It’s such a relief to not have to hear applause in between each speakers points. A time where intelligent debate wasn’t a point scoring, moneymaking, gameshow and was for the pure pursuit of truth is sorely missed.
@@helenacorreia7613 Why? How does what we are doing on this end of the screen have any effect on the minds of the producers and what they decide to put on the screen? They gon do wat they gon do, right? And actually there are a few good debates by their contemporaries even today that are very much this same format, IF you are looking it. Remember, what you search for and how you search determines your quality as an audience participant not so much the quality of the content. That's gonna become even more important in the near future, which was the subject of Chomsky's most recent debate a few weeks ago about ChatGPT, in case you missed it. Bro still on the grind in his 90's!
For me, it said nothing just because of that, it doesn’t matter the language, it doesn’t matter the vocabulary, philosophy is philosophy and this is not philosophy, I could get nothing from this except that Foucault is afraid of power and Chomsky has the notions of a high schooler
It can often be easier to listen to and understand someone else's language than to express yourself in it. Although both of these guys are in highly language-oriented fields, they probably could have had Chomsky speak French and Foucault speak English.
It's not just a lost opportunity, one could argue it shows the power of one language/culture over another - even more so today, English is ubiquitous and French has lost the position it once had. I feel it is also a loss for English speakers not having to learn French , as it helps to gain a deeper understanding of their own language - and even if you don't agree with me on that one, I think everyone who is bilingual (or multilingual) would agree that knowing a foreign language opens up a whole new world to you.
how do we know that didn't happen at some point, but it just didn't make it to youtube? Ive seen this video with other subtitles (like swedish or something). I bet theres all kinds of lost stuff on VHS in storage somewhere.
It's the silence when someone is speaking. The attention given to the speaker you can feel in debates and discussions years ago like this that is so special.
Maybe he meant well - and his take on the world certainly garnered my youthful support - but the reality of the Foucault inspired 'woke' take over of education is beyond tragic.
I cannot think of anybody capable enough to fill their shoes. Christopher Hitchens certainly was. Perhaps Stephen Fry, but we are regretfully short of quality, able people such as Foucault and Chomsky.
I love how they are patiently listening and considering one another's time, voice, and theories. The moderator has nothing to do but sit back and listen.
@Insectavamour No you're right. They aren't competing, because ultimately they are both interested in finding the truth. In other words, it isn't a political debate, it is an intellectual debate.
@Insectavamour it's definitely more of a discussion. People take initial sides in a discussion, or at least propose their initial viewpoint, but the point of a discussion is to talk about something, not try to convince someone of your viewpoint, and hopefully along the way you learn something. What you are witnessing here is people listening to each other and not just waiting to talk and shove their viewpoint down the other person's throat. I learned this a while ago at work as a business consultant, my job is not to be correct all the time but to assist in getting to the correct decision. To do this I must be open to hearing other people ideas and not be afraid that my ideas are wrong, or partially wrong. I seek the truth, not to be correct all the time.
@@Campfire30 That is exactly the point why they keep speaking about different paradigms: It is a philosophical debate for Foucault (as we would say, scientific, that is, he aims at learning about world and things as they are) - but for Chomsky it is a political debate (that is, he is aiming at shaping and commanding the world according to what he thinks the world should be). Two opposing approaches, I think. Today also, in the US, for some reason the public expects politics from philosophy.
@John-Paul Hunt Where did you see that written? BTW, it might so happens that the idiot is you and not Peterson for not making you understand his point. Ever visited that possibility?
Duality? wtf? Too bad it wasn't a political debate, so no room for the nonsense you're pointing out; his emotions have no importance. What seems to be important here is the fact that Foucault had to educate Chomsky (with a voltairean irony) about his false notions of human nature, spirit of justice out of society as a fish out of water, and so on...
Foucalt: Because our ideals of human nature are based on the beliefs of our society, we shouldn't use these to create a new society which hopes to remove the brutalities of our current society. Chomsky: We have only our current ideals, and we should use them to create a more advanced society which attempts to remove the inequalities of our current society.
Well, there is an even greater difference between the two. Foucault is rather direct, powerful, an antagonist of independent freedom in man and of the opinion that almost nothing can be done- he believes not in a better result in the future. Whereas Chomsky is the go-to societal man of our times. He freely believes in inner freedom and thus the choice between two sides, whose results may vary and are unpredictable and thus not from the government controlled. He believes in the existence of both good and bad in society and hopes for the appreciation of the good and its usage for a better future- future whose image one has to imagine so that he can lay abstract and undefined but still road-creating ideas. One is a pessimist and probably a thorough pragmatist and the other a man ready for comprises and appreciative procession toward something better and closer to our true nature.
So in essense both are looking in how to improve current image and masks of aristocracy in order make it work longer. No way this calls for progress and time proved it. Ancient greeks and Aristotle spoke the same, ended up under barbarian Romans.
Human Nature is Human Nature, and it contrasts and is always at enmity with the Divine Nature. Each individual is either being governed by the Human Nature or by the Divine Nature. Collective and progressive evolution favors humanity transforming into Divinity.
A lot of cameo appearances in the first 2 minutes of this debate. 0:01 Marty McFly 0:19 Ray Manzarek 1:11 Jeffrey Dahmer & Lyndon Johnson 1:26 Willem Defoe 1:36 Hunter S Thompson
We need more debates between actual experts, not one expert talking to fucking Joe Rogan. Get two smart people on a stage with a mediator, and let them actually talk to each other.
Just straight up thank you for posting this. As an contemporary American, it is a delightful reminder that civil discourse and discussion on this level ever happened. Much less so fluidly yet thoughtfully.
Quality, respectful and progressive debate goes back far further of course. I'm always brought back to that of Russell and Copleston in 1948. Today, the topic they grapple with would be utterly polarizing. The same was true for both involved here, but they dealt with it from genuine stances of interest, and not childish point scoring. We sorely need a return to this type of exchange. ua-cam.com/video/MVLKURgfft0/v-deo.html In particular, the closing words are very refreshing.
@@jimreplicant _"I've known Jeffery Epstein for fifteen years. He's a terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to hang out with. He likes beautiful women as much as I do, and a lot of them are on the younger side"_ -- Donald Trump, 2002 interview for New Yorker magazine. Stop pretending you give a shit about the welfare of abused children.
The quality of the cinematography and the lens is really special for 1972. This is film in low indoor light and the camera rig/lens and camera man were totally dialed. Not to mention the creative aspects of the audience shots.
Just to be led here by watching and listening to these incredible thoughts by great thinkers is a decent step towards the ocean of knowledge. I am grateful to all
Foucault is actually being a lot more politically modest. He is just saying that any attempt at revolution that uses concepts within the establishment will never get out of the establishment. He is calling for the scrutiny of apparently "neutral" institutions like hospitals and schools but isn't necessarily saying we should completely break our current system down. He is usually in the business of subversion from within.
Or an idiot who many people give credit 😂 Chomsky comes from the idea progress exists and democracy is better than other forms of government. For Foucault, no difference between the “democratic jail” or the “medieval torture” no difference between the sex freedom 100 years ago and the many liberties achieved in the last 50 years for minorities. The only difference for him is that power and control became more effective. He doesn’t have a vision about state, representation and so on. He is the reason why left is divided.
Can't help thinking how the video editing plays into the flow and last words of the conversation, but regardless just having a platform where actual ideas are discussed (instead of just politics) is an unfortunate rarity I'm very grateful for.
@@lydiawilder5996 I think I misused the word politics there, which in the true sense of the word means sensible and judicious action. I meant instead of just wanting their point of view to win regardless of the strength of any counter arguments (like in modern politics) they're trying to identify the truth of the matter rationally and show mutual respect despite their differences in opinion.
@@lydiawilder5996 Instead of 'just politics' he said, so I guess the usual partisan clap trap instead of an effort to figure out what's really going in the world.
Thanks for providing this. It's impressive these two can not only debate in different languages, but also carefully listen and respond to the other's points without talking over them and demeaning them. My experience with Foucault is mostly through hearsay (and a lot of that from his enemies), but I've got to say I was impressed with him in this clip.
The crappy degradation that have become our mainstream media, filled with noise from advertisments, pumped in order to create fights, and encouraged to be fast-paced to brainwash the viewers/listeners and leave them no time to ponder nor to elaborate the subjects that they are exposed to, have made us not used to this kind of authentic debate, characterized by politeness, respect, reflection. The feeling of freshness and enlightment that the old debates give us proves that they represented the right path to take for pursuing any kind of cultural and educational evolution.
@@i.1213 Correction: This isn't how "debates used to be". It's just what we cared to remember, or in this case upload to UA-cam. Else we may as well assume that all ancient Greeks were brilliant philosophers still relevant 2500 years later, which is clearly false.
@@i.1213 Ancient Greek philosophers, yes, but not the average ancient Greek. The average person was as stupid then as they are now, much to the dismay of philosophers - it's a disappointment we have in common despite the passage of millennia.
@@gessie yes! the nostalgia of survivor bias is so intense people who grew up in communist societies which fell apart during their lives will say after 20 years "it was much better during the communist time". Well said, sir!
With all the comments on how great their discussion was, I just want to say how refreshing and wonderful a commentsection full of seemingly intelligent and interested people is. Thanks to everyone here making this a great experience
I am commenting to disappoint you. Foucault's arguments can be reduced to who's penetrating who and Chomsky's arguments are as simple as an ever present CIA using their tricknology to make 3rd world countries bad.
It's truly a sign of our times that a conversation so relevant is clearly absorbed by its listeners as nothing more than an example of good conversation. Surely something is very broken in our society, when a video of two incredible intellects discussing the very moral foundations of our society plays more as an example of a bygone intellectual era than as a reference point on 20th century moral philosophy.
That just sounds naive to me. It's a question as old as society itself. Some things in small communities just doesn't translate to large communities, and then you have the complexity of inter-community cooperation, conflict and management. Our "nature" is inescapable and is amplified by these systems, whether we like it or not. We reject them at our peril, every time.
@@sinephase this is a myth founded by Enlightenment thinkers prior to the huge swath of research and discovery on ancient human history we've seen since that time. And as such, more recent work disproves it, or at least seriously calls it into question. I'd recommend you read at least the introduction and conclusion to The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow before you make similar claims in the future.
Wonderful to find this! The legend is that Foucault was paid in hashish for this appearance - a block he subsequently referred to as his Chomsky Hash...
