What is education? (Foucault)

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What is education? (French: Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? ) is the title of two texts by the philosopher Michel Foucault . Both have the same tenor in terms of content and go back to a lecture at the Collège de France on January 5, 1983.

In the commentary on Immanuel Kant's work answering the question: What is Enlightenment? he deals with the Enlightenment . What is education? is also an important contribution to Foucault's debate with Jürgen Habermas . The longer of the two texts was first published in 1984 as What is Enlightenment in English, the shorter and sharper in content in the same year as Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? in the magazine littéraire .

Publication history

The long version was first published as What is Enlightenment in English in The Foucault Reader . It was first published in French in 1993 in the magazine littéraire under the title Kant et la modernité and in 1994 in the fourth volume by Michel Foucault: Dits et Ecrits 1954–1988, edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald . The German first publication from 1990 in the anthology Ethos der Moderne. Foucault's Critique of the Enlightenment , edited by Eva Erdmann , Rainer Forst and Axel Honneth , goes back to the French text.

The short version of the text appeared in French in 1984 in the magazine littéraire and in a German translation as Was ist Revolution? What is education? in the daily newspaper of July 2, 1984. This in turn first appeared in English in 1988 in the anthology Politics, Philosophy, Culture under the title The Art of Telling the Truth.

content

In his text, Foucault deals with the role of philosophy in modernity. In the short, more sharply worded version, he writes:

"Philosophy as a problematization of a topicality and as a questioning of this topicality by the philosopher who participates in it and has to situate himself through it, all of this should characterize philosophy as a discourse of modernity and about modernity."

In the longer version he grants the Enlightenment a more comprehensive existence as a totality of events and processes, considers it fundamental for philosophical reflection, but only the reflexive relationship to the present. For him, enlightenment is the question of reason about its own historicity:

“On the one hand, I wanted to underline the roots of a type of philosophical question in the Enlightenment that simultaneously problematizes the relation to the present, the historical mode of being and the constitution of oneself as an autonomous subject. On the other hand, I wanted to make it clear that loyalty to doctrinal elements is not the thread that can connect us to the Enlightenment , but the constant reactivation of an attitude - that is, a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical being. "

Foucault contrasts two types of critical practice, both of which he found in Kant. On the one hand, there is Kant's well-known question as to what knowledge about knowledge is possible and what limits this knowledge has. From this, however, the criticism of what is universal, necessary and obligatory, and what is singular, contingent and a product of circumstances can be derived. For Foucault, criticism is no longer the search for universally valid formal structures, but a historical investigation into the events that constitute ourselves and that enable us to see ourselves as subjects.

Foucault thus establishes that the universal boundary conditions of modernity exist that induce people to produce themselves. The Enlightenment itself is part of what determines who we are, so it is impossible to be for or against it. It is irrelevant to things that are outside of the option to have legitimacy. While there is no knowledge free from or capable of transcending them, it is possible to reinterpret it and live in a way that best harmonizes with one's understanding of self.

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c Ciskin / Warner pp. 196-197
  2. ↑ a b Ulrich Johannes Schneider : Foucault and the Enlightenment in: Das Eighteenth Century, Volume 23, Issue 1 1999 ISSN  0722-740X p. 14
  3. ↑ Michel Foucault: What is Enlightenment? , in: the daily newspaper July 2, 1984, p. 10
  4. ↑ Schneider p. 14
  5. ↑ Michel Foucault: What is Enlightenment? , in: Eva Erdmann u. a. (Ed.), Ethos der Moderne. Foucault's Critique of the Enlightenment, Frankfurt / Main a. a. 1990, p. 45
  6. ↑ David B. Ingram : Foucault and Habermas in: Gary Gutting (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Foucault Cambridge University Press 2003, ISBN 978-0-521-60053-8 , p. 266
  7. ↑ David B. Ingram : Foucault and Habermas in: Gary Gutting (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Foucault Cambridge University Press 2003, ISBN 978-0-521-60053-8 , p. 267

swell

  • Michel Foucault: What is Enlightenment? , in: Eva Erdmann u. a. (Ed.), Ethos der Moderne. Foucault's Critique of the Enlightenment, Frankfurt / Main a. a. 1990. pp. 35-54
  • Michel Foucault: Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? in: ders. Dits et Ecrits 1954–1988. Volume 4: 1980-1988. Edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald. Gallimard, Paris 1994 pp. 562-578
  • Michel Foucault: Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? in: ders. Dits et Ecrits 1954–1988. Volume 4: 1980-1988. Edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald. Gallimard, Paris 1994 pp. 679-688

literature

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