Foucault after Hyppolite: Toward an ATheistic Theodicy (original) (raw)

Foucault's Forgotten Hegelianism

Parrhesia, 2014

Foucault and Hegel are often taken to be diametrically opposed thinkers. Contrary to this position, this article claims that Foucault can in fact be located within a Hegelian tradition of thought, as one of its most interesting variants, rather than as an anti- or non-Hegelian thinker. Both thinkers believe that the historical task of philosophy is to introduce mediation into the immediacy of the present in order to further the project of human autonomy. I point to two main similarities in their work. First, they both view human autonomy as the end point of political and philosophical analysis. Second, their philosophical methodologies – that of genealogy and phenomenology – are both analyses of the present through the traces and remnants of the past, or what Foucault would call “histories of the present.” This article places these two thinkers in conversation through the forgotten mediating figure of Jean Hyppolite in order to reorient the way in which we conceive of Foucault’s relationship to critical theory today.

"Hegel and Foucault Re-visited"

This paper argues that, despite their many differences, Hegelian 'phenomenology' and Foucauldian 'genealogy' pose a common challenge to philosophy by questioning the conception of knowledge and truth prevalent in philosophy, namely, the 'correspondence theory of truth'. Hegelian phenomenology challenges the aforesaid model of knowledge by showing that conscious experience is a dynamic interrelationship of subject and object. Foucauldian genealogy disputes the 'correspondence theory' by demonstrating that both the subject and the objects of knowledge are constituted in discourses. By casting doubt on the 'correspondence theory', Hegelian 'phenomenology' and Foucauldian 'genealogy' also query foundationalism and point towards a non-foundational knowledge. Both approaches demonstrate that truth is open-ended; truth and knowledge are intertwined with human activity and social-cum-political life. This implies that the philosopher, too, is a product of his time and, hence, his philosophy is part of the given social and political context in which he finds himself.

Hegel in modern french philosophy: the unhappy consciousness

Laval théologique et philosophique, 1993

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Oxford Handbook of Hegel, ed. Dean Moyar, Chapter 32 Hegel and Twentieth-Century French Philosophy

This chapter looks at Hegel’s impact on twentieth-century French philosophy by focusing on Kojève’s influential interpretation of Hegel, which enabled Beauvoir and Fanon to adapt Hegel’s philosophy to theorize gender and racial inequalities. Kojève took the struggle for recognition and the master/slave dialectic to be the central elements of Hegel’s thought. On this basis, by way of Sartre’s re-interpretation of the struggle for recognition as an inter-subjective battle between competing looks, Beauvoir and Fanon came to understand gender and racial oppression in terms of distortions in human relations of recognition. They argue that women (for Beauvoir) and black people (for Fanon) have been excluded from full participation in the struggle for recognition. However, these existential-Hegelian views are sometimes thought to have been superseded by the anti-Hegelianism of post-1960s French post-structuralism. Against this position, the chapter explains how the post-structuralist ‘French feminist’ Irigaray takes up and transforms Hegel’s notion of mutual recognition, to recommend that differently sexed individuals should learn to accept and recognize one another in their irreducible difference. This is indicative that Hegel remains a positive interlocutor for a range of contemporary French philosophers.

In conversation with Mark Olssen: on Foucault with Marx and Hegel

Open Review of Educational Research, 2017

It is challenging to define who Michel Foucault was, whether he was a theorist, a philosopher, a historian, or a critic. In many of his books, and essays, Foucault denied being a philosopher or a theorist, nor did he want to be called a writer or a prophet. He described himself as an experimenter by saying that his work simply consists of 'philosophical fragments put to work in a historical field of problems'. Like Ball [2013. Foucault, power, and education. New York: Routledge, p. 2], we believe that Foucault tried hard not to be 'a something', opening up opportunities to develop and practise theory. Emeritus Professor Mark Olssen has written widely on Foucault's theoretical underpinnings and legacy. This conversation aims to revisit Olssen's work, as well as Foucault's own writings in order to engage with Foucault's philosophical background and the methods he developed. By exploring Foucault's theoretical and methodological approaches, the conversation situates his work within broader traditions of social theory, particularly within the works of Marx and Hegel. Our conversation starts by discussing Foucault's relationship with Marx and Hegel and moves towards his approach to history and his wider contribution to poststructuralist school of thought.

Hegel After Derrida

1998

We will never be finished with the reading or rereading of Hegel, and, in a certain way, I do nothing other than attempt to explain myself on this point. Jacques Derrida

Philosophy and the Logic of Modernity: Hegel's Dissatisfied Spirit 2009.

Review of Metaphysics, 2009

Humanity's fall is a central theme in Hegel's thought. In his case the Fall is inflicted by human cognition and thinking. It is not sinfulness per se that announces humanity's distinctiveness but the knowledge of good and evil. 2 This reflective capacity is what initiates humanity's separation from nature. Rousseau famously argued that man was in modern culture alienated from himself. 3 The issue that concerned him was the general corruption of natural man in modernity.