File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1998/foucault.9802, message 115


From: Erik Hoogcarspel <jehms-AT-globalxs.nl>
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 21:32:17 +0100
Subject: Re: Concerns (cont.)


Op 15-feb-98 schreef david wachtfogel:

>(This is a continuation)

>You're either a materialist or an idealist. If you're an idealist, if you
>believe in the existence of extra material realities such as "love",
>"truth", "right", then you do not accept the materialist project, to
>which Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Foucault belong to.
>So please tell me Randall, tell us all, are you _a believer_, do you
>believe in extra material realities? Are you, to quote Paul Simon,
>"blinded by the light of god and truth and right?" Because if you are,
>you really don't have any business with Foucault. By F's standards you're
>just "wander[ing] through the night with out direction."
>-- David W.

Well, David this 'fork' is a wellknown retorical device, but it's not very
productive in a dialogue. You're acting like a bad lawyer (do like this
person, no? so you hate him and therefore you must have killed him'). Besides
it's obviously not true. You can be a nihilist, or think that all ontological
questions are utterly absurd. You may even, like Husserl, reject all
ontological claims and concentrate on the phenomenon itself. Or you may like a
postmodernist or scepticist claim that all universal propositions are false.
The challenge to Randall to come out of the idealist closet seems to me a
argumentum ad hominum! I personally don't give a shit about what Randall
believes and I surely don't want to excommunicate someone because of his or
her convictions.

So what's your direction, David?

-erik


   

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