Foucault after Hyppolite: Toward an ATheistic Theodicy

The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2005) Vol. XLIll Foucault after Hyppolite: Toward an A-Theistic Theodicy Rdal Fillion University of Sudbury Michel Foucault’s most significant contribution is the way in which he h a s thought confront i t s historically constituted discursive conditions. In this, he can-and should-be seen as participating in a long-standing tradition of thinking that goes back t o Hegel. The importance of Hegel for twentieth-century French philosophy is well known (along with Husserl a n d Heidegger). Although emphasis is usually placed on the influence of Alexandre Kojeve’s lectures, a recent work by Bruce Baughl has both widened and sharpened the focus on Hegel’s reception in France by privileging the impact of Jean Wahl’s Le m a l h e u r de l a conscience d u n s la philosophie de HegeL2 If Kojeve’s reading of Hegel remains focused on the dialectic of the master and slave, Wahl’s reading stresses the unhappy consciousness and the divided self. Baugh successfully shows how “Hegel’s description of how a reality divided against itself continually passes from one opposed term to the other, without finding repose or reconciliation, constitutes a dominant theme ~ in French philosophy from the 1920s up to the p r e ~ e n t . ”This emphasis on the unhappy consciousness is in effect a refusal of the dialectical synthesis that otherwise characterizes Hegel’s thought. What unites much of twentieth-century philosophy, according t o Baugh-from existentialism and surrealism t o postmodernism-is “an anti-finalism, a denial of any ultimate telos t h a t would allow one to overcome divisions and to Re‘al Fillion is Assistant Professor of philosophy at the University Sudbury, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. His research interests include Contemporary French Philosophy and Historiography, the Philosophy of History a n d M u l t i c u l t u r a l i s m . Recent publications include “Freedom, Responsibility, and the ‘American Foucault’” (Philosophy & Social Criticism 20041, “L’lde‘e de l’histoire’ chez Michel Foucault” (Science e t espirit 2003), “Foucault o n History and the Self” n a v a l theologique et philosophique 1998). of 79 Real Fillion understand them a s interrelated moments of a fully realized ‘ t ~ t a l i t y ’ . ”One ~ well recognizes Foucault here. If, like Hegel, Foucault is concerned with exploring philosophy’s relation to history, it is not in order t o describe Spirit’s ultimate reconciliation with itself, but r a t h e r to trace the dispersals a n d deployments of systems of t h ~ u g h tOne . ~ might even be tempted to see in Wahl’s development a distant image of Foucault’s own struggle. Wahl’s initial claim was that “the truth of Hegel is to be found not in the Encyclopedia’s ‘desiccated’ results of the dialectic, but in the striving and pathos of the dialectical movement itself, which corresponds t o consciousness’ search for reconciliation with itself”; however, a s Baugh notes, “Wahl himself later rejected as illusory the Hegelian attempt to reconcile existence through speculative thought, and so turned away from the mediation of the Begriff and the dialectic based on it.”6 One might read the development of Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ and then ‘genealogical’approaches in a similar light. However, as Baugh also notes, Wahl’s influence on Foucault was indirect, passing through Jean Hyppolite. I t will be my claim that this passage via the work of Hyppolite is crucial if we a r e properly to understand Foucault’s place within the development of French philosophy. Further, an appreciation of Foucault’s debt t o Hyppolite will help us better understand the nature of his own work taken on i t s own. I will argue t h a t Foucault’s work should be seen in the light of his own appreciation of Hyppolite’s reading of the significance of Hegel’s thought for our understanding of the relation between philosophy and history, indeed, for our understanding of what is meant by the philosophy of history. Focusing on the relation between Foucault and Hyppolite requires that we abandon the view that Foucault is a n essentially anti-Hegelian philosopher (in the way t h a t Deleuze can be said to be). Foucault’s concern with history runs too deep. Focusing on this relation, though, leads me to question Baugh’s claim a t t h e end of his work t h a t Foucault (albeit after a long struggle that Baugh ably describes) has, with his genealogical innovations, moved u s “beyond” Hegel and, together with Deleuze, “inaugurate[d] a new conception of historical reason, concerned with establishing the singularity of events, and the limitations and possibilities for historically determined perspective^."