We need both kinds of intellectuals. The ones who can not formulate concrete solutions, but who can see clearly what's wrong. And those which may miss some of the sofisticated details of society functioning, but can devise practical and mostly realizable ways of improving structures and life.
physicist vs engineer: the former tries to understand the underlying reality dispassionately and objectively while the later always strives to build something practical despite the lack of knowledge. We know both are important for society's progress.
@@johreh I share some of the frustration, particularly given today's toxic intellectual environment. But, as a scientist, I'd disagree. Sometimes the best we can do is point out flaws in a claim, even if we cannot present one which is ultimately better. We progress by refuting falsity, not by demonstrating veracity.
Foucault looks so cool calm and collected. Both are so articulated and clear when expressing their perspectives and even in disagreement they remain focused in analysing the subject at hand.
I'm pretty sure I saw a discussion similar to this on Twitter just the other day. Seriously though, it's refreshing to hear him bring up the fields of psychiatry and education being other mechanisms of political control, as well as Chomsky's acknowledgement of the uncertainty of outcomes from significant, abrupt social change, and it's potential to lead to fascism.
@@blackwaterbae7086 if we look at the history of psychiatry from its very beginnings, we can really see how much its progression has been mostly guided by social and economic influences. Mental illness does not function like other kinds of illness, and as such our understanding of it, or the 'science' we use to describe it, is susceptible to subjectivity (more than we'd accept in any other scientific/medical field). Its hard - if not impossible - to view mental illness objectively, even through the lense of neuroscience. Pharmaceutical/insurance companies have played such a massive role in the way we define, diagnose and medicate mental illnessess; how can we reduce the human condition, in all its complexity, to activity at the synapse? As soon as pharmaceutical companies find a formula (a way of presenting mental illness) that is monetarily benefitial, they will cease to engage in further research - regardless of whether anything is working at all. I hope how you can see too how this is all inexorably tied to politics. Its actually completely insane if you ask me. I will stop now but you get the point... this is just what I think from what I know.
As an American with a child in the Italian school system, my eyes have really been opened to some of the things that they discuss. I can see that the three-tiered high school system here superficially seems like it is designed to guide a child to good/productive ends, but I've come to see it as a mechanism to primarily reinforce the existing class system and produce workers at scale. At 13, you get pushed into a track that will pretty much define your life. I don't think this is good for students or even Italian society, but it does buttress a social class system that mimics the old landowner and tenant farmer stratification. In the US, I think you see this in gaming access to gifted programs and elite university admissions. These systems seem to be meritocracies, but they aren't ... and I'm a center-right guy from Wyoming. BTW, I was at MIT grabbing a coffee and looked up to see Chomsky. It was a kind of surreal moment.
@@Kavafy is it though? The whole concept of social construction may itself be a social construction. Think about it. Concepts such as gender, race, identity, money, happiness, etc... depend on the presence of society itself to exist. If there was only one person alive, then the concept itself of social construction would not exist, there would be no way for one to argue with themselves on what is gender, what is sexuality, race, age, life and death itself. There would be no way for somebody to argue with themselves on how do they exert power over other people or vice versa because there would be no other person around. So my conclusion is that while social constructs have been a fundamental part of society and have shaped our lives and thoughts to the point we can't imagine ourselves outside of these arbitrary molds, they are not absolute as chomsky would say. The name itself implies they depend on the relationship of two or more human beings.
Your ideas make no sense as we are social and co dependent in any way possible. To say the things wouldn’t exist, if there was only one single person, is absolutely pointless of an argument to use, to support your point. Do you understand what you are saying is just impractical to think about, because it’s even less real, than saying our social concepts are not real, because they exist only, because we are more than one single human on this planet. Where do we even go from there?
@@paolovallejo8022 Noam is like a human encyclopedia on the topic of genocides and, this is my interpretation of the joke, I believe Puma is referring to the petitions Foucault signed in favor of pedophilia and the abolition of prison.
@@justinthall5909 His exact words: "The mass slaughter in Srebrenica, for example, is certainly a horror story and major crime, but to call it “genocide” so cheapens the word as to constitute virtual Holocaust denial, in my opinion"
This exchange crystallizes the differences in approach between these thinkers. Chomsky is working within a scientific tradition, in which we understand that we must base our knowledge and our ideas on contingent assumptions subject to later correction-and that, nevertheless, we may speak of such concepts as human nature and universal qualities. Foucault, by contrast, is so radically wedded to the notion that every thought is historically determined-in particular, by the evolution of economic and social class relatons-that there can absolutely never be anything universal, that even provisional assumptions of universal foundations are hopelessly deluded. In this regard, Chomsky offers a progressive vision of political aspirations and activism, whereas Foucault offers a path of endless critique. I think one should also note that Foucault does not seem to acknowledge the paradox at the core of Derrida's understanding of how thoughts are shaped: that the critique itself is also already part of the "system" being criticized.
Thank you so much for your comment, it is as enlightening as the content of the video... because it helps my dumbass understand what I am listening to. Sort of.
Yet another one who understands neither Foucault nor Derrida...read Nietzsche and Freud. Don't you understand that every sign already contains its own opposite?
@@uperdown0 Yet another pretentious and dismissive non-reader who assumes that I have not already read quite a lot of Nietzsche and Freud (and written about them!) and have not written extensively about such paradoxes. The idea that "every sign contains its own opposite," however, is not especially relevant to either position. It is obviously central to Derrida, but it is a grave mistake to conflate Derrida with Foucault, as a whole generation of American students so often did.
@@Amittai_Aviram I'm not but people misunderstand both. Besides, it's not a "paradox", the fact that a material dialectical process occurs in every speech act, and this is constantly occurring and there's never "a" moment but a constant shifting of structural positions is NOT paradoxical. Even the Greeks knew that understanding material reality is a dialectical process...all scientific thought relies on it. How did we need Lacan to explain that signs don't refer to reality but always refer to the Other, though it's our relation to the other which gives us our understanding of material reality...it was right there in Plato the whole time.
@jgtemperton But there's nothing relative about it...human thought has a definite material character born out of a primal dialectical relation--atleast if you listen to Lacan. But the point is that denying reality, literally denying the other, is equal to nihlism and its the majority belief these days.
I really had to hand it to these two men who speak of relevant and compelling thoughts on matters that affect us from our history to current events. Foucault's argument says that human ideals of justice and kindness cannot be separated from our class and our culture and history that brought up today's systems however imperfect they may be. The classes in societies form a hierarchy that always distributes power away from the majority towards a few up the rungs of authority and leadership, as a natural tendency since it's repeated soo many times in many different forms regardless. And so, there is always gotta be discernment 'allowing' with consent, powers that manage and guide us that is benevolent vs. oppressive. And we can easily make distinctions between the two of those separate from any one culture, political, economic opinions and etc. There needs to be an open and serious discussion of such definitions, with a consensus that the best of our philosophies, psychologies and religious institutions can offer while not ever dividing the citizens of a given state between 'believers' and 'nonbelievers' or any other distinctions which generate, double standards or no standards at all, making hypocrisies, nepotism and oppression rampant in a society that's losing it sense for truth and wisdom through struggle. It makes problems of harmony and peace much harder in a country inherently full of different religions and cultures as the ideal first set down in the foundations of our constitution. We came into this world full of different people and it's not our job to lessen such a variety of views toward any one person's ideal. But it is up to us to constantly redefine our sense of self, society, and our principles according to any and all new information compelling enough to make it case for all members of our human society with no exceptions.
I agree more with Mr. Comsky... But thanks M. Foucalt, this is a great video for those brushing up on understanding spoken French! Michel Foucault speaks clearly and slowly enough to decipher.
Fascinating. I see in my minds' eye a sort of boxing exhibition on display here in the verbal court, with both sides demonstrating clear ethos in their approach. It's unusual for Chomsky, demonstrating all the behavior of a keen out-fighter - always conciliatory, always evasive, yet never distant or distracted - opening against someone so aggressive as Foucault, who seems to be aiming for the knockout blow right out the gate. There might be something insinuating in this comparison, but I don't mean it to be; it's just captivating, even beautiful, to see to people at their top cutting their teeth on the next level of their practice.
The world needs more of this kind of awareness more than ever. In just the first few minutes of Foucault's speaking, he describes the very chaos and profound trouble most societies are facing today. While not a definitive answer, it really brings home what was necessary to prevent it: 4:01 - 4:54 covers it with haunting beauty. This is especially true here in the US, but is also just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. Unbelievable that I'm just now hearing this. Humanity not too long ago, it seems, had a much better idea of what the future could be like, than the estranged one we live in today which Foucault has described the cause and symptoms of with eerie precision.
Couldn't agree more. The justice system engages in strategic rituals to appear normal and neutral. But it is not neutral or normal. It is an institution that perpetuates and reproduces inequality by exerting power over the oppressed. It's visible in the US. But such institutions are only criticized on a symptomatic level not at the systematic (structural) level. Only constantly critiquing the structures of such a system would make the oppression less pervasive.
That's because video can make even the biggest numb brains into faux intellectuals today. It exposes them to a large enough audience that a subsection will latch on to them for various reasons, and will in turn inflate both their self image and their social credibility. Just look at how many people put Jordan Creeperson on a pedestal while the guy can't even discern between schools of thought.
He is cleaning his theet, there is a class of jordan Peterson talking about serial killer body lenguage, he said things about what he is saying with his boody. In other part of the video you can see him searching for dirt under his fingernails. Just watch again the first reply in the video, the irony before he drops the messieur chomsky.
@@studywithmir1994 I would take what Peterson says with a grain of salt. He's not an intellectual; he's a smart man who brands himself as an intellectual. The same way a lot of news channels have host that brand themselves as journalist. This debate today would happen with 5 commercial interruptions; then the Nietzsche and Rousseau camps would break down the opponents words and manipulate them out of context to give their "side" a form of victory. And then it would make its way around the internet and get completely lost in translation from the original debate. I think that's why no true philosopher would appear on any of the formatted programs today, the true intellectuals probably prefer to discuss things in private; rather than have to perform for people when anything filmed is filmed with the intention of sensationalizing.
Was watching this with my girlfriend who enjoyed it very much, but had trouble with understanding the english part, would it be possible to add french subtitles aswell? Think many more people would love to understand this conversation!
