Task for Practice seminar №9

 

Ex.1. What is the Enlightenment for M.Foucault?

“We must never forget that the Enlightenment is an event, or a set of events and complex historical processes, that is located at a certain point in the development of European societies. As such, it includes elements of social transformation, types of political institution, forms of knowledge, projects of rationalization of knowledge and practices, technological mutations that are very difficult to sum up in a word, even if many of these phenomena remain important today. The one I have pointed out and that seems to me to have been at the basis of an entire form of philosophical reflection concerns only the mode of reflective relation to the present.

Humanism is something entirely different. It is a theme or rather a set of themes that have reappeared on several occasions over time in European societies; these themes always tied to value judgments have obviously varied greatly in their content as well as in the values they have preserved. Furthermore they have served as a critical principle of differentiation. In the seventeenth century there was a humanism that presented itself as a critique of Christianity or of religion in general; there was a Christian humanism opposed to an ascetic and much more theocentric humanism. In the nineteenth century there was a suspicious humanism hostile and critical toward science and another that to the contrary placed its hope in that same science. Marxism has been a humanism; so have existentialism and personalism; there was a time when people supported the humanistic values represented by National Socialism and when the Stalinists themselves said they were humanists.

From this we must not conclude that everything that has ever been linked with humanism is to be rejected but that the humanistic thematic is in itself too supple too diverse too inconsistent to serve as an axis for reflection. And it is a fact that at least since the seventeenth century what is called humanism has always been obliged to lean on certain conceptions of man borrowed from religion science or politics. Humanism serves to color and to justify the conceptions of man to which it is after all obliged to take recourse.

Now in this connection I believe that this thematic which so often recurs and which always depends on humanism can be opposed by the principle of a critique and a permanent creation of ourselves in our autonomy: that is a principle that is at the heart of the historical consciousness that the Enlightenment has of itself. From this standpoint I am inclined to see Enlightenment and humanism in a state of tension rather than identity.

In any case it seems to me dangerous to confuse them; and further it seems historically inaccurate. If the question of man of the human species of the humanist was important throughout the eighteenth century this is very rarely I believe because the Enlightenment considered itself a humanism. It is worthwhile too to note that throughout the nineteenth century the historiography of sixteenth-century humanism which was so important for people like Saint-Beuve or Burckhardt was always distinct from and sometimes explicitly opposed to the Enlightenment and the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century had a tendency to oppose the two at least as much as to confuse them.

In any case I think that just as we must free ourselves from the intellectual blackmail of being for or against the Enlightenment we must escape from the historical and moral confusionism that mixes the theme of humanism with the question of the Enlightenment. An analysis of their complex relations in the course of the last two centuries would be a worthwhile project an important one if we are to bring some measure of clarity to the consciousness that we have of ourselves and of our past” (" What is Enlightenment? " (" Qu'est-ce que les Lumiè res? ") / The Foucault Reader, ed. By P.Rabinow, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984, pp. 32-50).

Ex.1. What is your opinion about this text?

 

The current antiglobalist attitudes are historically linked to that source of nationalism and statism. In other words, the main aspects that characterize the present anti-globalization movement represent the core points of the nationalistic and statist vision and rely on the anti-cosmopolitan tendencies of the past.

Those tendencies favoured the introduction by the ruling é lites of the nation states of certain obstacles that were necessary for setting up and reinforcing their control of the territory and of the people they had taken over. The impediments affected the:

- Circulation of individuals. The main obstructions to the free movement of people were the invention of the passport and the introduction of state laws putting conditions on international travelling. Passports were issued to check movement of individuals even inside the state (internal passports). As for entering another country, let us focus on one reputed as amongst the most open in the world, the USA. Already in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act had prohibited the entry of Chinese workers for ten years. In 1904 the exclusion became permanent and in 1907 it was extended to Japanese and then to Korean citizens. In 1917 the literacy test was introduced in order to restrict immigration by excluding those with no reading and writing skills. Finally, in 1921, the Quota Act fixed a maximum number of entrants in the country (357, 000 individuals per year), a figure that was halved in the second Quota act of 1924.

- Circulation of goods. In the USA, a series of Tariff Acts (the McKinley Tariff, 1890; the Dingley Tariff, 1897; the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, 1922; the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, 1930) had been preceded by Tariff Laws in various European states (Austria 1874-1875 and later 1881 and 1887; Russia 1877; Spain, 1877 and 1891; Germany, 1879; France, 1881 and 1892; Italy, 1887; Sweden, 1888). The imposition of tariffs, restricting the drive towards technical innovation and business opportunities, was actually damaging the economic situation of everybody in general. Failure to acknowledge this was conducive to the political and economic attitude in favour of autarchy that would dominate the first half of the 20th century and that would be responsible above all for the long depression.

- Circulation of ideas. The obstacles to the circulation of individuals and goods due to the strengthening of state national borders and controls had also a negative effect on the circulation of ideas. If we consider how large, after the Second World War, was the contribution of immigrants to the revival of the sciences in the USA (physics, mathematics, architecture, psychology, sociology, etc.), we realize how negatively state controls on free circulation affect the realm of ideas (creation, diffusion). Besides that, state control of the means of communication and the efforts bestowed by the state on the formation of a national identity have not been, for sure, factors facilitating the free circulation and cross-fertilization of ideas coming from the outside.

It is therefore appropriate to say that the general climate promoting and hardening anti-globalist feelings was one based on the refusal of freedom and on the lack of acknowledgment of the dignity of every human being.

Generally they are points that are treated also by other movements who do not qualify as anti-global. Nevertheless, it is meritorious that some fringes of the anti-globalization movement have added their voice, in particular taking position in favour of: 1) the protection of the environment; 2) the betterment of working conditions; 3) the freedom of expression and movement. (From the web-site “Polyarchy: essays on statism”).