^ Baugh of course is quite right that Foucault struggled with Hegel’s conceptions of teleological development, necessity, and dialectical synthesis, as well as with t h e ideal of reconciliation. But this struggle, and t h e stakes of the struggle, he learned from Hyppolite who himself was firmly engaged in it. And Foucault learned from Hyppolite that this struggle was ongoing, just as history is ongoing. Thus, this paper suggests t h a t we t a r r y a while longer with this struggle that attempts to understand the place of history within philosophy and philosophy’s place within history and rather 80 Foucault after Hyppolite than follow Baugh and place Foucault “beyond Hegel,” we will consider the place he created for himself “after Hyppolite.” Foucault expressed his indebtedness to Hyppolite on a number of occasions, the most notable of which was surely his inaugural lecture at the College de France on December 2, 1970. Indeed, the Chair of the History of Systems of Thought was created t o replace the vacancy left by Hyppolite’s death. Foucault begins that lecture in what is the premier intellectual institution of France by suggesting that rather than begin a new discourse he would have preferred t o slip into a discourse already under way, pronounced by a nameless voice, allowing Foucault simply “to enmesh myself i n it, taking up its cadence, and to lodge myself, when no one was looking, in its interstices as if it had paused an instant, in suspense, t o beckon me.”*At the end of his elocution, he returns to this idea, this voice, a t the beginning nameless, that he now acknowledges as being the voice of Hyppolite. Hyppolite was the teacher responsible for bringing Foucault to philo~ophy,~ and this encounter with philosophy was in effect an encounter with the philosophy of history. I t is within this context, that of the possibility and need for the philosophy of history, that Foucault’s work can most fruitfully be read. And I am taking here the idea of “philosophy of history” in its original Voltairian sense as a contrast to all “theological” understandings of history. That is, if a theological interpretation of history is concerned with how our actions in this world relate to God’s ultimate plan for us, a philosophical interpretation of history is concerned with whether o r not there is any discernible plan or meaning in what we accomplish in this world. Indeed, the development of a concern for a philosophy of history from the eighteenth century onwards was precisely a concern with the importance and significance, with the intelligibility, of our experience of the lived world. It expressed a concern with what was perceived to be the movement of this lived world, with i t s development. The philosophy of history wanted to understand that movement, and it was motivated to do so out of its commitment to rationality, to seeing in the actions of human beings more than what Kant called “the idiotic course of things human,” t h a t is, the past seen as “everything in t h e large woven together from folly, childish vanity, even from childish malice and destructiveness.”1° In other words, it is my suggestion that it is important to read Foucault as struggling with the figure of Hegel, wrestling with his vision of Reason and History and, in the end, a s attempting to continue the transformation already under way in Hyppolite’s readings of Hegel’s works. I will characterize this transformation as one that can perhaps best be understood as 81 Real Fillion the attempted articulation of a n a-theistic theodicy. A theodicy because, a s will be discussed further below, this is how Hegel ultimately describes the project of t h e philosophy of history, which traces “the recognition of t h e process of development which the Idea has passed through in realizing itself-i.e. the Idea of Freedom, whose reality is the consciousness of Freedom and nothing short of it.”” However, much more explicitly (or much less ambiguously) than in Hegel, such a theodicy must be understood a-theistically (not atheistically; we a r e not concerned with denying t h e existence of God, not even w i t h affirming his nonexistence-but only recognizing the affirmation t h a t God is dead), t h a t is, it is a theodicy t h a t does not make reference t o the plenitude afforded by the notion of God and is intent on avoiding all eschatological temptations when contemplating (or attempting t o comprehend) this “best” of all possible worlds (i.e., the actual world). * Hyppolite’s primary concern, Foucault tells us, and in this he is surely right, is o u r relation to Hegel’s philosophy. W h a t is meant here by “our” relation is contemporary philosophy or the possibility of philosophy today. What is meant by “philosophy” today is, I will suggest, not a p a r t i c u l a r discipline b u t t h e attempt t o comprehend the world. I t is in this sense t h a t for Hyppolite, according t o Foucault, “the relationship with Hegel was the scene of a n experiment, of a confrontation in which it was never certain t h a t philosophy would come out on top. He never saw t h e Hegelian system a s a reassuring universe; he saw in it the field in which philosophy took the ultimate risk.”12 B u t why should t h e a t t e m p t to comprehend the world philosophically be considered a n “ultimate risk”? A risk for what? For philosophy? Or for reason? If Hegel’s attempt fails, does that signal the end of philosophy as a relevant and fruitful enterprise? Or more radically, does it announce the fading of any hope of having reason rule the world? Hyppolite’s work brings out the fundamental pathos a t the h e a r t of Hegel’s philosophical achievement by t r a c k i n g i t s ambiguities, a n d h e does t h i s , according to Foucault, by “shifting” the senses or directions t h a t Hegel himself seems t o have given his work, which results in what Foucault calls the inversion of five “themes” running through Hegel’s work. First theme: rather t h a n a total comprehension, philosophy becomes for Hyppolite’s Hegel a n unending tusk against t h e background of a n infinite horizon. Philosophy’s work is never complete and always begins anew “given over to t h e forms of paradoxes and repetitions.”