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Foucault: What is Enlightenment?

stephen_seagull

13:58 / 19.10.04

So, it's my second week back proper, and I'm lost already. This would be fine if I was lost in a geographical sense, because I could probably ask anybody in the street for directions and get some reasonably helpful information back in response. Except... it's not in a geographical sense. Anyways, I'm going off track.

In my first bit of philosophical education (unless that does include 'Eighteenth Century Period Study' which I only just passed and didn't really attend any classes for), I'm reading Foucault. Reading it isn't a problem, it's the little comprehensive questions reminiscent of my time in middle school that are proving to be rather problematic. First up is the rather vague What is 'Enlightenment'? I've come up with 'a moment in time when people begun to think about problems without known solutions' [an almost direct quote]. I managed to come up with this little beauty after 45 minutes of reading and re-reading. This may be all I need, but I'm sure it needs to be expanded upon a little more than that.

Any ideas?

14:06 / 19.10.04

if you're discussing "Enlightenment" in relation to Foucault, it probably refers specifically to the 18th-century rationalist movement in Europe, not "enlightenment" in the mystical sense you're using. you know, liberal democracy, science, uniform systems of law and weights and measures, etc.

stephen_seagull

15:46 / 19.10.04

I considered that, but the extract that we have been given to study is more concerned with ideas of modernity and counter-modernity, and the Enlightenment's effect on that. In fact, there is very little discussion of the Enlightenment within the boundaries of the eighteenth century. Thinking about it now, I guess I need to be thinking of it less as giving a clear-cut definition of the 'Enlightenment', but more from the angle of its effect on how we see things today. Maybe. I'll continue to ponder that one.

16:39 / 20.10.04

Have a look at Horkheimer & Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (the introduction & first chapter is all I've read), which is stunning, and also fairly clear (I think, but then I first read it at postgrad level).

stephen_seagull

10:24 / 22.10.04

Left it a bit late, but have just flicked through the intro to the Horkheimer book. Cleared things up a little for me, so now I have more than one juvenile idea to throw into today's seminar. Seemed pretty helpful though (cheers). Kinda cleared up the distinction between Enlightenment, Modernity and counter-modernity though, which is all good.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

12:15 / 22.10.04

Adorno was a bit of a sod for hiding meaning in deliberately obscure construction (he actually thought this would make his ideas more thoroughly read), and I must say the idea that DoE is clear is one I hadn't come up against before. Possibly a side effect of reading it for the first time as a post grad. Still, if you're happy with it, it's definitely useful. There's also the man Giddens's stuff about the Enlightenment and Foucault, though not everyone is a fan. At the very least, he's good for he-said-she-said.

13:33 / 01.02.05

It should also be noted that in many ways Foucault is writing against Habermas in this piece, or at least Habermas's attacks on Foucault. It is also interesting to note that Foucault is using a rather obscure piece by Kant that was initially written for a newspaper. This is a further retort to Habermas, as he (Habermas) sees his own view of the enlightenment in line with Kant (rather than say, Hegel). Foucault is similarly counting himself in the enlightenment tradition which may at the outset seem anachronistic on Foucault's part (and I may agree).

Henningjohnathan

22:17 / 01.02.05

Perhaps unrelated, but I was reading PK Dick's novel THE DIVINE INVASION the other day, and there is section that mentions that both Beethoven and Goethe were committed to spreading enlightment across Europe. In this sense, it seemed that the basic drive of the enlightenment was to free humanity from the yoke of dogmatic thought. Of course, it seemed Neitzsche predicted the devastion this "Death of God" would have in the next century.

However, I haven't looked into it to see how Beethoven and Goethe were related.