Theoria

My apologies for writing such a boring post after such a long period of absence. In the past few years, I was unfortunately too eager to get involved boundary skirmishes, but this has, for the most part, disappeared. I hate to say that I find myself pondering yet another boundary skirmish, yet again over the idea of “continental” and “analytic” philosophy. (I am working on a paper on what I hope is more interesting boundary dispute: the meaning of “critical” in “critical animal studies.”) Not being a philosopher, I should not have any interest in these sorts of fights, but, because much of my work on animals draws upon what is ordinarily called “continental” philosophy (but also increasingly upon what is ordinarily called “analytic” philosophy), I found myself reading yet more tirades about, on the one hand, the supposed fact that no such distinction exists and, on the other hand, that the distinction does in fact exist, but only in the minds of the superficial and dumb who are best relegated to literature departments. (These discussions have appeared in recent weeks on both “analytic” as well as “continental” blogs in discussions unrelated to one another.) It would seem that much of this discussion, on the “analytic” side, derives from some interview Brian Leiter did on myths in Nietzsche scholarship–I topic I know nothing of. (I teach the second essay from the Genealogy in my class on violence, but beyond that I don’t read much Nietzsche or Nietzsche scholarship.) Apparently, on the basis of this post (written by someone named Ben Burgis), “post-modernists,” such as Derrida and Foucault, are accused of calling Nietzsche a “proto-post-modernist” through citing an unspecified text that Nietzsche “never gave anyone permission to publish.” I cannot say with certainty, as Burgis’s post is not particularly well-written, but it seems that he derives this claim from something Leiter says in the interview. At any rate, this claim is repeated by Leiter here, albeit distinguishing between Foucault’s and Derrida’s respective appropriations of Nietzsche. I assume, but I do not know, the text in question is the one called “On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense,” which can be found in Kaufmann’s reader, if memory serves. The chaotic mess that is Will to Power may also be one of the unmentioned unpublished texts. I am not familiar with Derrida’s work on Nietzsche, but I have read a lot of Foucault–enough to know that the accusation is empirically false. Foucault’s most well-known text explicitly discussing Nietzsche is “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” Paul Rabinow, who edited the version published in The Foucault Reader, provides excellent notes, including all the citations and references to Nietzsche made by Foucault. These are, in order of citation: On the Genealogy of Morals, The Gay Science, Human, All Too Human, The Dawn of Day, Twilight of the Idols, The Wanderer and His Shadow, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Beyond Good and Evil. All published by Nietzsche in his lifetime, with his approval. Of course, Foucault cites Nietzsche in other texts, but even here the accusation cannot be sustained. For instance, in “Truth and Juridical Forms,” Genealogy is cited on truth. A second citation is given to Will to Power, which is used to buttress the original citation. In his course summary for “The Will to Knowledge,” The Gay Science is cited. Less explicit uses of Nietzsche can found in Archaeology of Knowledge, ‘Society Must be Defended‘, and The Order of Things. But, in none of these are unpublished texts of Nietzsche cited or even vaguely hinted at. Not mentioned in the posts on Foucault’s appropriations of Nietzsche is that Foucault explicitly discusses the meaning of Nietzsche’s ouevre, i.e., what should and what should not be included in Nietzsche’s “official” corpus, in “What is an Author?” and “On the Archaeology of the Sciences: Response to the Epistemology Circle.”

The issue remains open, of course, as to whether or not Foucault’s comments on Nietzsche are correct or even coherent, but the accusation that his interpretation relies upon unpublished texts cannot be sustained. (On my reading they are at least coherent; not being a Nietzsche scholar, I am in no position to judge whether they are correct or not as reasonable interpretations of Nietzsche.) So much for the “analytic” approach to texts, which is described as the “textually-best-supported reading,” championed by Burgis! Also, on the accusation of “post-modernism” and “post-structuralism,” our critics may want to peruse Foucault’s essay, “Structuralism and Post-Structuralism.”