What is criticism?

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What is criticism? (French: Qu'est-ce que la critique? ) is a lecture given by Michel Foucault in 1978 to the Société française de philosophie . The lecture was first published in print in 1990 in the Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie and in German in 1992 in an edition of Merve Verlag , translated by Walter Seitter.

As a definition of criticism, Foucault proposes the question How is it possible that one is not governed in such a way, in the name of these principles, for such purposes and with such procedures - that one is not governed in this way and not for it and not by them? Government pervades all areas of life, for example you govern yourself, but also children. School governs, etc. Government seems inevitable, and every question about good government implies how not to govern.

Foucault outlines a history of criticism from the new biblical criticism, the Critica Sacra , to critical theory . He not only tries to understand the criticism, but also to fathom the question forms that the criticism itself introduces. In the lecture he especially sat down with Immanuel Kant's text What is Enlightenment? and Kant's project of criticism and enlightenment . Kant, and his successors, placed the knowledge of knowledge as their primary task on criticism , and thus also the question of the limits of knowledge, while Foucault sees criticism as a critical-political activity and is concerned with overcoming precisely that border.

On the approaches from What is criticism? Building on this, Foucault gave the lecture What is Enlightenment? .

Remarks

  1. ^ Michel Foucault: What is Critique Berlin: Merve Verlag 1992. ISBN 3-88396-093-4 , pp. 11-12

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