Human nature, Foucault vs Chomsky.

[luckyshot]

Lol but in all seriousness:

Early Foucault: Structures determine action. Foucault was much more pessimistic in 1971 (he died in 1984 and his later works are much more accurate in regards to agency). Foucault can be said to be a communist during this time.
Early Chomsky: No, it's about the way our brains process and develop language. Chomsky was much more optimistic at that point and believed in innate universal qualities irrespective of cultural predilections. Chomsky, I suppose, can be described as an anarcho-syndicalist at the time of the interview.

Both seem to merge closer to one another as time passed, though.

Thank you for that.

I think I now understand the basic distinction.

It’s the old Jungian question: do people have ideas, or do ideas have people?

Is that fair?

Also, where would they stand on the Brett v. Shawn debate?

Did Brett, indeed, screw Brett?

Also @Ripskater what is your opinion of the OP?

 

[Pupi]

Thank you for that.

I think I now understand the basic distinction.

It’s the old Jungian question: do people have ideas, or do ideas have people?

Is that fair?

Also, where would they stand on the Brett v. Shawn debate?

Did Brett, indeed, screw Brett?

Also @Ripskater what is your opinion of the OP?

Not really, because both Chomsky and Foucault are materialists that focus on Marx and Jung was an idealist that focused on Hegel. Marx, Chomsky, and Foucault are inversions of Hegel and Jung. To Chomsky and Foucault, language, institutions, and other structures aren't abstract ideas living in a pure world of forms and are instead conditioned by socialization and authority (tradition and others). Saussure, the father of linguistics, said that language structures thought instead of thought structuring language (Chomsky and Foucault build upon him as well).

I've never heard of the Brett V. Shawn debate...what is that about?

 

[luckyshot]

Not really, because both Chomsky and Foucault are materialists that focus on Marx and Jung was an idealist that focused on Hegel. Marx, Chomsky, and Foucault are inversions of Hegel and Jung. To Chomsky and Foucault, language, institutions, and other structures aren't abstract ideas living in a pure world of forms and are instead conditioned by socialization and authority (tradition and others). Saussure, the father of linguistics, said that language structures thought instead of thought structuring language (Chomsky and Foucault build upon him as well).

I've never heard of the Brett V. Shawn debate...what is that about?

It’s way more complicated than that stuff you were talking about.

I don’t think I can really simplify it.

 

[luckyshot]

I just watched that shit until the 12th minute.

Did Foucault just claim the concept of “life” didn’t exist until the 17th century?

Also, goddamn it @Ripskater where are you? I fucjing need to know where you stand on this.

 

[TheGreatA]

Foucault is still very much "relevant" in left academic circles. My wife is in the communication department of a large California university where Foucault is still de rigueur. But I agree with you -- I have a low opinion of Foucault, although he is probably the least bad of the postmodern genre.

Most certainly he is. However, he bowed out of the game a long time ago as the end result of his life philosophy.

 

[Pupi]

It’s way more complicated than that stuff you were talking about.

I don’t think I can really simplify it.

You should read Hegel to better understand Jung since you seem intrigued. Jung is on the same boat as Kant and Hegel.

Most certainly he is. However, he bowed out of the game a long time ago as the end result of his life philosophy.

How did he bow out of the game?

 

[TheGreatA]

How did he bow out of the game?

AIDS.

 

[Pupi]

AIDS.

Lmao. Yeah, he was a homosexual and got ruined by his own and the scientific communities lack of awareness regarding the subject. Nevertheless, his focus on biopolitics and disciplining of people is on point. Homosexuality and acquiring AIDS hardly has to do with his "life philosophy." I don't think it can be simplified to just that.

 

[luckyshot]

AIDS.

I always said he was the Magic Johnson of philosophy.

You should read Hegel to better understand Jung since you seem intrigued. Jung is on the same boat as Kant and Hegel.

I read some Hegel a long time ago and all I remember is he’s an idealist, the dialectic, and the cutting board of history.

What did I miss?

 

[TheGreatA]

Lmao. Yeah, he was a homosexual and got ruined by his own and the scientific communities lack of awareness regarding the subject. Nevertheless, his focus on biopolitics and disciplining of people is on point. Homosexuality and acquiring AIDS hardly has to do with his "life philosophy." I don't think it can be simplified to just that.

Well, he saw doctor-patient relationship as a power struggle, and his suspicion of AIDS was aided by his conspiratorial mindset towards diseases and the practise of medicine in general, most especially diseases that he believed had been "invented" to control minority groups.

He went past the point of healthy skepticism, to the territory of radicalism, and as a result he became as blinded to reality as your average American "truther".

 

[Pupi]

I always said he was the Magic Johnson of philosophy.

I read some Hegel a long time ago and all I remember is he’s an idealist, the dialectic, and the cutting board of history.

What did I miss?

Hegel focused a lot on consciousness and rationality, but Jung following Freud was more interested in the "unconscious" and the role of myth-making. Neither are scientific despite claiming the opposite.