CHOMSKY: Yes, I would certainly agree with that, not only in theory but also in action. That is, there are two intellectual tasks: one, and the one that I was discussing, is to try to create the vision of a future just society; that is to create, if you like, a humanistic social theory that is based, if possible, on some firm and humane concept of the human essence or human nature. That’s one task. Another task is to understand very clearly the nature of power and oppression and terror and destruction in our own society. And that certainly includes the institutions you mentioned, as well as the central institutions of any industrial society, namely the economic, commercial and financial institutions and in particular, in the coming period, the great multi-national corporations, which are not very far from us physically tonight [i.e. Philips at Eindhoven]. Those are the basic institutions of oppression and coercion and autocratic rule that appear to be neutral despite everything they say: well, we’re subject to the democracy of the market place, and that must be understood precisely in terms of their autocratic power, including the particular form of autocratic control that comes from the domination of market forces in an inegalitarian society. Surely we must understand these facts, and not only understand them but combat them. And in fact, as far as one’s own political involvements are concerned, in which one spends the majority of one’s energy and effort, it seems to me that they must certainly be in that area. I don’t want to get personal about it, but my own certainly are in that area, and I assume everyone’s are. Still, I think it would be a great shame to put aside entirely the somewhat more abstract and philosophical task of trying to draw the connections between a concept of human nature that gives full scope to freedom and dignity and creativity and other fundamental human characteristics, and to relate that to some notion of social structure in which those properties could be realised and in which meaningful human life could take place. And in fact, if we are thinking of social transformation or social revolution, though it would be absurd, of course, to try to sketch out in detail the goal that we are hoping to reach, still we should know something about where we think we are going, and such a theory may tell it to us.
FOUCAULT: Yes, but then isn’t there a danger here? If you say that a certain human nature exists, that this human nature has not been given in actual society the rights and the possibilities which allow it to realise itself…that’s really what you have said, I believe.
CHOMSKY: Yes.
FOUCAULT: And if one admits that, doesn’t one risk defining this human nature which is at the same time ideal and real, and has been hidden and repressed until now - in terms borrowed from our society, from our civilisation, from our culture? I will take an example by greatly simplifying it. The socialism of a certain period, at the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth century, admitted in effect that in capitalist societies man hadn’t realised the full potential for his development and self-realisation; that human nature was effectively alienated in the capitalist system. And it dreamed of an ultimately liberated human nature. What model did it use to conceive, project, and eventually realise that human nature? It was in fact the bourgeois model. It considered that an alienated society was a society which, for example, gave pride of place to the benefit of all, to a sexuality of a bourgeois type, to a family of a bourgeois type, to an aesthetic of a bourgeois type. And it is moreover very true that this has happened in the Soviet Union and in the popular democracies: a kind of society has been reconstituted which has been transposed from the bourgeois society of the nineteenth century. The universalisation of the model of the bourgeois has been the utopia which has animated the constitution of Soviet society. The result is that you too realised, I think, that it is difficult to say exactly what human nature is. Isn’t there a risk that we will be led into error? Mao Tse-Tung spoke of bourgeois human nature and proletarian human nature, and he considers that they are not the same thing.
CHOMSKY: Well, you see, I think that in the intellectual domain of political action, that is the domain of trying to construct a vision of a just and free society on the basis of some notion of human nature, we face the very same problem that we face in immediate political action, namely, that of being impelled to do something, because the problems are so great, and yet knowing that whatever we do is on the basis of a very partial understanding of the social realities, and the human realities in this case. For example, to be quite concrete, a lot of my own activity really has to do with the Vietnam War, and some of my own energy goes into civil disobedience. Well, civil disobedience in the U.S. is an action undertaken in the face of considerable uncertainties about its effects. For example, it threatens the social order in ways which might, one might argue, bring about fascism; and that would be a very bad thing for America, for Vietnam, for Holland and for everyone else. You know, if a great Leviathan like the United States were really to become fascist, a lot of problems would result; so that is one danger in undertaking this concrete act. On the other hand there is a great danger in not undertaking it, namely, if you don’t undertake it, the society of Indo-China will be torn to shreds by American power. In the face of these uncertainties one has to choose a course of action. Well, similarly in the intellectual domain, one is faced with the uncertainties that you correctly pose. Our concept of human nature is certainly limited; it’s partially socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet at the same time it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals we’re trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong possibility, and in fact overwhelming probability, that at least in some respects we’re very far off the mark. 10:02 - 12:31 FOUCAULT: It seems to me that, in any case, the notion of justice itself functions within a society of classes as a claim made by the oppressed class and as justification for it.
CHOMSKY: I don’t agree with that.
FOUCAULT: And in a classless society, I am not sure that we would still use this notion of justice.
CHOMSKY: Well, here I really disagree. I think there is some sort of an absolute basis-if you press me too hard I’ll be in trouble, because I can’t sketch it out-ultimately residing in fundamental human qualities, in terms of which a “real” notion of justice is grounded. I think it’s too hasty to characterise our existing systems of justice as merely systems of class oppression; I don’t think that they are that. I think that they embody systems of class oppression and elements of other kinds of oppression, but they also embody a kind of groping towards the true humanly, valuable concepts of justice and decency and love and kindness and sympathy, which I think are real.
FOUCAULT: Contrary to what you think, you can’t prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realisation of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilisation, within our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a result form part of our class system; and one can’t, however regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or justify a fight which should-and shall in principle-overthrow the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for which I can’t find the historical justification.
Kinda disappointed The Rock didn't even hit Chomsky with a vintage "It doesn't matter what you think", or at least an eyebrow raise. Didn't know he spoke French though, very cool
It's interesting to me that my battle against my school as a child caused me to see these philosophical observations. The education system doesn't measure education more than it does obedience. If you don't do exactly what they ask, regardless of your personal objectives or if you've become educated nonetheless, they will brand you as a failure and see to it that you cannot reach your highest potential.
That seems to be the underlying intention of 'educational' systems in society; to steer the youth to operate in modes of conformity under existing economic, political and religious orthodoxy.
@@omp199 Learning about epistemology doesn't help you pass a high school exam, but is still correctly described as "educated". Having highly intellectual interests nearly guarantees failure in an academic setting as you'll be forced to regurgitate some random historical factoids, name a few countries on a map and, if you're really unlucky, recite a religious text.
@@gessie If a person fails tests of their understanding of history, geography, and religion, then I would have serious doubts about their understanding of epistemology, too. Of course, anyone can claim that they understand any subject that they have never been tested on. In the absence of an objective test, such a claim cannot be falsified. Which is why we should not take such claims seriously.
Pour les Francophones qui auraient du mal à suivre les interventions de Noam Chomsky sans sous-titres, ce débat a été retranscrit et traduit. On peut en trouver le texte dans : Michel Foucault, "Dits et écrits", Paris, Quarto Gallimard, 2001. Volume I (1954-1975), pages 1339-1380, sous le titre "De la nature humaine : justice contre pouvoir".
I find it funny how postmodernists deconstruct everything, including human essence and values, and then go on to criticize everything that, according to them, is "wrong", as if criticism didn't need some kind of measuring stick (i.e., values) which allows you to judge things as 'good' or 'bad' (i.e., criticize) in the first place. That's the swindle of moral relativism: It states that it is absolutely true that nothing is absolutely true. It's the perfect camouflage - and one that Foucault and his buddies (Deleuze, Derrida, etc.) used countless times: to make any kind of grandiose claim about society, humans, etc., and then, when being called out on it, to state that they were just misunderstood because in reality, their words mean something different, or they were just deconstructing, or, well, there really isn't any truth at all, so you can't judge them based upon truth. That is the ultimate form of sophistry and psychopathy. P.S.: No wonder all these morally depraved "philosophers" (they sully that term) signed a petition in 1977 calling for the legalization of sexual relations with minors. Look it up.
In other words, I think that Foucault is or was a realist and Chomsky an idealist. The first one analyzes society as it has been and is or was, from a Western point of view but fully conscient of it, and the second one as it should be, also from a Western point of view but relatively unconscious of it. The first analyzes the human being as it is and the second as it should be. This debate is relatively obsolete because it took place in an age where the world was clearly divided in two ideology blocks and where Western ideas were prevalent due to the economic power of the West (before the fall of communism, before the energy crisis of the 70's, before the resurgence of China and India, before of the technology revolution and social media... . Since then, one of this blocks has disappeared and now we are living in a much more dangerous world, with the resurgence of nationalism and multiculturalism everywhere. It's undeniable nowadays that, if one is born in India or in China or in the USA or in Germany or in Nigeria or in Russia or in Saudi Arabia or Thailand, one is going to have a different education based on different human values. Nowadays, even the UNO is struggling to find its raison d'être, because States don't respect international law any more (or they have ceased to pretend to respect human rights) and associate with each other to pursue their economic egotistic and cultural interests. Aggressors call themselves victims everywhere, we are living in the Age of Cynicism, Narcissism and Relativism. Like always, the ones that suffer are the ordinary citizens, the dispossessed, children, women, men of low condition, people without military power or social connections. One tragedy chases another tragedy, people get desensitized after watching tragedies again and again, the focus of attention of the world changes to new entertainments and so play the powerful their game, diverting attention away from their deeds using other actors on the international stage. It seems to me that, while the world has advanced technologically and economically, it has regressed in terms of environmental issues, political insecurity and human values to the age before First World War. We are in times of permanent showdown. Nowadays, even traditional democratic values are becoming relative, as we see in the USA with insane figures, unthinkable in times of Eisenhower and Reagan, but also in many other European countries (even Reagan looks like a weak moderate guy compared with what we see nowadays and he would have no say whatsoever in his own camp. At least his jokes sounded much better than the ranting, insulting, lying and accusing we hear at present moment). People want to feel secure at home and to be entertained and people want to consume above all, to show their ape-like social status within the community. People are more than ever manipulated with social media, which offer a perfect platform for liars and manipulators. The summary of all this chaos we are experiencing now is this one: all human conquests are not definitive, unquestionable, secured and obtained for ever. We can easily revert to barbarism to defend our turf and we could easily erase ourselves from this planet. In fact, we are slowly erasing ourselves already, by way of destroying Nature. Only, because our lives are relatively short, no one sees or will see the whole process in its entirety.
For me, a french who lived in Anglo-Saxon countries for quite some time, it's fun to see the french guy being reactive and debating for the sake of debating, and the American dude being affirmative and debating as a means to get somewhere.
