From: "Dickinson College -- Bologna" <fonddc_a-AT-iperbole.bologna.it> Subject: Re: sartre Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 08:19:58 +0200 Mitchell, I've written a paper on Sartre and Foucault on freedom. If you'd like a copy, I'd be happy to send it to you by regular mail or as an attachment to your Emal address. -- John ----- Original Message ----- From: Mitchell D. Wilson <lobster-AT-mail.utexas.edu> To: <foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu> Cc: creece <creece-AT-sun.science.wayne.edu>; greg <aztec-AT-mail.utexas.edu>; <rstill-AT-texas.net> Sent: Friday, June 04, 1999 7:30 AM Subject: sartre > What do you Foucauldians make of this? > > "There is no inertia in consciousness" (Sartre 1957:8). > > [I'm hoping to get some refs/ideas for my following argument.] > > "There is no inertia in consciousness" for Sartre because our actions are > always being pulled along by our responses to reality, meaning we are always > presented with a choice, "always" being a key word here, meaning that we > always have to respond, that reality presents us with options from which we > must always choose, and (the ringer) since we always have a choice then we > are always free, because freedom is stipulated as "having a choice"--this is > Sartre's idea of freedom? This could be circular logic? Sartre stipulates > freedom as "having a choice" (don't have a ref but I remember it from a > philosophy class, hope that's good enough) and then reasons that if you > always have a choice then you must always be free. > > Foucault would with some brilliant historical example, which I can't do, so > I'll just say that a Foucauldian would counter with criticism on Sartre's > brand of "choice." What are we free to choose? The answer could be simple. > It could be that we are only ostensibly free in that the choices themselves > from which we "choose" are determined, and so in the end we are not so free > as Sartre claims. > > Is Sartre perverse or can a philosopher intentionally define freedom as the > fact of always having to choose? "Having" is the key word here. If all we > can ever do is respond to some stimuli, i.e., respond to a situation from > which we must choose, then how can we be truly free when reality has up > jumping through one of its hoops? > > But the above is assuming--in "reality has us jumping through hoops"--that > we are puppets jumping through hoops, being led around by the nose with the > very constructions of reality hoisted on us by a, possibly Marxist (?), > social determinism in which there's a one to one correspondence between > representation and reality, which in a round aboutly sinister way has lead > us right back to structuralism, not quite Foucauldian theory. > > So to avoid this round trip contradiction, we could talk about Foucauldian > power. Power for Foucault, please someone elaborate for me here, is > productive and always creates its own resistance due to the fact power > creates the options from which people choose--are we back at Sartre? > > Foucault, as I understand, came along in the 60s and laid waste to Sartrean > "freedom"? How? > > m >
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