Foucault's analysis of Cartesian "progress"

In a particularly difficult passage (pages 58 ff) in Order of Things, Foucault argues that Descartes engages in a critique of resemblance (in his Regulae). Instead of the orthodox argument, in which “sixteenth century thought becom[es] troubled as it contemplates itself”, Descartes excludes resemblance as a fundamental experience and primary form of knowledge. Descartes accomplishes this by universalizing the act of comparison in rational thought, thereby giving it its purest form. The challenge is, however, that according to Descartes true knowledge can only arise from intuition (as an act of “pure and attentive intelligence”) linked through deduction, but this excludes comparison almost by definition. Comparison exists in only two forms, but must be reconfigured: the comparison of measurement and of order. Measurement analyzes the world into units that establish relations of equality and inequality. Order analyses elements, the simplest possible that can be found, and arranges differences according to the smallest possible degrees. With Descartes, classical resemblance ceased to be the fundamental category of knowledge, and instead became an analysis of identity and difference.

The “progress” of the method is such that measurement is reduced to serial arrangement (as an act of order), which shows up in differences of degrees of complexity. This analysis progresses from the unit and relations of equality and inequality to an analysis of identity and differences (“differences that can be thought in the order of inferences”). This analysis of identity and difference no longer fulfilled its role in revealing how the world is ordered, since it now progresses according to the “order laid down by thought”. In the 16th century, kinships, resemblances and affinities, which are interwoven with thought, take on a new configuration, which can be summed up as “rationalism” (“if one’s mind is filled with ready-made concepts”). In the classical episteme knowledge was never complete and always open to fresh possibilities, based on similitude. The new system of comparison permits a “complete enumeration” with certain knowledge of identity and differences,  as each point can be necessarily connected to the next. In this new system the action of the mind will no longer draw things together (establishing kinship, affinity, etc.), instead it will act by discriminating (establishing identities and making successive series of connections). Finally, history and science will become separated, because there is no common unit of measurement. Language, thus, is no longer one of the “figurations of the world”, and while it can translate truth if it can, it can no longer be considered the “mark of it”.

Foucault as Heideggerian

From Professor Hubert Dreyfus:

Foucault’s comment on Heidegger in his last interview: For me Heidegger has always been the essential philosopher … My entire philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidegger.

Review of History of Madness

Foucault, M. (2009). History of Madness. (J. Khalfa, Ed., J. Murphy, Tran.). London; New York: Routledge. Reviewed Monday, July 18, 2011

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Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools)

C.f. Michel Foucault’s History of Madness (2006) / Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’â classique (1961)

Das Narrenschiff

The relationship of asceticism, pastoral power, and open source software

There are two elements to counter-conduct, against the pastoral power and newer formation, governmentality.

The first element of counter-conduct is asceticism. Asceticism. Asceticism is not the diminution of evil, rather, it is the mastery of the self’s relationship to evil. Asceticism is a counter-conduct to pastoral power because it is incompatible with forms of pastoral power that “involves permanent obedience, renunciation of the will, and only of the will, and the deployment of the individual’s conduct in the world” (Foucault, p.207). WIth the pastorate there is a level of respect for the law, but the ascetic “turns this around again by making it a challenge of the exercise of the self on the self”.
The second element of counter-conduct is community. Whereas asceticism has an individualizing effect, the formation of community is something completely different. Two forms of counter-pastoral communities existed. The first kind was apocalyptic, which believed that the centrality of the Church, the Church itself, in Rome was the Antichrist. The second, more subtle and learned form of counter-pastoral community believed that if the pastor is in a state of sin his privilege and authority ceased to exist. In this formulation the pastor’s power is not independent of his moral worth. The priest’s power to administer the sacraments became a point of counter-conduct, with some communities refusing to acknowledge the ability of the priest to perform baptism on children, without the consent of the individual and the community.

These two elements of counter-conduct are found in contemporary discourse about open source software. The formation of an individual’s own digital self can only be fully realized by creating the apparatus as one desires. For example, the subjectivity one gains from Facebook is that of the (public) face—-the clean and sanitized face that is blue and columnar, open to the public (or with consent fear of accidental exposure), and necessarily corporate (“likes” and targeted advertising). Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are customizable operating systems, with considerable latitude for expressive subjectivity, but at their root, the system pushes against counter-conduct, under the guise of protection against spam, viruses, and software instability. Open source software, however, is fully expressive, at least within the constraints of skill and programming language functionality (which deserves its own treatment, since it is not at all clear that open source software permits counter-conduct against base elements of digitally, networking, linearity, etc.). Open source programmers frequently speak of their ability to “scratch their own itch” and “hack around”, which is both playful and generative of how they represent themselves to themselves. The community of open source is, and always has been, oriented towards counter-conduct, at least in discourse and intra-group conceptions. The freedom and ability to create new communities is paramount to open source software, and is increasingly popular as open source licensing becomes more permissive and business friendly. Forking, and especially forking without recognition of the past communities, is variously considered both necessary and problematic. If the direction of a community is problematic for a subset it is easy to create a new community, but it is just as easy to create a commercial enterprise that co-opts the community interests (as long as the license is permissive). Closed source software is considered, apocalyptically, the ruin of computing, and functionally, constraining. Sponsored open source software is very productive but also stifling, given that it needs to meet certain business goals.

There is certainly more to be said here, but this will have to suffice for now.