Wait, could you please explain? I have America brain and cannot comprends-pas what you mean. Please help lift me up out of the ignorance and parochialism of the American Anglosphere, sir
No friend not excited at all. I just came with my bag of popcorn to read the comment section. Chomsky is a hack and Foucault was a pedophile. Nothing more to see here
I love how Chomsky is talking about the practical reality and benefits of decentralization back in 1971. He is probably onto something with his original comments, if you consider that at it's functional core a human being's mind seeks to anticipate, so that creativity and the need to nourish its expression becomes an instinct being human as core as the need for food or water. Had we all an inalienable right to such, could make it easier, for instance, to argue for resources to be made accessibly available to encourage the arts; or even make it more apparent we simply need to make sure everyone has access to enough food and water if we want to even begin to consider what the real possible capabilities of the species are.
I basically agree with what you say and I think it is an important point of view. The basis of the discussion between Foucault and Chomsky, at that time, however, was based precisely on that point you make, to know exactly where we are going and what we want to claim and protect. In order to legally configure a basic right to creativity, so to speak, we would have to be clear, each and every one of us, about what creativity is, and unfortunately, we didn't know in 1971 and we don't know now. Perhaps because we have not moved an inch forward or because we never really wanted to discuss the subject, even though we pretended otherwise.
@@guapelea I believe the context of artificial intelligence (or as I like to call it autonomous intelligence) provides a context for identifying and recognizing creative agency, be it human or not. Hopefully one could make both more clear.
@@aaattteeennn It is true that artificial intelligence designers have seriously considered what creativity is and how to differentiate it from the usual functions of human intelligence such as organization and complex decision making, but when we speak, as in the video, of a "right to creativity", that is, of making sure that every individual has the opportunity to understand what it is to be creative and to train in it, we are talking not about differentiating a function that might deserve the name creative, but about the place that creativity should and can have in an overall design of what we call a dignified human life.
I think at the very end of the debate I agree with Foucault. The substructure really does determine the superstructure. "Justice," "Peace," "Happiness," cannot mean the same thing for the elite and the working minions
I agree with you. However, although the WORDS have different meaning their is a reality beyond the words. If I burn my hand I can call it "painful" or an "unwanted challenge". The reality is that some things are preferable and others aren't no matter what you call them. Giving certain things certain names might make them APPEAR easier to accept but those policies, no matter how they are understood, will create a situation that is preferable or not.
Well, even after understanding every words they said, it doesn't mean I was thinking fast enough to properly assimilate everyhing they threw at each others 😅That was brutally challenging, no matter the language used.
@@RottenMuLoT I don't remember precisely who or where this was said but it was probably a TED talk or a book. "Once the brain learns to incorporate on some level the basic structures/characteristics of multiple languages (far beyond the 'hello/goodbye/how are you starter) neural pathways are formed where ideas can be transmitted without fully having to process them." This is also true of reading and speed reading in a similar way. The window dressing tends to fall away. The descriptors of how the drop or torrent of rain fell and was absorbed by the grass stops mattering and all that's left is the understanding that it rained and there just happened to be grass on which it fell. This does not mean to imply that careful articulation is pointless or lacks beauty/clarity. The main linkage here is "what is the simplest explanation of why someone says a sentence that is then proceeded by another?". The gaps get filled in, not through some random/tangential speculation but rather by the overarching structures/pathways that allow the brain to stop focusing on "window dressing" and to focus primarily on the idea itself. Once that hurdle is passed (it's huge and can take more than an entire lifetime without effort) these types of debates become as simple as "i believe there's an overarching structure that governs this..." "nah that's highly unlikely..." and off to the races. (Focault spoke both French/English fluently while Chomsky understood french but wasn't fluent--as far as a I remember about them. the idea was could they have a debate in multiple languages and it work.)
It's also interesting considering Foucault is from Europe and Chomsky was educated in the USA. You can definitely tell which one was educated in the continent home to both World Wars. Foucault is far more cautious of new formulas that call humans by nature good, as his country knows the horrors of what humanity can achieve. In this way, Chomsky is a bit naïve.
Very interesting indeed. Collective history and representations influencing their own thesis, perhaps. However, I'm not sure I'd call "new" the philosophical idea of human being inherently good. It was pretty much the basis of the Enlighnment, and of positivist philosophy in the XIXth century. Chomsky is still on that line, Foucault, like many Europeans, definitely left it behind.
Foucault trusts critique to do its job, but what makes him think that critique itself is not just another tool the use of which is another ruse of power? He seems to think that exposing the pathologies of power is then tantamount to the production of tools to oppose that power. It seems to me that he fails to appreciate the complexities of power itself, its capacity to maintain itself through all critique, its ability to produce the semblance of "fighting" it while masking the instrumentalization of critique and its supposed production of tools in order to maintain itself, and perhaps even perpetuate itself. In this sense, Foucault remains trapped in a Platonist and Hegelian framework...
@@tameshrew469 it is pretty straightforward. if one listens carefully to the discourse of Foucault in this video, the one thing he does not acknowledge is that critique itself can be instrumentalized by power... critique in his view is meant to start and promote and sustain emancipation from the ruses of power, but what if critique itself is precisely a ruse of power???
@@anthonydecastro6938 perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly enough. Could you explain exactly some of the ways critique can help power. I'm sure it can but it is quite bold to claim that critique helps power since the unfashionable truth is that critique often is not good for power. Critique even in itself undermines any democracy and furthermore is the first stepping stone towards "real action" such as protests, strikes and voting. Even in a complete dictatorship, critique may not undermine the power structure directly, but just having the ability to criticise the government is an improvement for those who are oppressed. Sure it's not much, but let's be honest those people are f*cked if they do f*cked if they don't.
@@tameshrew469 in a nutshell, the crucial and critical concept is the "RUSE OF POWER". The powers that be may and could allow critique, but only as an indirect way of actually promoting themselves. It is naive to think that the powers that be, very much in the manner that liberal democracy and capitalism are able to re-occupy territories subjected to critique, are not astute enough to subtly subvert critique not by denying it but by appropriating it and using it so that they can re-morph into something else that perpetuate these same powers. that all the critique of the American establishment has not produced any permanent change in the system is proof of such.
@@anthonydecastro6938 it has produced change though? America may be in an awful state right now but it would be even worse without the changes critique has made. Women's rights, black rights, gay rights etc. Sure, the system may still be corrupt, but I think critique makes is harder for the government, think about how easy it would be if noone protested anything - they could get away with everything and anything without any risk to their position. The problem is not that critique itself is ineffective, but that it is usually performed ineffectively, where people are not properly united and end up mostly fighting amongst themselves. All those on the left who are meant to criticise the right and fight against them, end up just fighting amongst themselves and making each other look bad.
Foucault saying nothing at all really. An example of the French intellectual class of that era, the post-socialist/communist deconstructionist types who were masters of empty sophistry and contrarianism for its own sake. 'well we can't know that human nature is human nature so.....' is not a reason to dismiss alternative propositions to the current socio-political paradigm. But there he is saying it all the same. Intellectual debate became a sort of competitive sport amongst those of the Sorbonne it seems to me. Endless pontification on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis and how nothing means anything and everything is oppression. Talk about a mechanism of distortion and obsfucation
Lots of them were communists or/and pedophiles , Foucault, matzneff , simone de beauvoir just to name a few . In France we admired them , were influenced by them … simply disgusting
@@iamleoooo possibly. He has a much more pragmatic and 'brass tacks' approach, even if I may disagree with some of his assertions. I'm not deeply familiar with his work anyway, but of what I know this is what I'd say
we urgently need more debates, discussions and knowledge interchange between the best minds of our time without any ideological or political agenda, just for the sake of finding the truth, auditing the power groups all around us, etc. great video much appreciated!
Chomsky-There are such things as human decency and justice and they’re reflective of the essentially positive values that humans feel internally and strive to obtain within our institutions. And these values of justice and decency are appropriate goals for humanity to be working to try to perfect as much as that’s possible, while remaining open to the idea of evolving what our values and goals are based upon evidence that we will receive at future times while working to achieve these stated ends. Foucault-Because we currently are and always have lived in a class society as humans, any value or any possible notion of what is right or wrong for humanity to try to strive towards that we know of at this point in our specie’s history cannot be used as a measuring stick or as a goal for humanity to work towards in any future classless society that we could ever try to commit to achieving, because of this supposed inability to transfer knowledge pertaining to our class based society and have it be applicable in a future classless society. I hope that’s fair to both parties. Especially Foucault, who I am much less familiar with…That is a good summary of what Foucault was saying though, right? That’s what I got out of it.
Both are progressive idiots who embrace some form of moral relativism because they essentially despise religious morality and HAVE TO oppose it at all costs. That's where their fundamental opposition to moral absolutism stems from. Their own psychological inadequacy.
It's also interesting considering Foucault is from Europe and Chomsky was educated in the USA. You can definitely tell which one was educated in the continent home to both World Wars. Foucault is far more cautious of new formulas that call humans by nature good, as his country knows the horrors of what humanity can achieve. In this way, Chomsky is a bit naïve.
@@kaidenkondo5997 It's no mere coincidence that Chomsky was portrayed as the proverbial paradigm to avoid in two books by Sowell and Hollander ("Intellectuals and Society" and "Pilgrims...", respectively). These two are not the great thinkers everyone takes them to be because they lack fundamental economic literacy which spills over to the rest of their worldview.
''economic literacy'' is not everything my dude. in fact economics is quite an unstable field of study. in fact, economists have a humorous depiction of people who blindly follow economics: homo economicus.
@@kaidenkondo5997 economic literacy is everything my dude. You just haven’t realized it yet as you probably still vote on instinct instead of looking who’s BSing you with false and unrealistic promises (that involve YOUR and MY money).
When I first discovered this debate some years ago, I thoght that Chomsky lost bc his "Human Nature" argument was week and Foucault was right about it dont being a thing. Today... I think Chomsky is correct. We are creative animals, and all the comprehension of power structures Foucault brought is useless, if not used in a political strugle for emancipation. Thanks for uploading this, many more people should see it
I thought the human nature argument was very weak. Basically, humans are intrinsically creative -> we should foster it as an ideal society -> a decentralized system and probably a very capitalist system is the way to do it. I don’t think Foucault would disagree with humans’ natural creativity at all, and I thought he was much more insightful with his idea that every system is tainted by politics and class (even education, etc). I think he was just saying that even our definition of ideal is tainted by our experiences to show that just letting human nature work is impossible. At least that’s how I took the information, but I have no prior knowledge of these two
I love Foucault’s point about the impossibility of defining tomorrow’s society, because we only have today’s cultural norms of thinking available in our language. 🤔
He doesn't say it is impossible but that it is risky. That good old "fear the unknown" idiom. Chomsky is on the "give society a chance" side of the discussion because sometimes the only way to learn is by doing mistakes. "Practice makes perfect" idiom.