‘3 Second theme: given t h i s background, t h e t h e m e of a n achieved, completed, or accomplished self-consciousness becomes t h a t of a repeated interrogation t h a t constantly draws philos82 Foucault after Hyppolite ophy away from itself and its abstractions and generalities in order to “reestablish contact with the non-philosophical; it was t o draw as close as possible, not to its final fulfilment, but to t h a t which precedes it, t h a t which has not yet stirred i t s ~ncertainty.”’~ Third theme: thus, the sense that philosophy is meant to give to existence in its comprehension of the world is accomplished by “a philosophy that was present, uncertain, mobile all along its line of contact with non-philosophy, existing on i t s own, however, and revealing the meaning this non-philosophy has for US.”15 Fourth theme: if philosophy’s ultimate task is to provide the meaning o r sense of that which is manifested non-philosophically, then this raises the question of philosophy’s status itself. Is it already within that which it is not, ‘(secretly present”? If so, it is perhaps superfluous already. If it is not, what precisely is its role? What kind of justification can i t give of the task it has set itself? If i t s only justification is itself, then i t may legitimately be considered absolute. However, given its relation t o non-philosophy, does not its absoluteness appear merely arbitrary? Fifth and final theme: “if philosophy really must begin as absolute discourse, t h e n w h a t o f h i s t o r y , and what is t h i s beginning which starts out with a singular individual, within a society and a social class, and in the midst of struggle?”16 I will not ask here the extent to which this interpretation of the “shifts” and “displacements” accurately reflect Hyppolite’s appropriation of Hegel. My interest rather lies in showing how these shifts and displacements are reflected in Foucault’s own conception of the task of philosophy as h e himself ((shifts”i t through his historiographical practice. Here i t would perhaps be best t o take these themes i n reverse because the fifth theme is no doubt the one that underscores Foucault’s work most emphatically. Philosophy must confront history in Foucault’s work (as it does in Hegel’s), not as a chronicle of events that needs to be given order and sense but as a problematized and problematizing practice of making sense of t h e world, a t least a s far a s t h e past is concerned. As h e writes in the Archaeology of Knowledge, “history is one way in which a society recognizes and develops a mass of documentation with which it is inextricably bound.”17How does philosophy inscribe or insinuate itself into this self-constituting process and what does it attempt when it does so? Foucault’s works are exemplary in this regard inasmuch a s they a r e themselves incursions into and interrogations of historical writing.18 But, of course, Foucault is not a historian, at least not in the disciplinary sense, though he was very close to them, especially the “new historians” who were busy revamping and renewing French historiography i n the 1960s and ’70s (and in t h i s 83 Real Fillion continuing the work initiated by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, t h e founders of the A n n a l e s school). Indeed, one can ( a n d should) read The Archaeology o f Knowledge as Foucault’s attempt t o articulate and track his own relationship to these evolving historiographical practices i n his investigation of discursive practices, an attempt that repeats itself throughout his career. In a discussion with a group of historians concerning Discipline a n d P u n i s h , Foucault declares: “My books aren’t treatises in philosophy or studies in history: at most, they are philosophical fragments p u t to work in a historical field of problem^."'^ The notion of a “historical field of problems” is one with which these interlocutors would have been quite comfortable. Indeed, in many ways, the selective attention to a “field of problems” may be what best characterizes the otherwise eclectic approaches and methods of the new historians, insofar as it takes up the distinction that contemporary historiography draws between “histoire-problem”’ and “histoire-recit.”While the latter conceives itself essentially as the narrative of past events, the former recognizes itself as problern-oriented.20 Such historiographical developments cannot but have a n impact on conceptions of history generally. This is reflected in Hyppolite’s reworking of Hegel, where the emphasis is less on the narrativity that an appreciation of history might provide than on the