Babette Babich: A Philosophical Shock’: Foucault’s Reading of Heidegger and Nietzsche
Although there is no lack of efforts to read Foucault and Nietzsche together or indeed to align Foucault and Heidegger, Foucault scholarship overall tends to be split on these same terms. The author argues that the opposition is misleading for the complicated reason that Foucault’s Heidegger can only be understood on Nietzschean terms while and at the same time, Foucault’s Nietzsche only takes place by way of Heidegger albeit (and this point simply cannot be overemphasized) a very Frencophone reading of Heidegger.
Michel Foucault analyzes the formation of the ‘subject’ or ‘self’ in a post-Nietzschean, post-Heideggerian, quasi-Marxist, or today, we had better correct that to say, just because few scholars have any desire to be named Marxist: simply, vaguely leftist context,1 exceeding what has been called the poststructuralist as much as the postmodern moment by means of different epistemic discourses of imitation, representation, but also rhetorical or ‘stylistic’ discourses and including practical or therapeutic analysis. Additionally, to recall the important question of practice and the increasingly popular language of philosophical therapy, more than Nietzsche’s vision of either convalescence (and nihilism) or healing or indeed of the philosopher as lawgiver or a physician of culture, Foucault is illuminated by Pierre Hadot’s analysis of the Stoic ‘art’ of philosophy as ‘a way of life.’ (...)
Michel Foucault analyzes the formation of the ‘subject’ or ‘self’ in a post-Nietzschean, post-Heideggerian, quasi-Marxist, or today, we had better correct that to say, just because few scholars have any desire to be named Marxist: simply, vaguely leftist context,1 exceeding what has been called the poststructuralist as much as the postmodern moment by means of different epistemic discourses of imitation, representation, but also rhetorical or ‘stylistic’ discourses and including practical or therapeutic analysis. Additionally, to recall the important question of practice and the increasingly popular language of philosophical therapy, more than Nietzsche’s vision of either convalescence (and nihilism) or healing or indeed of the philosopher as lawgiver or a physician of culture, Foucault is illuminated by Pierre Hadot’s analysis of the Stoic ‘art’ of philosophy as ‘a way of life.’ (...)
Babich, Babette, ""‘A Philosophical Shock’: Foucault’s Reading of Heidegger and Nietzsche." In: C. G. Prado, ed., Foucault’s Legacy
(London: Continuum, 2009), pp. 19-41." (2009). Articles, Book-Chapters, and Essays by Babette Babich. Paper 11.
http://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich/11