This is what debates are supposed to be. They once used to be genuine, good-faith discussions trying to understand different perspectives and to reach a consensus on a murky topic, and not simply a performance in persuasion and optics for a neutral audience to pick sides.
The logical conclusion of Foucault’s final point seems absurd as his criticism of his civilization necessarily takes place within the language (spoken and symbolic) of the same civilization. That would almost totally limit the possibilities of emancipatory action.
@jgtemperton It seems like a manifestation of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, that you can’t prove something by reference to itself. I get it’s an examination of language, but you’re always within some tradition, as Gadamer said.
I rather understood it as follow: let's be extra careful about the coding language we want to use to build the new world, because if we use the same old coding language, we might create something even more flawed.
From a time when the students of Philosophy had enough time to learn the languages of the big philosophers, Foucault obviously learned English, but Chomsky taught himself French as well. Foucault even calls this very thing "disciplinary time": we need to effectivize our time, separating it into smaller and smaller categories as even the movement of our hands and fingers that write on the page becomes more perfect. Ideas are already translated into words and we lose even more of the original meaning when we translate those words into yet another language.
Foucault suggests "exposing" and "unmasking" institutions so that we can "critique" and "fight" them. But without SOME kind of vision, assertion, or even implication of preference against which to compare those institutions - how can one have any basis for critique or any notion of what to fight for? Foucault is right to caution against going down yet another dogmatic path based on our own ignorance and limitations - but how can we do anything but this in any practical way? This, I think, is why Chomsky's suggestion is appropriate, so long as we take Foucault's concerns to heart and proceed with diligent care, provisional flexibility, compassion, and humility.
I once read a quote from Chomsky in which he called himself quite conservative. I never quite understood what he meant at the time. But compared to figures like Foucault, I really understand it. Chomsky argues for the existence of fundamental human qualities that will always exist in our species across time and space. And I agree with him. It seems obviously correct, with obviously some degree of flexibility which is influenced by culture and environment
it's about justice and class struggles for power. classes are all about enjoying life and being happy. the higher your class the more likely it is you'll be happy and enjoy life, although not guaranteed, but you have more opportunity for happiness as you move up the class structure. justice favors those in a higher class
This is cool. I disagreed with the final point here that we cannot justify crusading for a new system outside of ours because we can't see clearly the way forward. If this were true then the advice for depressed people would be to sit and ruminate forever.
I guess you and I have a different understanding of what the final point is. I don't think that is actually Foucaults point, I think he is making a different point than that. I'll give you a contemporary analogy that might not work, but here goes. It's kind of like the electric car thing that is going on right now. Chomsky is pointing out that yes, our understanding of these larger systems are flawed, and that we will need to press forward anyway. Foucault is making the point that the change we see in electric cars, still reflects the authoritarian systems at large, namely in the car centric view, rather than significantly changing the status quo. He isn't saying that our attempts to change the system are doomed, he's saying that they are flawed, and we run the risk of further adding to the sunk cost. I believe Chomsky is right in this, but that doesn't mean that Foucault isn't right either, it just means Chomsky is more correct.
Foucault feels like the pessimist to Chomsky’s optimist. Or the destroyer to Chomsky’s creator. I mean this not in a bad way, just that Foucault’s focus seems to be pointing out and rooting out problems in society, but can’t bring himself to meet Chomsky at the point of creating solutions.
"I cannot help but think that the notion of human nature, the notion of goodness, of justice, of human essence and its realization, are all notions and concepts that have been formed within our civilization, in our type of knowledge, in our form of philosophy, and as a result, they are part of our class system. And we cannot, however regrettable it may be put these notions forward to describe or justify a fight that should or shall in principle overthrow the very foundations of our society." Uh...why not? Is Foucault implying here that you can't use an idea generated by a superstructure to dismantle that same superstructure? Even if he is correct that these notions are completely dependent on the civilization from which they spring (as in, not inherent to humanity at all), then can we not still use them to overthrow, leading to a hypothetical classless society in which new and different notions of justice, goodness and human essence will develop?
@@googlygoo9472 Ok, but then, what notions do we use to reform the system? Were are we supposed to take our ideas from, if not from ourselves? Because even if we skew all our notions of morality in order to create something new, at this point, that would still be a rational choice to choose the "bad" instead of the "good" and, therefore, would still be within the frame of social construct.
@@bebelc2l To go back on the Foucault argument, he beleives our notion of goodnes was created by the system and for the system. These same ideas then can't create a classless society because they are of the class system. But I can't comment on what notions of good he is contemplating since i'm a not that familiar with is work. For myself many notions goodness are incompatible with a classless society.
First problem: He's making claims but not justifying them. Second Problem: What he's proposing, that all our ideas are rooted in a civilization-based class system, is unfalsifiable. Third Problem: The idea that an idea is invalid or corrupted because of who it came from is both false reasoning, and also poisons the well against anyone who would try to suggest social solutions.
My youngest children attended a local co-op school where the teacher had some very offensive and oppressive beliefs but was also an excellent instructor of classical logic. They then proceeded to use the logical tools he provided them with to dismantle his outlandish belief system. So Yes, M. Foucault, we can use the tools from the oppressive system to overthrow the foundations of that system. It's really quite easy -- and thoroughly enjoyable too!
Wonderful discussion. But I must say, Chomsky's view of the justice system and what it embodies is quite warped. It doesn't conform to the lived experience of most who encounter it, although the system may certainly "aspire" to a higher principle. Just not the reality.
For me, Foucault's thoughts seem to be strongly influenced by the French educational and political system at the time (assuming it was similar to nowadays). For example, saying that the educational system is there to "distribute" knowledge is typically French (as opposed to stimulating curiosity and creativity). The French educational system is also quite class-oriented (or limiting) - consider the Ecole National d'Administration (ENA) for example.
The "stimulating curiosity and creativity" is the total opposite of in American schools. American schools are dumbing-down institutions of training in compliance and obedience. America is famous for having wishful thinking (the phrases "we should", "we must", "we have a dream" and so on), and doing the direct opposite. Americans understand "knowledge" as information. They measure everything. What they cannot measure, gets dismissed. They measure IQ.
@@gracie99999 I think distribute in this sense means the selection of knowledge for distribution. There are disciplines curated by the state and its institutions as a priority. These disciplines are then taught to students with the objective of fueling stability and order, reinforcing the reigning political system. Anything that is marginal from the state's ideal of education, like literature, philosophy, etc, receives less attention or are outright ignored, worst censored and destroyed. Although I cannot really say if that is 100% the case with France. I only know that in where I live in we have a massive problem with the education system.
I don't get it. How does Foucalt intend to deal with crime. Some men will always want more no matter how classless a society becomes. 'Alpha males' so to speak (not a big fan of the phrase but ehh) will always battle out for power, no matter how utopian a society becomes. Greed and desire and vain impulses will always trouble weaker men no matter their education. How does he intend to deal with them when they cross the line? The current justice system, it could be argued, does protect a class elite people, and argued rightly so, but to argue that the very idea of justice is to protect a class of people is insane. Mr Foucalt goes on to proclaim "...the notion of human nature, the notion of goodness, of human essence and its realization are all notions and concepts that have been formed within our civilization in our type of knowledge, in our type of philosophy, and as a a result, they are part of our class system...." Has there ever been any human civilization that does not have these concepts and notions? I dont think so. Hence they are, in all actuality, rooted in human nature itself.
If you find this discussion intellectually stimulating or highly absorbing, you may find the late 19th century Russian book, "The Possessed" (also translated into English as "Devils", or "Demons") a very serious and provoking read. The author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, was often called prophetic as the story, published in 1871-72, is the collective psychological and social unfolding of the future revolution of 1917 in a condensed geographic location, but on terrifying scaffolding of dimension in the psychological realm. "The Possessed" also lampshades the influence of proceeding generations on establishing the foundation upon which succeeding modern generations thoughts and ideas truly stem. The novel incorporates a depth which is not quickly realised, so it is a very long book. Fear not! Extracting the knowledge in this book does pay off, and you will be able to discuss with other cool humans a classic in Russian and Existential literature. :)
It’s such a relief to not have to hear applause in between each speakers points. A time where intelligent debate wasn’t a point scoring, moneymaking, gameshow and was for the pure pursuit of truth is sorely missed.
That depends on the audience.
I have to agree, it nice to just hear both perspectives without any added background noise.
@@helenacorreia7613 Why? How does what we are doing on this end of the screen have any effect on the minds of the producers and what they decide to put on the screen? They gon do wat they gon do, right? And actually there are a few good debates by their contemporaries even today that are very much this same format, IF you are looking it. Remember, what you search for and how you search determines your quality as an audience participant not so much the quality of the content. That's gonna become even more important in the near future, which was the subject of Chomsky's most recent debate a few weeks ago about ChatGPT, in case you missed it. Bro still on the grind in his 90's!
You can still hear that in other parts of the world.
Debate is not an exercise in the pursuit of truth but a showoff of ideas by confrontation
No one's gonna mention that these two had a high-level philosophical debate in two different languages without missing a beat?
Well Noam Chomsky did anyway. There's some telling cuts before Foucault starts talking...
Their obligation
Well, in fairness, Chomsky was a linguist, and I am pretty sure he knew French.
For me, it said nothing just because of that, it doesn’t matter the language, it doesn’t matter the vocabulary, philosophy is philosophy and this is not philosophy, I could get nothing from this except that Foucault is afraid of power and Chomsky has the notions of a high schooler
It can often be easier to listen to and understand someone else's language than to express yourself in it.
Although both of these guys are in highly language-oriented fields, they probably could have had Chomsky speak French and Foucault speak English.
As an English speaker, I greatly appreciate the Foucault translation. I feel that not Translating Chomsky into French is a great opportunity lost.
It's not just a lost opportunity, one could argue it shows the power of one language/culture over another - even more so today, English is ubiquitous and French has lost the position it once had.
I feel it is also a loss for English speakers not having to learn French , as it helps to gain a deeper understanding of their own language - and even if you don't agree with me on that one, I think everyone who is bilingual (or multilingual) would agree that knowing a foreign language opens up a whole new world to you.