multifariousness of the world it reveals. The third and fourth themes, according to Foucault, have to do with the precariousness and uncertainty of philosophy’s contribution as a sense-giving project to processes t h a t a r e initially seen as unphilosophical. If Hegel has extended the reach of philosophy immeasurably by having it reach right into the irrational itself, then Hyppolite, and Foucault after Hyppolite, shows a concern with the impact such a n extension has on philosophy itself. Hegel’s grasp of Absolute Knowing becomes in Hyppolite noticeably more tentative if still attentive or, as Foucault puts it, revealed by a philosophy that is “present, uncertain, mobile” whose primary concern, according to Hyppolite, is to apprehend in the manifestations of the world the meaning that it contains, “as we find life in the midst of everything living.”21The idea of life, of linking philosophy t o life, to life’s multifarious manifestations, is important for Hyppolite, echoing Hegel’s attempt at Jena of linking life and infinity: “The concepts of life and infinity are equivalents. In the Logic of Jena, Hegel thinks of infinity as a dialectical relation of the one and the many, but we can recognize in t h i s logical dialectic t h e very idea of life. Reciprocally, life is this dialectic itself, and life forces the spirit to think dialectically.”22Thus, this linking of philosophy t o life is in effect a concern with life and thought, with life as thinking, something that Foucault also takes up, even in the very title of the Chair he occupies a t the College de France, where philosophy gives itself over to the history of systems of thought. Here, 84 Foucault after Hyppolite too, Foucault comes after Hyppolite who, according to Foucault, did not see himself as a historian of philosophy but spoke r a t h e r of t h e history of philosophical t h o u g h t , a distinction wherein one can find “the singularity and scope of his e n d e a v o ~ r . By ” ~ ~insisting on this notion of philosophical thought, Hyppolite was insisting on “that which, within any system-no matter how complete in appearance-overflows from it, exceeds it, and puts it in a relation of both exchange and default with philosophy itself; philosophical thought was not for Hyppolite the intuition of a system, its unformulated intimacy; it was its incompleteness, the debt he could never repay, the space his propositions could never fill; that which, i n i t s pursuit, always remains despite being t a k e n up by p h i l o ~ o p h y . ”And ~ ~ thus, within this philosophical thought or philosophical thinking which Hyppolite would trace a n d outline and explore, one realizes through Hyppolite, philosophy itself “is never actualized or present in any discourse or text; that, in fact, philosophy does not exist; rather it hollows out through its perpetual absence all philosophies, it installs within them the lack that they incessantly pursue, continue, disappear, follow and remain for the historian suspended and to be taken up.”25 Foucault, then, through Hyppolite, continues this questioning of philosophy, of the very presence of philosophy in and through the writing of history, which, in effect, describes philosophy’s very condition of possibility, that is, those systems of thought that reveal thought’s “machinery”, its “discontinuous systematicities”26and trace a t the very root of thought the elements of chance, discontinuity, and material it^.^^ Foucault, after Hyppolite, radicalizes thought’s relation t o itself by radicalizing its relation to its historical manifestations. This is not, however, merely historicism. Nor does it lend itself to the sociology of knowledge. This is not about man and his activities. Foucault does not abandon philosophy in favor of some other project. Recall above, in connection with Discipline and Punish and his discussion with historians, that he saw his work as producing “philosophical fragments,” t h a t is, we can now see, fragments of philosophy within systems of thought whose ordering and deployment go beyond the synthesizing efforts of any single mind, even Hegel’s. But like Hegel, and like Hyppolite, Foucault knows t h a t philosophy, if it is to continue philosophizing (and if philosophy is anything it is the effort to continue philosophizing as Socrates and Nietzsche have shown us), it must confront the history that is its very condition of possibility. Foucault, in his own work, exemplifies Hyppolite’s second Hegelian theme, that of transforming, through philosophical effort, any achieved or complete self-consciousness into a repeated interrogation. This interrogation takes on many forms throughout his career but situates 85 Real Fillion itself fairly clearly a n d consistently a t a certain level of discourse t h a t Foucault calls knowledge ( s a u o i r ) which is situated between opinion and scientific knowledge (connaissance scientifique). In the document he submitted for the position at the College de France, Foucault gives a brief description of the “object” of investigation t h a t gradually took shape through his specific concern with the interesting and seemingly paradoxical question of how we might have formulated t h e project of “knowing” madness (which culminated of course in his Madness and Civilization). Through his concrete investigations of “how t h e mad were recognized, isolated, excluded from society, interned and treated; which institutions were destined to house and retain them-sometimes to care for them; which authorities pronounced them mad and according t o what criteria; which methods were adopted for constraining them, punishing them, or healing them,” Foucault gradually came t o discern t h e delineation of what would become his “object” of investigation: t h e “networks” (reseaux) of knowledge invested “in complex institutional systems.”28 B u t if t h i s describes ( a t t h a t p o i n t ) h i s “object” of investigation, and the level of discourse at which he situated himself, it is his philosophical questioning of it t h a t brings him back t o Hyppolite-and Hegel. We will recall t h e first inversion Hyppolite effects with regard t o Hegel’s attempt to conceive philosophy as a totality capable of thinking itself, the idea of thought thinking itself through its very movement is to have thought or philosophy conceive itself as a n unending task set against a n infinite horizon. It is within this context t h a t one must understand Foucault’s claim t h a t he has in his work produced “philosophical fragments put t o work in a historical field of problems.” That is, I want to suggest t h a t Foucault has taken up Hyppolite’s-and Hegel’s-challenge of making sense of history, of having this as philosophy’s principal t a s k with the proviso t h a t philosophy understand itself as a task and not a result. Philosophy’s purpose is not to describe or to understand a n independently existing reality, nor is it t o attempt to construct o r constitute t h a t reality; rather, it must make sense of its unfolding. Of course, for Foucault, t h a t unfolding does not reveal o r display o r signal a n increasing self-consciousness; r a t h e r , h e refuses t h i s p a r t i c u l a r speculative move. Foucault, like Hegel, is concerned with thought, but unlike Hegel, he is not concerned with Spirit. (Indeed, his rejection of Hegel is largely a rejection of t h e idea of s p i r i t a n d not a rejection of philosophy’s t a s k of m a k i n g s e n s e of history.) Foucault comes after Hyppolite, but he also comes after Marx and Nietzsche. After Marx, life “determines” consciousness and not t h e other way around, a n d after Nietzsche, life m u s t be lived without God. 86 Foucault after Hyppolite * I a m suggesting t h a t Foucault’s insistent a n d creative attempts to make sense of history, that is, to render our world intelligible through an examination of its historical unfolding (or systematicites) should be seen as a continuation rather than a rejection of the Hegelian attempt t o inhabit a reasonable world. Indeed, I have suggested that we could, with profit, appreciate Foucault’s various projects a s a n attempted a theistic theodicy in that, like all theodicies, they refuse to give up the world t o senselessness, to see it as without purpose and direction. Of course, Foucault’s theodicy is a-theistic in that it makes no claim to an u l t i m a t e purpose or direction for t h e world (hence Foucault’s phi lo s ophical fragments 1. How ever, despite the death of God, the world does not sink into meaninglessness and purposelessness. On the contrary, what has happened is t h a t meaning a n d purpose have been released from t h e dictates of any ultimate guarantor. What we a r e faced with is a proliferation of purposes and meanings with no clear way of evaluating them. It is this situation that we need t o make sense of-a world with proliferating meanings and purposes, not one that lacks meaning o r purpose. This is the world t h a t Foucault’s thought tackles by trying t o render it not meaningful ( i t is already r e n t with meaning) b u t intelligible.29 In other words, we need to see Foucault’s efforts as fitting squarely within what Leonard Lawlor has recently described as t h e “Hyppolite” m i d d l e , t h a t is, t h e investigative space a s delimited by Foucault between “a phenomenology of pre-discursive experience and an epistemology of philosophical which, following Hyppolite’s Logic and E ~ i s t e n c eis , ~intent ~ on keeping t h e focus on working out a logic of sense where “immanence is ~ o r n p l e t e . ”And ~ ~ for Foucault, like Hegel, comprehending immanence as complete is comprehending history. Throughout his oeuvre, Foucault demonstrates this comprehension of history. However, for many, his essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” provides the most succinct expression of his distinct understanding of history. What is less often noted is t h a t the text was included in a volume entitled Hommage h Jean H y p p ~ l i t e and , ~ ~ one cannot help but think that the choice of its title is a wink t o what Deleuze, another of Hyppolite’s students, describes as the way their teacher “rhythmically beat out Hegelian triads with his fist, hanging his words on the beat....”34 And indeed, it is the third and final note t h a t is decisive-history. To be sure, Foucault takes us there via Nietzsche and the concept of genealogy, but