed, amended,
rejected and practically adequate. Can we say the same of religous truth? 


>It is very difficult not to be simple-minded when the stakes appear so
high, but are they 
>so high, and in what sense? What is the price of using the language of
heresy and 
>apocalypse in dealing with a philosophical questionning of our thoughts and
practices? 
>Aren't we giving up the very care for the truth in blind defense of truth's
virginity? 

No. What we are doing is taking note of Russells words, which to paraphrase,
remind us that a commitment to truth distinct from the thought of truth is
the only thing that keeps our humanist arrogance in check. We can be wrong.
I can be wrong about truth and so can you, but only if there is such a
thing. If there is no such thing then there is simply nothing to be wrong
about. 

>

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"What I try to achieve is the history of the relations which 
 thought maintains with truth; the history of thought insofar as it is the
thought    of truth. All those who say truth does not exist for me are
simple minded."
(Foucault)


Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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