Well, he saw doctor-patient relationship as a power struggle, and his suspicion of AIDS was aided by his conspiratorial mindset towards diseases and the practise of medicine in general, most especially diseases that he believed had been "invented" to control minority groups.

He went past the point of healthy skepticism, to the territory of radicalism, and as a result he became as blinded to reality as your average American "truther".

It's a power-struggle to a certain degree and that's more true in certain fields than others (especially Psychiatry, a field that justifies the removal of individual and group liberty based on authority). Remember, back then homosexuality was branded as a psychological illness, so someone from his position can rightly dispute that and call bullshit on unscientific paradigmatic claims (which have been reversed and proved him right).

 

[TheGreatA]

It's a power-struggle to a certain degree and that's more true in certain fields than others (especially Psychiatry, a field that justifies the removal of individual and group liberty based on authority). Remember, back then homosexuality was branded as a psychological illness, so someone from his position can rightly dispute that and call bullshit on unscientific paradigmatic claims (which have been reversed and proved him right).

Everything is a power struggle of sorts, the difference here, as with "truthers" opposing all government action, is that they've crossed the line of rational critique, and entered the realm of the irrational. Same goes for Foucalt with his ideas on doctors being the innovators of disease, scoffing at the idea of HIV existing while engaging in unprotected sex, putting numerous lives at risk while carrying the disease, apparently remarking that he had no problems "dying for the love of boys". He had put his ideology before his better sense.

When it comes to psychiatry, I would agree with most critiques of it (including Foucalt's), but I do not consider it a practise of medicine as much as a form of social control, which becomes quite obvious when you study its foundations. It appears to me that the greater the number of trained psychiatrists in a society, the greater the number of mentally ill patients, when it should be the opposite way, according to all forms of common logic.

Physical illnesses, on the other hand, are significantly less subject to non-empirical critique (which is what all of Foucault's critique consisted of, at the end of the day, with very little actual data to back up his observations), compared to mental ones.

One of his theories was that a man should become his own doctor, and practise "self-medicine", but from the way his life ended up, it becomes painfully obvious that he lacked the practical knowledge to be his own.

 

[esdoornblad]

"... philosophy (The guys from this department were particularly inane)" -- Richard Feynman

There is about a 90% chance that if people are discussing Kant, Freud, Jung, Foucault (not to mention Lancan, Derrida) the discussion will be both (a) 20 pages long, (b) inane. If you really want to see an extreme case, have a look at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Barad

 

[esdoornblad]

By the way, Zizek is one of my favourite comedians:

 

[tramendous]

I've recently had the pleasure of watching this video:


Remember to turn on CC when you watch.

While I thought Foucault had some points in that we are limited by the walls the institutions have put around us, I found myself more in agreement with Chomsky, that our innate curiosity is what determines our growth and that because of the society which we live in now, human creativity (in the west at least) is not repressed by the state / institutions.

The reason I find myself in agreement with Chomsky, is that I used to believe in Foucault (without ever having known of the man), blaming society and thinking nothing mattered since I was destined to fail. But as one grows in life, I began to realise that the hindrances I have in my life are usually the ones I have put in front of myself. I started to change the way I lived through small steps, and now I aim to do something productive every day.

Also in a religious sense I feel like that I am in agreement with Chomsky, when he said that the limitations put upon us by the institutions makes us seek out the knowledge outside of it. Think of Plato's cave for an analogy that you can draw as a parallel. This is because I grew up with almost no knowledge about my own faith, and the only introduction I had to it, was inside the institutions that Foucault mentioned. This lead me to having a very narrow Weltanschauung, however my own curiosity and that of my brother, both made us start to question aspects of our faith, and find other materials that further grew our perception of the nuance in our religion, and recognise the flaws of the Hadiths and the Sunnah. Had my brother and I been locked in a state of mind where we only sought out truth inside the walls that Foucault says we are in (granted he also says great discoveries transforms society, but the institutions despite transformation still remains) we would have not been able to escape the cave, and just think that the opinion / stance of those we perceived as having more knowledge about the topic to be inherently always true.

That being said, I also recognise that ones life can be impacted through a bad start, such as being born in a socio-economic poor environment where education and knowledge is not fostered, and that the walls of the institutions around you would feel like a subconscious cage, constricting the free flow of your minds movement. This is why I truly believe that we need to foster our fellow humans, early on, through good education and character building to make them see each other as thinking individuals, have solidarity with them and nurture their mind through a socratic manner.

A fellow Muslim? Us Salam alaykom

 

[Possum Jenkins]

Chomsky is great but I do think he defaults to blaming America and the West too quickly at times. Take the case of the extremism of the Middle East, he blames the Brits for allying with radical Islam in the aftermath of the First World War. But the Brits actually put a Hashemite in charge of Arabia who was swiftly BTFO by the Saudis. The Saudis were smart enough to only pursue their interests only as far as they did not conflict with those of the Brits, the imperial hegemon at the time, to the point of turning on their own soldiers with the help of the infidels.

My point is you can't really blame the Brits, it denies the Saudis the agency they clearly had in engineering their place in the modern world. But to Chomsky the blame falls on the Brits for allowing it to happen.

