From: "Stuart Elden" <stuart.elden-AT-clara.co.uk> Subject: RE: "The essential philosopher" Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 10:25:22 -0000 Matthew, and others As far as I know Foucault never met Heidegger. I have a feeling he said somewhere - not about Heidegger, but about another important writer for him - that the words were enough (probably a remark attributed in one of the biographies). But he certainly knew people who knew Heidegger. For example, he was taught by Jean Beaufret briefly (to whom Heidegger wrote the Letter on Humanism), and met with Ludwig Binswanger when working on the translation Denoix mentions, and they apparently discussed Heidegger. Foucault's references to Heidegger are extremely brief, and sometimes enigmatic. There are lots and lots of implicit relations though. It seems to me that their relation is found in both obvious, and less than obvious places. For example, there is a very direct attribution of his late interest in truth and subjectivity to Heidegger in the L'hermeneutique du sujet lecture course (p. 182, cf. p. 505.) [I think i've posted the exact quotations here before, but can do again if there's interest]. As for the phenomenology issue, i guess it depends what is meant by phenomenology. Foucault is against the phenomenology and existentialism that had such an impact in France (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) etc. But Heidegger was instrumental in the break with that in France through the Letter on Humanism (see comments by Althusser, Lefebvre and Derrida, amongst others). Heidegger is far from _simply_ a phenomenologist (whatever that might mean). There are lots of contrasts of course - I'm not suggesting Foucault is simply a Heideggerian. But it seems to me that the role of Heidegger is neglected in looking to his Nietzscheanism (which seems to me to be filtered very much through Heidegger's monumental book Nietzsche), and that for some the role of Heidegger is downplayed because of his association with Nazism (ie the reading of Paul Rabinow). I've written on these issues here and elsewhere before. I'm currently interested in working out the relation/links between Foucault and Heidegger's thinking of issues of the politics of calculation (particularly through the former's work on racism and the latter's Beitraege) and on the issue of truth and subjectivity (reading the above mentioned lecture course and Heidegger's work on truth and freedom). With both the issue is not so much one of influence (though i think there certainly is an influence), but more of a shared set of concerns that are played out in related though different ways. I think it's interesting that even in lecture courses of Heidegger's that were unpublished until after both thinkers' deaths, there are numerous areas of overlap and common interest. Hope that sparks some interest Best wishes Stuart
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