in this “hommage,” i t is Hyppolite’s reworking of fundamental Hegelian themes that fuels Foucault’s efforts a t questioning the actuality of the 87 Real Fillion It is this questioning of the actuality of the world through an examination and articulation of its historicality that allows us t o think of Foucault’s work as an attempted a-theistic theodicy. I do not suggest this term out of oxymoronic mischief but because I believe i t captures something of the movement of Foucault’s thought a s i t makes use of history and historiography. Indeed, associating the idea of theodicy with history, which is basic to Hegel’s thought, is already to move theodicy in an a-theistic direction. Traditionally (and still today in analytic philosophy), theodicies concern themselves with the justification of evil in a world purportedly created by a benevolent and allpowerful God. (If there is evil, then God is perhaps good but not all-powerful, o r all-powerful but not good.) However if, like Hegel, one thinks about what is manifest in the world without reference to a personal God (i.e., the personal attributes of goodness and potency), then what needs justification is not so much “evil” as it is senselessness. That is, sense must be made of that which appears senseless. Hence, Hegel calls his philosophy of history the “true” theodicy. The senselessness t h a t consideration of the world reveals, that “slaughterbench on which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states and the virtue of individuals were sacrificed’’36 f o r Hegel is redeemed, not through passive contemplation from a divine standpoint, but through the active exercise of reason-of making sense-that history can also reveal when the passions that feed history are transfigured by philosophy into t h e contemplation of t h e process of development of the Idea of Freedom. The complaints that his view of history is too abstract and schematic miss the point of working out a philosophy of history whose task is t o help us make sense of the world and not merely submit to it. He tells us ( t o complete a quote introduced earlier) t h a t : “Philosophy concerns itself only with t h e glory of t h e Idea mirroring itself in the History of the World. Philosophy escapes from the weary strife of passions t h a t agitate the surface of society into t h e calm region of contemplation; t h a t which interests i t is the recognition of the process of development which the Idea has passed through in realizing itself-ie. the Idea of Freedom, whose reality is the consciousness of Freedom and nothing short of it.”37 Clearly, Foucault’s work does not seek to celebrate the grandeur of Hegel’s vision. However, I am arguing that he does not in fact abandon it, or seek to replace it. Rather, he continues its “inflexion,”started by Hyppolite, by refusing the speculative presumption of Philosophy with a capital P of escaping “from the weary strife of passions that agitate the surface of society into t h e calm region of contemplation” in order to have philosophy confront more directly history and the strife t h a t characterizes i t . I think this is how we need to understand Foucault’s contribution to the Hommage a Jean Hyppolite: he 88 Foucault after Hyppolite has taken up a figure of philosophical thought-a practice dear to his teacher3*-in this case, Nietzsche, and demonstrates how this figure’s concept of genealogy can contribute t o the task of having philosophy confront “the weary strife of history” rather t h a n escape from it by showing t h a t history “has a more important t a s k t h a n t o be a handmaiden t o philosophy to recount the necessary birth of t r u t h and values; i t should become a differential knowledge (connaissance) of energies and failings, heights and degenerations, poisons and antidotes. Its task is to become a curative science.”39One sees immediately Foucault’s own forays into such “historical fields of problems” as inspired by these genealogical considerations. But we will recall t h a t his works a r e not simply “historical treatises,” even if genealogically conceived, but are in fact “philosophical fragments,,’ that is, pieces of philosophy, which following Hyppolite (following Hegel), a t t e m p t to comprehend immanence a s complete. In other words, I read Foucault’s work as a continuation of Hegel’s work by other means. His also is a finite attempt t o make sense of history as a n infinitely unfolding process. However, the difference with Hegel is t h a t Foucault places himself more squarely w i t h i n t h a t process a s opposed t o situating himself a t its end. (Of course, we are always in some sense a t the “end” of history because the future forever lies ahead of us.) But Foucault’s work can be seen a s a continuation of HyppoliteEIegel even more precisely insofar as it is also (partly) motivated, like Hegel’s philosophy, by the desire to make sense of the idea of “freedom.” That is, rather than merely affirm or deny freedom, either treating it as a postulate or an illusion, his work shows how it is revealed through the working out of the intelligible structures of the world as they manifest themselves historically (i.e., both continuously and discontinuously). This