Abstract
As early as 1967 and as late as 1980, Foucault made statements calling academic philosophy into question and suggesting that it has little if any value in contemporary society. Nowhere is his aversion to the discipline more adamantly manifest, however, than in the interview titled “The Great Confinement,” which he gave in 1972 to the German periodical Tages Anzeiger Magazin. Among other disparaging comments, Foucault, in the interview, characterizes philosophy as “no more than a vague little university discipline” and accuses professional philosophers of doing no real work and of distancing themselves from reality. “If I occupy myself with the GIP,” he asserts, “it is only because I prefer effective work to university yacking and book scribbling.”1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Foucault, “Le grand enfermement” (1972), FDE1, no. 105, 1169.
This is not to say that Foucault gave up his interest in literature. He remained interested in literature for a variety of reasons throughout his career and drew on literary sources for some of his genealogies into the 1980s. Nor, of course, had he never been politically active before the 1970s—see Marcelo Hoffman, Foucault and Power: The Influence of Political Engagement on Theories of Power (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 2–3. What happens in the early 1970s and with the GIP is that political activism comes to have a central oppositional place in his thinking about philosophy.
Michel Foucault, “Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual,” History of the Present 4 (Spring 1988): 1–2, 11–13.
Ibid. In response to his interlocutor, Foucault says, “I think that, at the heart of all this, there’s a misunderstanding about the function of philosophy, of the intellectual, of knowledge in general: and that is that it’s up to them to tell us what is good. Well, no! No, no, no! That’s not their role. They already have far too much of a tendency to play that role as it is. For 2,000 years they’ve been telling us what is good, with the consequences that this has implied. There’s a terrible game here, a game that conceals a trap, in which the intellectuals tend to say what is good, and people ask nothing better than to be told what is good—and it would be better if they started yelling, ‘How bad it is!’ Good, well, let’s change the game. Let’s say intellectuals will no longer have the role of saying what is good. Then it will be up to people themselves, basing their judgment on the various analyses of reality that are offered to them, to work or to behave spontaneously, so that they can define for themselves what is good for them. What is good, is something that comes through innovation. The good does not exist, like that, in an atemporal sky, with people who would be like the Astrologers of the Good, whose job it is to determine what is the favorable nature of the stars. The good is defined by us, it is practiced, it is invented. And this is a collaborative work” (13).
My point here is probably overstated. At least some of Foucault’s remarks during this period indicate astute awareness and political acceptance of gray areas. For a discussion of this and some quotations from Foucault on this point, see Keith Gandal, “Michel Foucault: Intellectual Work and Politics,” Telos 67 (1986): 131.
For the GIP’s enormous demands on Foucault’s time see David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 264.
Ibid., 292.
Foucault, “Prisons et asiles dans le mécanisme du pouvoir” (1974), FDE2, no. 136, 1391. Interestingly enough, the word is in English in the French interview. Deleuze’s phrase was in French, “une boîte à outils” (“Les intellectuals et le pouvoir” [1972], FDE2, no. 106, 1177).
Arnold Davidson, ed., Foucault and His Interlocutors (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 200.
Ibid., 201.
Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 81–82.
Ibid., 265.
Ibid., 267.
Gilles Deleuze, “Foucault and Prison,” Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews from 1975–1995 (New York: Semiotext[e], 2007), 282. See also Foucault’s comments in “Luttes autour des prisons” (1979), FDE2, no. 273, esp. 813–814.
Quoted in Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 234.
Henry David Thoreau, The Annotated Walden (New York: Bramhall House, 1970), 155.
John Stuhr, Genealogical Pragmatism: Philosophy, Experience, and Community (New York: SUNY Press, 1997), 45.
Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design (New York: Random House, 2010), 5.
Arran Gare, “Introduction: The Future of Philosophy,” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 8.1 (2012), 3.
Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal, The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? (Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1989).
David Hildebrand, “Philosophy’s Relevance and the Pattern of Inquiry,” Teaching Philosophy 22.4 (December 1999), 377.
Michael Fox, “The ‘Relevance’ of Philosophy and Its Relevance for Teaching,” Metaphilosophy 4.3 (July 1973): 266.
Consider, for example, the extent to which Charles and David Koch financially underwrite institutional programs in various sorts of social theory, including political philosophy, to further their own radical right-wing political agenda. Philip Mirowski documents some of their donations to economics departments; see Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown (London: Verso, 2013), 45, 234–36. In many universities where there are interdisciplinary programs in or centers for leadership studies or philosophy, politics, and economics, the Koch brothers have a more direct influence on hiring as well as the research and teaching choices of political theorists. Consider this campus-wide announcement at my own university: “Want to build your resume while advancing economic freedom? The Charles Koch Institute gives students the opportunities to turn their passion for economic freedom into careers through professional education programs. These opportunities have expanded to include the Koch Internship Program, the Koch Associate Program, and Liberty@Work. Join us at the information session to learn more—Monday, Feb. 10, 5–6 p.m., THC 310.” This was posted on the university listserv on February 9, 2014. It is not unique.
Examples of such studies include John McCumber, Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001) and G. A. Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 216.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2016 Ladelle McWhorter
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McWhorter, L. (2016). The Abolition of Philosophy. In: Zurn, P., Dilts, A. (eds) Active Intolerance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137510679_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137510679_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55286-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51067-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)