We have english subtitles and thats enough for most of us
could not agree more. 10000% perfect
how do we know that didn't happen at some point, but it just didn't make it to youtube? Ive seen this video with other subtitles (like swedish or something).
I bet theres all kinds of lost stuff on VHS in storage somewhere.
We're on the English version of UA-cam here. If you find this same debate on the French version, you may find French subtitles.
It's the silence when someone is speaking. The attention given to the speaker you can feel in debates and discussions years ago like this that is so special.
It's so depressing that something as mundane as allowing another person time to speak is now considered special. But I agree.
i mean probably half of them were stoned even foucault apparently was given a big portion of weed in exchange for agreeing to do this debate
Do they both understand both languages?
@@nofurtherwest3474 Yes, whilst Chomsky is bilingual (English and Hebrew), he can understand French but just chooses not to answer in it.
@@beast_pasta2392 As a standard, philosophers speak in their native tongue to limit the loss of meaning from ideas to speech.
You'll never know how much im excited to the fact Foucalt is a real person and actually speaks
He was a monster who should have rotted in prison.
Maybe he meant well - and his take on the world certainly garnered my youthful support - but the reality of the Foucault inspired 'woke' take over of education is beyond tragic.
@@blackmore4 L
@@blackmore4 L
He's a pedo
It’s so apparent that these guys were having a great time, despite their disagreements. I hope we see more of this in our time
7:55
that's right. without a doubt spot on.
As long as the "culture war" continues, that feature of our civilization has been lost - I fear, forever.
They're mentally masturbating
I cannot think of anybody capable enough to fill their shoes. Christopher Hitchens certainly was. Perhaps Stephen Fry, but we are regretfully short of quality, able people such as Foucault and Chomsky.
I love how they are patiently listening and considering one another's time, voice, and theories. The moderator has nothing to do but sit back and listen.
@Insectavamour they damn sure are
@Insectavamour I'm not sure the word competing is appropriate - and if competing goes to domination or superiority feeling, so here i think it is not
@Insectavamour No you're right. They aren't competing, because ultimately they are both interested in finding the truth. In other words, it isn't a political debate, it is an intellectual debate.
@Insectavamour it's definitely more of a discussion. People take initial sides in a discussion, or at least propose their initial viewpoint, but the point of a discussion is to talk about something, not try to convince someone of your viewpoint, and hopefully along the way you learn something. What you are witnessing here is people listening to each other and not just waiting to talk and shove their viewpoint down the other person's throat. I learned this a while ago at work as a business consultant, my job is not to be correct all the time but to assist in getting to the correct decision. To do this I must be open to hearing other people ideas and not be afraid that my ideas are wrong, or partially wrong. I seek the truth, not to be correct all the time.
@@Campfire30 That is exactly the point why they keep speaking about different paradigms: It is a philosophical debate for Foucault (as we would say, scientific, that is, he aims at learning about world and things as they are) - but for Chomsky it is a political debate (that is, he is aiming at shaping and commanding the world according to what he thinks the world should be). Two opposing approaches, I think. Today also, in the US, for some reason the public expects politics from philosophy.
Such a joy to see this back! Much appreciate your translation of Foucault's speech into English, I do find it much more concise than the original!
Foucault is a pedo.
@John-Paul Hunt Where did you see that written? BTW, it might so happens that the idiot is you and not Peterson for not making you understand his point. Ever visited that possibility?
I was gonna say, big props to the translator, they did good work!!
French is BS
i agree! 110% true
I love the duality of Chomsky talking calmly as Foucault smiles like a maniac while picking his teeth
He does look maniacal there huh? Like he's ready to bite Chomsky in the jugular. But I'm sure it's just his passion shining through.
Duality? wtf? Too bad it wasn't a political debate, so no room for the nonsense you're pointing out; his emotions have no importance. What seems to be important here is the fact that Foucault had to educate Chomsky (with a voltairean irony) about his false notions of human nature, spirit of justice out of society as a fish out of water, and so on...
I thought Chomsky looked like a nervous undergraduate.
Suck your own farts more please.
@@watching99134 Who would be unable to pass Foucault's class with his level of understanding.
Foucalt: Because our ideals of human nature are based on the beliefs of our society, we shouldn't use these to create a new society which hopes to remove the brutalities of our current society.
Chomsky: We have only our current ideals, and we should use them to create a more advanced society which attempts to remove the inequalities of our current society.
great summary, cheers!
Foucalt: I want to have sex with minor children
Chomsky: Maybe we should use the values that are passed down and that may be problematic
Well, there is an even greater difference between the two. Foucault is rather direct, powerful, an antagonist of independent freedom in man and of the opinion that almost nothing can be done- he believes not in a better result in the future. Whereas Chomsky is the go-to societal man of our times. He freely believes in inner freedom and thus the choice between two sides, whose results may vary and are unpredictable and thus not from the government controlled. He believes in the existence of both good and bad in society and hopes for the appreciation of the good and its usage for a better future- future whose image one has to imagine so that he can lay abstract and undefined but still road-creating ideas. One is a pessimist and probably a thorough pragmatist and the other a man ready for comprises and appreciative procession toward something better and closer to our true nature.
So in essense both are looking in how to improve current image and masks of aristocracy in order make it work longer. No way this calls for progress and time proved it. Ancient greeks and Aristotle spoke the same, ended up under barbarian Romans.
Human Nature is Human Nature, and it contrasts and is always at enmity with the Divine Nature. Each individual is either being governed by the Human Nature or by the Divine Nature. Collective and progressive evolution favors humanity transforming into Divinity.
Seriously could listen to this type of debaitng day in and day out. the integrity of these men is admirable during the whole conversation
Lol 😆 integrity. Foucault a pedophile, fucked little boys in Tunisia and bragged about it. And Chomsky spent a lot of time with Jeffery Epstein
A lot of cameo appearances in the first 2 minutes of this debate.
0:01 Marty McFly
0:19 Ray Manzarek
1:11 Jeffrey Dahmer & Lyndon Johnson
1:26 Willem Defoe
1:36 Hunter S Thompson
This cracked me up. 😂 I think you mean George McFly though.
The comment I was looking for.
If I'm not mistaken, Willem just ripped an SBD.
Also 0:19 Donald Sutherland.
Dahmer though… LOL 😂
Wonder what he was thinking about 🤣🤣
Jokes apart. I am at such a high level of intellectualism that I can't comprehend a single word of these legends
We need more thinking and dialogue like this today. This was stimulating and important
We need more debates between actual experts, not one expert talking to fucking Joe Rogan. Get two smart people on a stage with a mediator, and let them actually talk to each other.
@@andybaldman
I thought Rogan was an expert though... 👽
I'm sorry to crush your dreams, but it is very uncommon for openly anti-government thinkers to have a discussion like this, for obvious reasons.
@@mattiaorlandi1524 Even if the topic isn't systems of government though, this type of dialogue is sorely needed today on all kinds of issues.
@@11DaltonB yeah of course, I'm just saying that an argument on this specific topic is going to be very hard to organize
Just straight up thank you for posting this. As an contemporary American, it is a delightful reminder that civil discourse and discussion on this level ever happened. Much less so fluidly yet thoughtfully.
It still goes on, just you can't easily google them cause it isn't made for plebians.
@@drbeavis4211 If it isn't made for plebians it isn't civil anymore. Thus it isn't the same, OP is right.
Quality, respectful and progressive debate goes back far further of course.
I'm always brought back to that of Russell and Copleston in 1948. Today, the topic they grapple with would be utterly polarizing. The same was true for both involved here, but they dealt with it from genuine stances of interest, and not childish point scoring.
We sorely need a return to this type of exchange.
ua-cam.com/video/MVLKURgfft0/v-deo.html
In particular, the closing words are very refreshing.
Ahh yes the pedophile can really was poetic cant he
@@jimreplicant
_"I've known Jeffery Epstein for fifteen years. He's a terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to hang out with. He likes beautiful women as much as I do, and a lot of them are on the younger side"_
-- Donald Trump, 2002 interview for New Yorker magazine.
Stop pretending you give a shit about the welfare of abused children.
The quality of the cinematography and the lens is really special for 1972. This is film in low indoor light and the camera rig/lens and camera man were totally dialed. Not to mention the creative aspects of the audience shots.
What the hell are you talking about??? Light is quite enough, every face is well lit.
Fascinating. What do you think about the content of their discussion?
I agree. Capturing the audience gave it the feel of a group discussion, whereas most camera operators would ignore them.
@@ronanrogers4127 two charlatans. Nothing relevant
@@alvarc3675 only one charlatan here, clearly - and they're certainly not on screen!
Just to be led here by watching and listening to these incredible thoughts by great thinkers is a decent step towards the ocean of knowledge. I am grateful to all
Foucault pathological philosophies is a fucking cancer upon society, same category as Marx
lmao. they're just 2 guys talking sht. neither had to or are to prepared to actually fight for, or even sacrifice for their ideals.
When Foucault makes Chomsky look like a moderate, you know you're in deep revolutionary territory.
Yep
lmao true
Foucault was a revolutionary pedo, so yeah (but then again, chomsky received $$ from epstein)
Foucault is actually being a lot more politically modest. He is just saying that any attempt at revolution that uses concepts within the establishment will never get out of the establishment. He is calling for the scrutiny of apparently "neutral" institutions like hospitals and schools but isn't necessarily saying we should completely break our current system down. He is usually in the business of subversion from within.
Or an idiot who many people give credit 😂 Chomsky comes from the idea progress exists and democracy is better than other forms of government. For Foucault, no difference between the “democratic jail” or the “medieval torture” no difference between the sex freedom 100 years ago and the many liberties achieved in the last 50 years for minorities. The only difference for him is that power and control became more effective. He doesn’t have a vision about state, representation and so on. He is the reason why left is divided.
Can't help thinking how the video editing plays into the flow and last words of the conversation, but regardless just having a platform where actual ideas are discussed (instead of just politics) is an unfortunate rarity I'm very grateful for.
The topic of this discussion is politics. Were you paying attention?
I really liked the French man’s thinking
@@lydiawilder5996 I think I misused the word politics there, which in the true sense of the word means sensible and judicious action. I meant instead of just wanting their point of view to win regardless of the strength of any counter arguments (like in modern politics) they're trying to identify the truth of the matter rationally and show mutual respect despite their differences in opinion.
@@lydiawilder5996 Instead of 'just politics' he said, so I guess the usual partisan clap trap instead of an effort to figure out what's really going in the world.
