Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 15:13:04 -0700 (MST)
From: Flannon <fjackson-AT-du.edu>
Subject: Hello 




Sorry for the delay, but lets see if we canget this thing of the ground.  
At the moment there are 11 people subbed to the list.  Before making a 
general announcment about the list I thought we could hash it out amongst 
ourselves as to exactly what the thematic possibilities of the list 
should be.  It may turn out that such an activity will form a central 
part of the discussion and thus should follow a general announcement 
instead of preceeding it, but lets see what happens.

Here's my take on the situation.  When I announced this list on the 
Nietzsche list I formulated the question as:  What is a post-Nietzschean 
scientificity?  This now seems tome to be an inappropriate way to put it 
for several reasons.  First, putting it in this way accords Nietzsche an 
originary place, with the suggestion being given that this place could in 
some way be recovered as the site from which a certain set of 
transformation occured within scientific discourse.  At the same time this 
place would also constitute the locus of explanation to which our 
dialogue must necessarily return so as to reveal the truth ofthe relation 
in question.  On the face of it such an attempt seems to run counter to 
the question itself, for it disallows a genealogical position for 
Nietzschean discourse, making of it something concrete, immutable and 
closed to interpretation.  A better way to formulate the question is: 
What is the relationship between Nietzsche and scientific discourse?  In 
puting the question in this way Nietzsche's position becomes devalued to a 
certain extent, and its possible that the question could simply be 
formulated as:  What is scientific discourse?, or, What is the history of 
science?, though I don't think that I would want to go this far.

So, what is the relationbetween Nietzsche and scientific discourse?  The 
question opens a broad constellation of authors and works, some of which 
may have no direct referential link to Nietzsche's work, i.e. they don't 
quote Nietzsche or rely on his work in any intentional manner.  Foucault 
and Canguilhem immediatly come to mind as two philosophers whose work 
occures immediatly within the region determined by Nietzsche 
andscientific discourse.  That is, in both Foucault and Canguilhem 
scientific discourse forms a horizontal axis which is bisected at a 
perpendicular angle by a Nietzschean impulse.  Its probaly not necessary 
to say too much about Foucault here so I'll focus my comments on 
Canguilhem.  Canguilhem is an interesting because, while its obvious that 
he read Nietzsche he doesn'trely on Nietzsche to make his argument (in 
_The Normal and the Pathological_ Canguilhem mentions Nietzsche once, 
maybe twice but no more than that and when he does this he only mentions 
him, he dos not use him), and yet he can be called a Nietzschean in the 
sense that he did to the life science what Nietzsche did to morality. 
For instance, in an earlier post on the Nietzsche list I. P. Write said 
"The ascetic ideal is the revenge of the symbol upon the symbolised, or 
the ideal on the earthly",  this is a sentiment very much in keeping 
with the distinction that Canguilhem repeatedly makes between the history 
of a science and the science of which it is a history.  As Canguilhem 
puts it in "The History of Science"  "...the history of isthe history of 
anobject -- discourse -- that _is_ a history and has a history, whereas 
science is the science is the science of an object that is _not_ a 
history, that has _no_ history."  In making this distinction Canguilhem 
is reliant upon the notion that error is a necessary part of scientific 
discourse, and that the overcoming of error produces an epistemic rupture 
after which that which was once true can no longer serve as the true for 
the non-history of science, though it is precisely the 'progression' of 
this rupture that the history of science must articulate. The same 
process seems to be at work here that Nietzsche engages in the 
distinction between truth and lie and in how the true world becomes a fable.
Also, from this there can be drawn a counter position in which the 
history of science does not occure within the matrix established between 
Nietzsche and scietific discourse.  Canguilhem criticizes Thomas Kuhn for 
failing to make the disctinction between the history of science and 
science as such, with the result being that for Kuhn the history of 
science occures as thehistory of subjective genius (This theme is also 
taken up by Dominique Lecourt).  

(Sorry if I've run on a bit toolong about Canguilhem, but I'm a nut for 
his work, though I have yet to find anyone else who has read his work. So 
please, please, please if you have read talk to me.)

One last point and I'll stop for now.  So far I've got a couple of points 
within the field of nietzsche/scientific discourse (Foucault and 
Canguilhem, to which I would add Bachelard, Althusser and maybe Cavailles 
and Koyre though I haven't read these last two),  and I've offered a pint 
exterior to the field (Kuhn), so Now I'd like to posit that in some way 
Heidegger stands as the limit condition of the feild defined by Nietzsche 
and scientific discourse.  I'm not sure how ling this will hold up 
because my reasons for doing this are somewhat minimal and vague, but 
here goes.  There is an interview with Foucault, which unfortunatly at 
the moment I can't find, in which he is discussing his relationship to 
Nietzsche.  Foucault say that the part of Nietzsche which he finds most 
interesting is not the Nietzsche of Zarathustra, or of the eternal 
return, or any of "the five great doctrines" for that matter, but those 
works in which Nietzsche is primarily concerned with the truth, i.e. 
_Daybreak_, _Human, All Too Human_, _The Gay Sciences_.  In his books on 
Nietzsche Heidegger defines this same period as the least important part 
of Nietzsche's work and he goes so far as to call it 'a postivistic 
period' in Nietzsche thought. (I think this is in the first volume but 
I'mnot quite sure. If anybodiy is interested I can dig upthe reference).  
So, if you're willing to allow that Foucault's work occures within the 
field delimited by Nietzsche and scientific discourse adit does this by 
focusing on those portions of Nietzsche that Heidegger would exclude, 
then it would seem to follow that in some way heidegger would constitute 
the limit condition of this field.  Though for the moment this is to 
leave the quality of this limit condition unexamined.

Talk to you later.

Flannon