Michel foco
(netherlands)
By liu yuhong
Jianjiang press, march 2012
Pricing: $18. 00
Humanity: the defence of justice and power
In 1971, noam chomsky and michel foco held a “century debate”. One of them speaks english, one speaks french and there is no translation. From “human nature” to humanity, power, creativity, freedom and the struggle for political justice。
Why is this argument still far-reaching after 40 years? Chomsky and fukuo reveal the current conflict in western cultural and political centres. It has inspired more than the debate itself。
A book critic, kim
Ordinary people who have long been insulated from professional problems, after having had enough of the soap operas after dinner’s trash time, will occasionally have a desire to listen to the truth from their heart. It might be surprising to have scholars on mass communication platforms like television. The french academy has made some attempts to expose the academic community to the public. As to the results of the annual public appearances of professors such as fukuo, who report their latest research in a continuous manner, we can assume that fukuo has crossed the body of others like a diver and started with a tape recorder ... At the end of the year, people came to the podium and turned off the tape recorder without asking any questions; he was alone among the noisy crowds. This feeling of loneliness, in 1971, is not likely to be alleviated by the company of chomsky。
From the point of view of the debate that took place between the two great philosophers, which undoubtedly had the lethal force of being a “minority” or “microfinance” admirer of the two philosophers for a variety of reasons, the brochure based on this debate, chomsky, fukuo, is probably not a short-sighted reader。
Behind the simple face of the booklet, however, is not the absence of the wrong signs and hidden traps. For example, fukuo is largely described as a behaviorist based on traditional empirical positions, an image that is probably far from his true point of view -- in the sense of focusing on the real effects of words, foco's position was indeed similar to that of empiricalism, but he would never agree with any form of logical restatement. Philosophers who have not yet lost faith in the logic of the human language continue to revert to other theories that need to be analysed. That thought was meaningless to foco, who had never envisaged adding a new level of interpretation to the discourse. Language is per se non-transparent, and we can only consider how what is called “knowledge” is “veridiction” in its specific application, in its interlocking with other forces and systems and in the identification of what is knowledge, criminal or abnormal in universities, prisons or psychiatric hospitals. The process of truthization is actually related only to those factors that influence the effects of words in a given context, not to any more noble “origin” — whether the latter is a platotype “physio” or a kantian “a priori sense” or “a priori logic”。
If we keep that in mind, it will be easy to identify the great difference between the basic academic positions of foco and chomsky. The latter, like other american philosophers, who mostly tend more emotionally to plato and conde, attribute language to some deeper innate rule or natural ability embedded in human nature. It is in this vein that, in order to give the human language a reliable logical starting point, chomsky must acknowledge the existence of something like human nature or the inherent mental pattern, which he insisted on in this debate. These two lines of reasoning are judged by the fact that they may well exceed the current level of human awareness, but it is essential to understand fukuo's position that in his interpretation of what he says about the world there is no need for a “humanity” or similar notion without compromising his own thinking. Given the behaviour of both sides in their arguments, it seems that chomsky himself is not aware of the fundamental differences between him and foco, and that, in the case of a particular knowledge, its boundaries are practically non-negotiable for the former — because he has placed the content in the realm of another human being, but the boundaries of this knowledge are clearly identifiable for the latter — although for some of the decisive signs, such as the notion of “life” in the knowledge systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it remains a difficult question to avoid。
When the arguments of two men entered the second half of the day, and the issues were moved from the foundations of knowledge to the legitimacy of politics, chomsky began to speak without any doubt of justice or justice in the capitalist society, condemning war and the swelling of state power, and we could easily have foreseen that fukuo would never agree to the existence of some objective justice and consider that the latter was nothing more than an invention by the agents of power. I don't know. If humanity is just a bad interference in the discussion of some truth-making processes in the history of ideas, then justice is a decorum that must be removed from the discussion of mechanisms for the functioning of capitalist power. In the final arguments between the two sides, if we are able to avoid the influence of terms that taste like gunpowder, such as the “proletary class” or “unionism”, we can see a very interesting fact that, in fact, even more radical liberals like chomsky, still subscribe to some of the fundamental principles of capitalist society – such as the us-style rule of law, and retreat from violence, while more “left” foco – go further。
Unfortunately, for the readers of china, reading this argument inevitably faces certain limitations and errors: in the case of the former, our modern social science is closer from the beginning to america; in the case of the latter, our living conditions make the french left-wing view completely incomprehensible to most. If readers can find a resonance from the humanism of chomsky and have a certain sense of rejection of fukuo's denial of justice, the booklet may have the potential to be a “pharmaceutical point” that drives them to read the two philosophers' writings。
Live
Pk1 about humanity
“i personally believe that human nature, or the nature of civil society, may be outside the realm of human science.”
Fukuo: i do not fully agree with mr. Chomsky that, in a sense, he classifies the philosophical rule as inherent in the heart or as a human nature. ... We must put these rules back into other areas of human practice, such as economics, technology, politics, sociology...”
Pk2 on power
Fukuo: “there is no power without potential rejection and resistance.” “the proletarians wage war against the ruling class because it wants power for the first time in history”
Jomsky: "no, i disagree."
Pk3 on justice
Fukuo: people want to win war, not because it is just.”
Jomsky: “i disagree with this. ... Our only justification for this war is that we believe that certain fundamental values of the human person will be realized after the change of power.”
Pk4 on justice
Fukuo: in a society without class, i don't know if we're talking about justice
"well, i can't agree with that. I think there is an absolute foundation — and if you want to ask what it is, then i really can't answer it, because i can't describe it — it is rooted in basic human characteristics.”