Thanks for providing this. It's impressive these two can not only debate in different languages, but also carefully listen and respond to the other's points without talking over them and demeaning them. My experience with Foucault is mostly through hearsay (and a lot of that from his enemies), but I've got to say I was impressed with him in this clip.
The crappy degradation that have become our mainstream media, filled with noise from advertisments, pumped in order to create fights, and encouraged to be fast-paced to brainwash the viewers/listeners and leave them no time to ponder nor to elaborate the subjects that they are exposed to, have made us not used to this kind of authentic debate, characterized by politeness, respect, reflection. The feeling of freshness and enlightment that the old debates give us proves that they represented the right path to take for pursuing any kind of cultural and educational evolution.
@@i.1213 Correction: This isn't how "debates used to be". It's just what we cared to remember, or in this case upload to UA-cam. Else we may as well assume that all ancient Greeks were brilliant philosophers still relevant 2500 years later, which is clearly false.
@@gessie Weren’t they great and still treasured in these days?…
@@i.1213 Ancient Greek philosophers, yes, but not the average ancient Greek. The average person was as stupid then as they are now, much to the dismay of philosophers - it's a disappointment we have in common despite the passage of millennia.
@@gessie yes! the nostalgia of survivor bias is so intense people who grew up in communist societies which fell apart during their lives will say after 20 years "it was much better during the communist time".
Well said, sir!
With all the comments on how great their discussion was, I just want to say how refreshing and wonderful a commentsection full of seemingly intelligent and interested people is. Thanks to everyone here making this a great experience
I am commenting to disappoint you. Foucault's arguments can be reduced to who's penetrating who and Chomsky's arguments are as simple as an ever present CIA using their tricknology to make 3rd world countries bad.
It's truly a sign of our times that a conversation so relevant is clearly absorbed by its listeners as nothing more than an example of good conversation. Surely something is very broken in our society, when a video of two incredible intellects discussing the very moral foundations of our society plays more as an example of a bygone intellectual era than as a reference point on 20th century moral philosophy.
Foucault contributed greatly to the mess we have today
That just sounds naive to me. It's a question as old as society itself. Some things in small communities just doesn't translate to large communities, and then you have the complexity of inter-community cooperation, conflict and management. Our "nature" is inescapable and is amplified by these systems, whether we like it or not. We reject them at our peril, every time.
@@sinephase this is a myth founded by Enlightenment thinkers prior to the huge swath of research and discovery on ancient human history we've seen since that time. And as such, more recent work disproves it, or at least seriously calls it into question. I'd recommend you read at least the introduction and conclusion to The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow before you make similar claims in the future.
@@christinec271 what, that our instincts are expressed through how we organize our societies?
@@sinephase Dude is "Christine Crow".....😄😄😄😂😙
Wonderful to find this! The legend is that Foucault was paid in hashish for this appearance - a block he subsequently referred to as his Chomsky Hash...
We need both kinds of intellectuals. The ones who can not formulate concrete solutions, but who can see clearly what's wrong. And those which may miss some of the sofisticated details of society functioning, but can devise practical and mostly realizable ways of improving structures and life.
physicist vs engineer: the former tries to understand the underlying reality dispassionately and objectively while the later always strives to build something practical despite the lack of knowledge. We know both are important for society's progress.
@@rajbhandari9605 the former *despite a lack in knowledge breadth*, the latter *despite a lack in knowledge depth*.
Not sure we need Foucault. To just point out problems without giving any suggestions on how to solve them is close to useless.
@@johreh I share some of the frustration, particularly given today's toxic intellectual environment. But, as a scientist, I'd disagree. Sometimes the best we can do is point out flaws in a claim, even if we cannot present one which is ultimately better. We progress by refuting falsity, not by demonstrating veracity.
@@johrehRead 'Discipline and Punish' sometime.
Foucault looks so cool calm and collected. Both are so articulated and clear when expressing their perspectives and even in disagreement they remain focused in analysing the subject at hand.
You know he was a pro pedophilia advocate, right? And admitted to abusing children as young as four.
Classic! Thank you so much! Please keep up the good work!
i am soo happy i found foucault with this as now i can practic my french listening skills and learn more about the world
He's a wonderfully clear speaker, he really is a great person to listen to for ear training.
I'm pretty sure I saw a discussion similar to this on Twitter just the other day.
Seriously though, it's refreshing to hear him bring up the fields of psychiatry and education being other mechanisms of political control, as well as Chomsky's acknowledgement of the uncertainty of outcomes from significant, abrupt social change, and it's potential to lead to fascism.
Great stuff, thanks for typing out the words we just heard and could read on-screen anyway. but good job.
zvzgonghiovnzne
Why psychiatry though?
@@blackwaterbae7086 if we look at the history of psychiatry from its very beginnings, we can really see how much its progression has been mostly guided by social and economic influences. Mental illness does not function like other kinds of illness, and as such our understanding of it, or the 'science' we use to describe it, is susceptible to subjectivity (more than we'd accept in any other scientific/medical field). Its hard - if not impossible - to view mental illness objectively, even through the lense of neuroscience. Pharmaceutical/insurance companies have played such a massive role in the way we define, diagnose and medicate mental illnessess; how can we reduce the human condition, in all its complexity, to activity at the synapse? As soon as pharmaceutical companies find a formula (a way of presenting mental illness) that is monetarily benefitial, they will cease to engage in further research - regardless of whether anything is working at all. I hope how you can see too how this is all inexorably tied to politics. Its actually completely insane if you ask me. I will stop now but you get the point... this is just what I think from what I know.
@@danielnaylor7737 Thank you for sharing
My only struggle is finding someone that'll look at me like Foucault does Chomsky at 7:55
LMAO!
😅
Jaco, I know I had to rewind that a couple of times. He looks demonic. What's with all the teeth picking. Why does Chomsky later call Foucault amoral?
Well, Foucault was gay
If you were an 11 year old Tunisian boy Foucault would look at you that way too.
As an American with a child in the Italian school system, my eyes have really been opened to some of the things that they discuss. I can see that the three-tiered high school system here superficially seems like it is designed to guide a child to good/productive ends, but I've come to see it as a mechanism to primarily reinforce the existing class system and produce workers at scale.
At 13, you get pushed into a track that will pretty much define your life. I don't think this is good for students or even Italian society, but it does buttress a social class system that mimics the old landowner and tenant farmer stratification. In the US, I think you see this in gaming access to gifted programs and elite university admissions. These systems seem to be meritocracies, but they aren't ... and I'm a center-right guy from Wyoming.
BTW, I was at MIT grabbing a coffee and looked up to see Chomsky. It was a kind of surreal moment.
A center-right guy from wyoming? nahhh
Foucault: "Everything is socially constructed"
Chomsky: "No, some things are human universals"
Chomsky: "And saying, 'Everything is socially constructed,' actually presupposes human universals such as social construction!"
@@Amittai_Aviram That is a good observation and I agree Foucault's position is self-defeating.
@@Kavafy is it though? The whole concept of social construction may itself be a social construction. Think about it. Concepts such as gender, race, identity, money, happiness, etc... depend on the presence of society itself to exist.
If there was only one person alive, then the concept itself of social construction would not exist, there would be no way for one to argue with themselves on what is gender, what is sexuality, race, age, life and death itself. There would be no way for somebody to argue with themselves on how do they exert power over other people or vice versa because there would be no other person around.
So my conclusion is that while social constructs have been a fundamental part of society and have shaped our lives and thoughts to the point we can't imagine ourselves outside of these arbitrary molds, they are not absolute as chomsky would say. The name itself implies they depend on the relationship of two or more human beings.
Your ideas make no sense as we are social and co dependent in any way possible. To say the things wouldn’t exist, if there was only one single person, is absolutely pointless of an argument to use, to support your point. Do you understand what you are saying is just impractical to think about, because it’s even less real, than saying our social concepts are not real, because they exist only, because we are more than one single human on this planet. Where do we even go from there?
PARKLIFE!
Never ask a man his salary, a woman her age, Michel Foucault which petition he signed, and Noam Chomsky which genocides didn't happen
Do elaborate
troll
@@paolovallejo8022 Noam is like a human encyclopedia on the topic of genocides and, this is my interpretation of the joke, I believe Puma is referring to the petitions Foucault signed in favor of pedophilia and the abolition of prison.
@@paolovallejo8022 Noam Chomsky hardcore denies the Bosnian genocide, there's a really good video on here by a guy named kraut, it's really weird.
@@justinthall5909 His exact words: "The mass slaughter in Srebrenica, for example, is certainly a horror story and major crime, but to call it “genocide” so cheapens the word as to constitute virtual Holocaust denial, in my opinion"
This is a blast from the past!! The two thinkers I admire a lot. ❤
This exchange crystallizes the differences in approach between these thinkers. Chomsky is working within a scientific tradition, in which we understand that we must base our knowledge and our ideas on contingent assumptions subject to later correction-and that, nevertheless, we may speak of such concepts as human nature and universal qualities. Foucault, by contrast, is so radically wedded to the notion that every thought is historically determined-in particular, by the evolution of economic and social class relatons-that there can absolutely never be anything universal, that even provisional assumptions of universal foundations are hopelessly deluded. In this regard, Chomsky offers a progressive vision of political aspirations and activism, whereas Foucault offers a path of endless critique. I think one should also note that Foucault does not seem to acknowledge the paradox at the core of Derrida's understanding of how thoughts are shaped: that the critique itself is also already part of the "system" being criticized.
Thank you so much for your comment, it is as enlightening as the content of the video... because it helps my dumbass understand what I am listening to. Sort of.
Yet another one who understands neither Foucault nor Derrida...read Nietzsche and Freud. Don't you understand that every sign already contains its own opposite?
@@uperdown0 Yet another pretentious and dismissive non-reader who assumes that I have not already read quite a lot of Nietzsche and Freud (and written about them!) and have not written extensively about such paradoxes. The idea that "every sign contains its own opposite," however, is not especially relevant to either position. It is obviously central to Derrida, but it is a grave mistake to conflate Derrida with Foucault, as a whole generation of American students so often did.
@@Amittai_Aviram I'm not but people misunderstand both. Besides, it's not a "paradox", the fact that a material dialectical process occurs in every speech act, and this is constantly occurring and there's never "a" moment but a constant shifting of structural positions is NOT paradoxical. Even the Greeks knew that understanding material reality is a dialectical process...all scientific thought relies on it. How did we need Lacan to explain that signs don't refer to reality but always refer to the Other, though it's our relation to the other which gives us our understanding of material reality...it was right there in Plato the whole time.
