File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_2001/foucault.0102, message 88


From: "Bryan C" <kirk728-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Establishment
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 01:55:05 -0700


>Roberto, Bryan, etc.
>
>We should be sensitive to the ways in which establishment modes of inquiry
>can pervert even thoroughly anti-establishment conclusions. If you
>revolutionize moral philosophy with new categorical principles, then you've
>merely replaced one establishment with another. Roberto's point is that
>Aristotelian modes of thought are inherently establishmentarian - that they
>always seek establishment.

There will probably always be some establishment.  Even under F's
philosophy there would be an establishment.  If everyone love F then F
would _be_ the establishment.

Ultimately it isn't positivism or syllogism that is establishmentarian,
it is mass acceptance.

F says that there will always be norms, they aren't going anywhere so
everything is establishmentarian.

>I think an example is the way Bryan is addicted (I don't mean this
>pejoratively) to "objective" principles and "transcendental" norms. Bryan
>tends to reduce ethical behavior to obedience of certain laws. I would 
>agree
>that we need to stand against homophobia in order to fight it (obviously)
>but I don't see why we need to claim that Reality (or God) somehow prefers
>that homophobia not exist. Why can't YOU prefer that homophobia not exist?
>Why not oppose it because it bothers you?

Because Hitler preffered that the Jews not exist.  He exterminated them
because they bothered him.  This is the problem with all moral
relativism, it justifies Hitler and Stalin and, in a localized manner,
the homophobia that Juan expressed.  So while he bothers you, you
bother him and no one is more justified than the other.

>It's kind of like filling a totalitarian regime with new people. Contrary 
>to
>what Marx says in the Manifesto, class struggle takes place between elites 
>-
>not masters and slaves. Foucault argues pretty effectively that it really
>doesn't matter who's ruling if the precise mechanism of rule is preserved.

But there will always be norms.  I say we reshape the norms just as F
suggested.  If we can't get rid of them then we must ask ourselves, what
is the best norm to have?  This is where I see positivism come in.
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