is especially evident in his use of the notion of power-relations. It is the notion of power-relations that will (for a time) mediate the “endless task” of making sense of this world as i t is set against its “infinite horizon.” It is within the notion of powerrelations t h a t t h e unfolding of history is to be rendered intelligible. By understanding our attempts to make sense of the world within power-relations, Foucault is trying to situate our freedom in terms as concrete as the world as we experience it and struggle with it. Here, too, Foucault is following (but also subverting) the Hegelian understanding of history. That is, because Foucault is not concerned with Philosophy with a capital P, and because he is not concerned with the relation of consciousness to Spirit, his account of freedom and the recognition of freedom t a k e on a different form. Through t h i s concept, he means t o place the recognition of the possibility of freedom within the weary strife of history. That is the point of characterizing our relations as power-relations. A power 89 Real Fillion relationship, Foucault tells us, “can only be articulated on the basis of two elements that are indispensable if it is really to be a power relationship: that the ‘other’ (the one over whom power is exercised) is recognized and maintained to the very end as a subject who acts; and that, faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up.”40This is what I meant earlier when I said that Foucault wants t o situate himself and his thinking more firmly within the unfolding of our attempts to make sense of the world. And this we do not do alone but with and against others, and t o do so is to participate in power relations, t o exercise power. But it is in and through this participation that we can truly recognize and realize our freedom because: “Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are ‘free’. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several kinds of conduct, several ways of reacting and modes of behavior are a ~ a i l a b l e . ”Thus, ~ ~ there is no opposition between the notions of power and freedom or, rather, “there is not a face-to-face confrontation of power and freedom as mutually exclusive facts (freedom disappearing everywhere power is exercised) but a much more complicated interplay. In this game, freedom may well appear as the condition for the exercise of power (at the same time its precondition, since freedom must exist for power to be exerted, and also its permanent support, since without the possibility of recalcitrance power would be equivalent to a physical deterrninati~n).”~~ By developing this notion of power, Foucault is attempting to continue the project of recognizing and realizing the freedom t h a t lies a t the heart of our attempts to make sense of the world, but now understanding those attempts as “agonistic,” the site of “mutual incitement and struggle.” This, according to Foucault, is t h e scene of history a s we live and seek t o understand it. Foucault writes: “The history t h a t bears and determines u s h a s t h e form of a war r a t h e r t h a n t h a t of a language-relations of power, not relations of meaning. History has no ‘meaning’, though this is not to say that it is absurd o r incoherent. On the contrary, it is intelligible and should be susceptible of analysis down to the smallest detail-but this in accordance with the intelligibility of struggles, of strategies and Foucault’s commitment to the intelligibility of the world is the same commitment t h a t inspires all theodicies. And his efforts show us that, even if we live in an a-theistic world that can no longer promise a n ultimate guarantee t o our various a t t e m p t s to make sense of it, we can still appeal to t h e guarantee that remains at the heart of all theodicies: that only careful attention to the actual world will reveal any sense i t may contain. 90 Foucault after Hyppolite Notes Bruce Baugh, Frertch Hegel: From Surrealism to Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 2003). J e a n Wahl, Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (Paris: Rieder, 1929). Baugh, French Hegel, 2. Ibid., 6. We will recall that the Chair that Foucault held a t the College de France was given t h e t i t l e of C h a i r of t h e History of Systems of Thought. ti Baugh, French Hegel, 24. Ibid., 172. Michel Foucault, “The Discourse on Language” in The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridon Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 19761, 215. According to his biographer, D. Eribon, a young eighteen-year-old Foucault freshly arrived in Paris would have fallen under the spell of Hyppolite and philosophy because of their ability to make sense of history. Cf. D. Eribon, Michel Foucault (Paris: Flammarion, 1989), 34. lo Immanuel Kant, On History, ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrll, 1963), 12. I’ G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 19561, 457. And in the last paragraph Hegel says: “this is the true Theodicea, the justification of God in History.” l2 Foucault, “The Discourse on Language,” 236. l 3 Ibid. l4 Ibid. Ibid., my emphasis. l6 Ibid., my emphasis. Ibid., 7. On Foucault’s impact on historical writing, cf. P a u l Veyne, “Foucault Revolutionizes History,” trans. Catherine Porter in Foucault and his Interlocutors, ed. Arnold Davidson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). l9 Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 3 (New York: The New Press, 20001, 224. 