After being interested in Foucault for several years, because of his relation to Nietzche and anarchism, I'm finally seeing how his ideas pertain to my own interests. I've begun reading the Order of Things, which seeks to reconstitute commonly grouped together bodies of knowledge (science, econ, history) according to previously unknown, underlying epistemologies/meta-perspectives.
He seeks to examine the arbitrariness of conventional classifications such as biology&chemistry, Economics&Math. Breaking from all the obscure and reverent jargon of contemporary philosophy, we might say that what Foucault wants to do is show the genealogical grouping of sciences and humanities, thereby clarifying their actual status in history and taking away their seeming 'objective' and certain character. His conclusion is that the notion of man which philosophy and the sciences have grappled with is a recent invention, and, therefore, merely one phase that will go away some day. So that there will be an end to 'man' (or the concept as we know understand it.)
Taken out of the proud obscurantism of modern academia, we might see this endeavor as analogous to the 'deconstruction' of christian dogmas that have become commonplace over the last century. Instead of thinking of the books of the Christian bible as related by a continuous, and internally consistent theology, we find that the writers of various books had different theological views, and that the decision to include the books in the bible were made by still other individuals. Recently I read Misquoting Jesus, which shows the impossibility of stating that the modern version, the King James translation of the new testament, is a reliable account of the apostles and paul or that it is an intact revelation from god.
In reading The Order of Things, the payoff for me, is the experience of a totally different way of looking at familiar structures, undermining their seeming obviousness. It is an almost tactile sensation, like I can feel things breaking away and reshaping.
I guess this is something similar to what Foucault experienced in encountering a passage from Borges' regarding an imagined Chinese encyclopedia featuring an utterly absurd and contradictory taxonomy.
Inherent in the conception of said encyclopedia is that, in Alien China, why wouldn't we find classifications, or organizations of knowledge that seemed inconceivable and attacked our intellectual comfort, or the very solidity of our comprehension. Another example that comes to mind is Xerxes scourging of the Hellespont as reported by Herodotus (What kind of world view makes you whip the water to punish it?)
I want to note that Borges and Herodotus were exoticizing the orientals, and the actual unity of human nature is displayed in the Persians and Chinese' willingness to return the favor.
On the other hand, even the imagined alien perspectives of those savage and inscrutable orientals can serve to expand consciousness. The very conceiving of a perspective contrary to our own expands are minds, to the extent that we fully experience the 'reality' of such a perspective.
Studying logic and philosophy in my late teens and early twenties helped me to see the common patterns of theories in general. So, if I get stuck on the details of a book on science (I often do,) I can get the feel of where the writer is going and what conclusions he wants to bring me to. If i get lost in the numbers of an economic debate (I always do,) I can still get the general premises by looking at the apparently opposed arguments.
Philosophy helped me to expand my consciousness out over many general structures of human thinking, both prescriptive and analytic. After going from my default religious understanding to the broad patterns of philosophy, I was then able to fill in a lot of other gaps in between, such as what it meant to believe something, the classifications of belief I had gone through, the classifications of beliefs that I encountered, the many typical ways people argue for things, and the simple notion of knowledge structure and hierarchy.
In contrast, I have struggled with basic neuroscience for years now mostly because of my need to integrate things into systems with human meanings. Or to see parts of a system as features in a systemic process. But all the sections of the brain, different kinds of neurons, electrical gradiances, and neurotransmitters have to be memorized as mere elements of the brain, without a big scheme to place everything in, like with cars or science. The general function of these elements in the manifestation of mind (neural correlates of consciousness) have not been worked out in any complete way.
Another example contrary to the pattern of learning discussed above is my eternal battle with math. Every time I start to grasp principles, definitions, or formulas, i am undone instantly by the arithmetic.
Studying languages has been much more conducive to my need to for learning by systemic foreignness and systemic consistency. In learning Chinese, by immersion and repetition, has caused me to recall the bits of Vietnamese and Spanish that I learned in the States but never used. Also, it has helped me to start learning bits of other languages and some notions in subjects in linguistics. In regards to English, it has given me a much better perspective on word usage, dialectical variation, and slang.
I first heard this horribly awkward phrase last week in a lecture series called Great Minds of the West, 2nd edition。
The particular lecture was on Nietzsche. Nietzsche has generally been referred to as advocating perspectivism. But this guy was saying perspectivalism as in pur-spec-tie -valism. How come i read so much Nietzsche and never saw that word? Walter Kaufmann never used it that i can recall. But maybe I've forgotten. Anyways if everyone else gets past the awkwardness of the word, than I'm down too.
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