Chomsky tailors his talks to the audiences he's talking to. Whenever he discusses a problem he says something like "Well, there are lots of reasons why, but a big part is [insert the role of the West and or US here]"

And he makes his reasons for doing this clear: You are responsible for your own actions, not someone else's actions. So an American or Westerner should know what they have done so that they are able to rectify it. There's no value in talking about the other guy's crimes when your own crimes are still being perpetrated.

Perfectly rational.

 

[m25105]

Chomsky tailors his talks to the audiences he's talking to. Whenever he discusses a problem he says something like "Well, there are lots of reasons why, but a big part is [insert the role of the West and or US here]"

And he makes his reasons for doing this clear: You are responsible for your own actions, not someone else's actions. So an American or Westerner should know what they have done so that they are able to rectify it. There's no value in talking about the other guy's crimes when your own crimes are still being perpetrated.

Perfectly rational.

In other words, to paraphrase Chomsky.

"I am an american, I stop my own crimes, or work with others to stop the states crimes. So when I don't stop or rectify, when mine or the states crimes are presented to the public, how can I speak of myself as a 'good guy', as the media does, and say they are the bad guys, when we are often worse?"

I think Chomsky has lived this long cause of guilt in a subconscious way (note, there will be no references, this is just me). He has all this knowledge, all this memory, but he never tried to make his own party. Especially given the technology for information spreading back then. So instead he's become a public, voice a guilty conscience if you will. Now though thanks to the age of information technology; we are able to access various outlets that rapports what is going, and interactions through out the world. We are more interconnected if you will. And as such with the value that is drawn from this interconnectedness, we can now change ourselves, and society for the better, by ensuring that true justice exists in the world.

This is also why I prefer Chomsky's reasoning over Foucault, I didn't like that Foucault didn't believe in any reasoning to do something against the state, cause power would just be taken over by something else. I see this as an infinite loop. If we don't attempt to break out this loop, we can never move forward as a society. In other words; Foucault had a great lack of morality for the belief in ourselves as human being and what we can attain through kindness and justice.

A fellow Muslim? Us Salam alaykom

Aleyküm Selam brother.

 

[ultramanhyata]

When it comes to human nature I tend to default to something closer to Foucault's view in that I instinctively view human behavior as the result of the institutional framework.

It seems like even those at the two farthest ends of the human nature debate spectrum agree that every observable result is produced via a combination of nature and nurture/genes and institutions. It just becomes an argument over degree.

 

[Possum Jenkins]

In other words, to paraphrase Chomsky.

"I am an american, I stop my own crimes, or work with others to stop the states crimes. So when I don't stop or rectify, when mine or the states crimes are presented to the public, how can I speak of myself as a 'good guy', as the media does, and say they are the bad guys, when we are often worse?"

I think Chomsky has lived this long cause of guilt in a subconscious way (note, there will be no references, this is just me). He has all this knowledge, all this memory, but he never tried to make his own party. Especially given the technology for information spreading back then. So instead he's become a public, voice a guilty conscience if you will. Now though thanks to the age of information technology; we are able to access various outlets that rapports what is going, and interactions through out the world. We are more interconnected if you will. And as such with the value that is drawn from this interconnectedness, we can now change ourselves, and society for the better, by ensuring that true justice exists in the world.

This is also why I prefer Chomsky's reasoning over Foucault, I didn't like that Foucault didn't believe in any reasoning to do something against the state, cause power would just be taken over by something else. I see this as an infinite loop. If we don't attempt to break out this loop, we can never move forward as a society. In other words; Foucault had a great lack of morality for the belief in ourselves as human being and what we can attain through kindness and justice.

I wouldn't call Chomsky's view one of guilt but rather of responsibility and morality. He's often stated that at least those living in totalitarian, repressive countries (like the old USSR, China, the Arab theocracies) have fear of state violence as a valid excuse for not speaking out against their countries crimes. But those of us living in free societies have no such excuses and simply have to have the will to act in a moral way.

And yeah, Chomsky himself referred to Foucault as totally amoral in subsequent interviews. When you reach a point of skepticism so great you're afraid of taking ANY stance because hey, that's just an institution coercing you, you end up sitting on the sidelines and not contributing shit. Chomsky has said that you should have the courage to take certain stances if you want to get things done, but at the same time keeping open the possibility that you can be totally wrong.

 

[m25105]

I wouldn't call Chomsky's view one of guilt but rather of responsibility and morality. He's often stated that at least those living in totalitarian, repressive countries (like the old USSR, China, the Arab theocracies) have fear of state violence as a valid excuse for not speaking out against their countries crimes. But those of us living in free societies have no such excuses and simply have to have the will to act in a moral way.

And yeah, Chomsky himself referred to Foucault as totally amoral in subsequent interviews. When you reach a point of skepticism so great you're afraid of taking ANY stance because hey, that's just an institution coercing you, you end up sitting on the sidelines and not contributing shit. Chomsky has said that you should have the courage to take certain stances if you want to get things done, but at the same time keeping open the possibility that you can be totally wrong.

Foucault is certainly no Kantian in the end