2o Cf. Frangois Furet, I n the Workshop of History, trans. Jonathan Mandelbaum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 21 J e a n Hyppolite, Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of History, trans. B. Harris and J. B. Spurlock (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996),49. 22 Ibid., 43. Cf. also J e a n Hyppolite, “The Concept of Life a n d Consciousness of Life in Hegel’s Jena Philosophy,” in Studies i n Marx and Hegel (New York: Basic Books, 19691, 3-21. 23 Michel Foucault, “Jean Hyppolite, 1907-1968,” Dits et ecrits, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 780, my translation. 24 Ibid. “ ... ce qui dans tout systeme-aussi acheve qu’il paraissele deborde, l’excede, e t le met dans un rapport a la fois d’kchange e t de defaut avec l a philosophie elle-m6me ; l a pensee philosophique, ce n’etait pas, pour lui, l’intuition premiere d’un systeme, son intimite informulee; c’etait son inachevement, la dette qu’il ne parvient jamais a acquitter, le blanc qu’aucune de ses propositions ne pourra jamais couvrir; ce par quoi, aussi loin qu’il se poursuive, il demeure en reste 91 Real Fillion par rapport a la philosophie.” 25 Ibid. “ ... la philosophie n’est jamais actualisee ni presente dans aucun discours ni aucun texte; qu’a vrai dire la philosophie n’existe p a s ; qu’elle creuse plut8t de s a perpetuelle absence t o u t e s les philosophies, qu’elle inscrit en elles le manque ou sans cesse elles se poursuivent, se continuent, disparaissent, se succedent, e t demeurent pour l’historien dans un suspens ou il lui faut les reprendre.” 26 Foucault, “Discourse on Language.” 27 This i s especially evident in Foucault’s “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” revised translation in Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 2 (New York: The New Press, 1998), 367-91. We will return to this essay below. 2H Foucault, “Titres et travaux,” Dits et ecrits, vol. 1, p. 842. 29 An a-theistic theodicy also suggests that, although we cannot be concerned with God’s justice (which of course i s t h e etymological significance of t h e word theodicy), t h e concern with justice does not automatically devolve to “Man” or human justice. Rather the concern is w i t h t h e s t r u c t u r a l a n d systematic deployment of j u s t i c e s understood historically. As Foucault p u t s it: “ H u m a n i t y does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where t h e rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of i t s violences i n a system of rules and t h u s proceeds from domination to domination” (“Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 378). 30 Leonard Lawlor, Thinking Through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 20031, 12. 3 1 Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, translated by L. Lawlor and A. Sen (New York: State University of New York Press, 1997). 32 Lawlor, T h i n k i n g Through French Philosophy, 12; Hyppolite, Logic a n d Existence, 176. Such a focus, according to Lawlor, characterizes all of w h a t h e calls “the g r e a t French philosophy from t h e Sixties” (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze), with as its principal problem: “how to conceive, within immanence, the difference between logic and existence ( t h e Logos and time), structure and genesis, thought and experience, the said and the unsaid, monument and soul, philosophy and non-philosophy” (Lawlor, T h i n k i n g Through French Philosophy, 12). 33 Foucault, ed., H o m m a g e a J e a n Hyppolite ( P a r i s : P r e s s e s universitaires de France, 1971). 34 G. Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 12; quoted in Baugh, French Hegel (London: Routledge, 20031, 188 n45. 35 For a n excellent discussion of this essay as it relates to Hyppolite and to French philosophy generally, cf. Lawlor’s T h i n k i n g Through French Philosophy, especially t h e section entitled “Foucault’s Three Great Concepts: Metaphysics, the Actual, and Genealogy,” 15-20. 36 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, as quoted in Joseph McCarney, Hegel on History (London: Routledge, 2000), 199. McCarney provides a good discussion of Hegel’s “theodicy” in the final chapter of this work, 195-220. 37 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 457. 3R In t h e same year of t h e H o m m a g e , a two-volume collection of Hyppolite’s studies of various thinkers was published under t h e title Figures de la penske philosophique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1971). 92 Foucault after Hyppolite Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 382. “The Subject and Power” in Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 3 (New York: The New Press, 2000),340. 41 Ibid., 342. 42 Ibid. 43 “Truth and Power” in Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 19541984, 116. 39 40 93