File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1998/foucault.9804, message 25


Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 10:05:10 -0700
From: Dave Roberts <dave.roberts-AT-tracsys.com>
Subject: Re: Philosopy Majors


>baths are applicable to philosophy.  ...granted that we cannot do 
>anything with philosophy, might not philosophy, if we concern ourselves 
>with it do something with us?"
>--Martin Heidegger, _Introduction to Metaphysics_

Heidegger turned in his Jewish department head in early
Nazi Germany and was rewarded with the job.  He was
a good German.  

>"what is philosophy today--philosophical activity, I mean--if it is not 
>the critical work thta thought brings to bear on itself.  In what does it 
>consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might 
>be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already 
>known."
>--Michel Foucault, _The Use of Pleasure_

Foucault spent the last part of his life in the bathhouses
of San Francisco infecting young homosexuals with
the aids that he was dying from as an exercise in 
personal power and efficacy.

Those are the most unfortunate examples of philosophers
that I am aware of.  A more noble philosophical example 
might be the Socrates of The Apology.

What can you say about a field that honors the
incoherance of a Hegel, a Wittgenstein, or a Derrida?
If these are critical thinkers why can't they think
their way into an effective sentence?  Philosophy
should be the most effective route to a good education.
It sometimes is.

Dave



   

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