@jgtemperton But there's nothing relative about it...human thought has a definite material character born out of a primal dialectical relation--atleast if you listen to Lacan. But the point is that denying reality, literally denying the other, is equal to nihlism and its the majority belief these days.
I really had to hand it to these two men who speak of relevant and compelling thoughts on matters that affect us from our history to current events. Foucault's argument says that human ideals of justice and kindness cannot be separated from our class and our culture and history that brought up today's systems however imperfect they may be. The classes in societies form a hierarchy that always distributes power away from the majority towards a few up the rungs of authority and leadership, as a natural tendency since it's repeated soo many times in many different forms regardless.
And so, there is always gotta be discernment 'allowing' with consent, powers that manage and guide us that is benevolent vs. oppressive. And we can easily make distinctions between the two of those separate from any one culture, political, economic opinions and etc. There needs to be an open and serious discussion of such definitions, with a consensus that the best of our philosophies, psychologies and religious institutions can offer while not ever dividing the citizens of a given state between 'believers' and 'nonbelievers' or any other distinctions which generate, double standards or no standards at all, making hypocrisies, nepotism and oppression rampant in a society that's losing it sense for truth and wisdom through struggle. It makes problems of harmony and peace much harder in a country inherently full of different religions and cultures as the ideal first set down in the foundations of our constitution.
We came into this world full of different people and it's not our job to lessen such a variety of views toward any one person's ideal. But it is up to us to constantly redefine our sense of self, society, and our principles according to any and all new information compelling enough to make it case for all members of our human society with no exceptions.
A Heart felt Homily tending toward Humility within Humanity.
This is really quite something, ty for sharing
I'm finding myself in line more with Michel Foucault, but I look forward to part 2
Chomsky's a ray of light... Foucault's rotational prism... The atmosphere must've been buzzing... DCN
I agree more with Mr. Comsky... But thanks M. Foucalt, this is a great video for those brushing up on understanding spoken French! Michel Foucault speaks clearly and slowly enough to decipher.
Very interesting, not only the intellectual debate, but the competence of both individuals in two languages.
Foucault: “Anarcho-syndicalism is like a pendulum…”
Chomsky: “…which can only swing in a circle.”
I have to record this quotes.thx
Fascinating. I see in my minds' eye a sort of boxing exhibition on display here in the verbal court, with both sides demonstrating clear ethos in their approach. It's unusual for Chomsky, demonstrating all the behavior of a keen out-fighter - always conciliatory, always evasive, yet never distant or distracted - opening against someone so aggressive as Foucault, who seems to be aiming for the knockout blow right out the gate. There might be something insinuating in this comparison, but I don't mean it to be; it's just captivating, even beautiful, to see to people at their top cutting their teeth on the next level of their practice.
Calm down.
Just wow 😍 to watch them together and witness their debate is an amazing opportunity!!!
The world needs more of this kind of awareness more than ever. In just the first few minutes of Foucault's speaking, he describes the very chaos and profound trouble most societies are facing today. While not a definitive answer, it really brings home what was necessary to prevent it: 4:01 - 4:54 covers it with haunting beauty. This is especially true here in the US, but is also just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. Unbelievable that I'm just now hearing this.
Humanity not too long ago, it seems, had a much better idea of what the future could be like, than the estranged one we live in today which Foucault has described the cause and symptoms of with eerie precision.
Couldn't agree more. The justice system engages in strategic rituals to appear normal and neutral. But it is not neutral or normal. It is an institution that perpetuates and reproduces inequality by exerting power over the oppressed. It's visible in the US. But such institutions are only criticized on a symptomatic level not at the systematic (structural) level. Only constantly critiquing the structures of such a system would make the oppression less pervasive.
8:00 I love how avid Foucault seems to hear his opponent's argument. We lack this on politics and social issues today, everyone is an hack.
That's because video can make even the biggest numb brains into faux intellectuals today. It exposes them to a large enough audience that a subsection will latch on to them for various reasons, and will in turn inflate both their self image and their social credibility. Just look at how many people put Jordan Creeperson on a pedestal while the guy can't even discern between schools of thought.
He was thinking what je looked like as a boy
He is cleaning his theet, there is a class of jordan Peterson talking about serial killer body lenguage, he said things about what he is saying with his boody. In other part of the video you can see him searching for dirt under his fingernails. Just watch again the first reply in the video, the irony before he drops the messieur chomsky.
You know he was a pro pedophilia advocate, right? And admitted to abusing children as young as four.
@@studywithmir1994 I would take what Peterson says with a grain of salt. He's not an intellectual; he's a smart man who brands himself as an intellectual. The same way a lot of news channels have host that brand themselves as journalist. This debate today would happen with 5 commercial interruptions; then the Nietzsche and Rousseau camps would break down the opponents words and manipulate them out of context to give their "side" a form of victory. And then it would make its way around the internet and get completely lost in translation from the original debate. I think that's why no true philosopher would appear on any of the formatted programs today, the true intellectuals probably prefer to discuss things in private; rather than have to perform for people when anything filmed is filmed with the intention of sensationalizing.
Was watching this with my girlfriend who enjoyed it very much, but had trouble with understanding the english part, would it be possible to add french subtitles aswell? Think many more people would love to understand this conversation!
CHOMSKY:
Yes, I would certainly agree with that, not only in theory but also in action. That is, there are two intellectual tasks: one, and the one that I was discussing, is to try to create the vision of a future just society; that is to create, if you like, a humanistic social theory that is based, if possible, on some firm and humane concept of the human essence or human nature. That’s one task.
Another task is to understand very clearly the nature of power and oppression and terror and destruction in our own society. And that certainly includes the institutions you mentioned, as well as the central institutions of any industrial society, namely the economic, commercial and financial institutions and in particular, in the coming period, the great multi-national corporations, which are not very far from us physically tonight [i.e. Philips at Eindhoven].
Those are the basic institutions of oppression and coercion and autocratic rule that appear to be neutral despite everything they say: well, we’re subject to the democracy of the market place, and that must be understood precisely in terms of their autocratic power, including the particular form of autocratic control that comes from the domination of market forces in an inegalitarian society.
Surely we must understand these facts, and not only understand them but combat them. And in fact, as far as one’s own political involvements are concerned, in which one spends the majority of one’s energy and effort, it seems to me that they must certainly be in that area. I don’t want to get personal about it, but my own certainly are in that area, and I assume everyone’s are.
Still, I think it would be a great shame to put aside entirely the somewhat more abstract and philosophical task of trying to draw the connections between a concept of human nature that gives full scope to freedom and dignity and creativity and other fundamental human characteristics, and to relate that to some notion of social structure in which those properties could be realised and in which meaningful human life could take place.
And in fact, if we are thinking of social transformation or social revolution, though it would be absurd, of course, to try to sketch out in detail the goal that we are hoping to reach, still we should know something about where we think we are going, and such a theory may tell it to us.
FOUCAULT:
Yes, but then isn’t there a danger here? If you say that a certain human nature exists, that this human nature has not been given in actual society the rights and the possibilities which allow it to realise itself…that’s really what you have said, I believe.
CHOMSKY:
Yes.
FOUCAULT:
And if one admits that, doesn’t one risk defining this human nature which is at the same time ideal and real, and has been hidden and repressed until now - in terms borrowed from our society, from our civilisation, from our culture?
I will take an example by greatly simplifying it. The socialism of a certain period, at the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth century, admitted in effect that in capitalist societies man hadn’t realised the full potential for his development and self-realisation; that human nature was effectively alienated in the capitalist system. And it dreamed of an ultimately liberated human nature.
What model did it use to conceive, project, and eventually realise that human nature? It was in fact the bourgeois model.
It considered that an alienated society was a society which, for example, gave pride of place to the benefit of all, to a sexuality of a bourgeois type, to a family of a bourgeois type, to an aesthetic of a bourgeois type. And it is moreover very true that this has happened in the Soviet Union and in the popular democracies: a kind of society has been reconstituted which has been transposed from the bourgeois society of the nineteenth century. The universalisation of the model of the bourgeois has been the utopia which has animated the constitution of Soviet society.
The result is that you too realised, I think, that it is difficult to say exactly what human nature is.
Isn’t there a risk that we will be led into error? Mao Tse-Tung spoke of bourgeois human nature and proletarian human nature, and he considers that they are not the same thing.
CHOMSKY:
Well, you see, I think that in the intellectual domain of political action, that is the domain of trying to construct a vision of a just and free society on the basis of some notion of human nature, we face the very same problem that we face in immediate political action, namely, that of being impelled to do something, because the problems are so great, and yet knowing that whatever we do is on the basis of a very partial understanding of the social realities, and the human realities in this case.
For example, to be quite concrete, a lot of my own activity really has to do with the Vietnam War, and some of my own energy goes into civil disobedience. Well, civil disobedience in the U.S. is an action undertaken in the face of considerable uncertainties about its effects. For example, it threatens the social order in ways which might, one might argue, bring about fascism; and that would be a very bad thing for America, for Vietnam, for Holland and for everyone else. You know, if a great Leviathan like the United States were really to become fascist, a lot of problems would result; so that is one danger in undertaking this concrete act.
On the other hand there is a great danger in not undertaking it, namely, if you don’t undertake it, the society of Indo-China will be torn to shreds by American power. In the face of these uncertainties one has to choose a course of action.
Well, similarly in the intellectual domain, one is faced with the uncertainties that you correctly pose. Our concept of human nature is certainly limited; it’s partially socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet at the same time it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals we’re trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong possibility, and in fact overwhelming probability, that at least in some respects we’re very far off the mark.
10:02 - 12:31
FOUCAULT:
It seems to me that, in any case, the notion of justice itself functions within a society of classes as a claim made by the oppressed class and as justification for it.
CHOMSKY:
I don’t agree with that.
FOUCAULT:
And in a classless society, I am not sure that we would still use this notion of justice.
CHOMSKY:
Well, here I really disagree. I think there is some sort of an absolute basis-if you press me too hard I’ll be in trouble, because I can’t sketch it out-ultimately residing in fundamental human qualities, in terms of which a “real” notion of justice is grounded.
I think it’s too hasty to characterise our existing systems of justice as merely systems of class oppression; I don’t think that they are that. I think that they embody systems of class oppression and elements of other kinds of oppression, but they also embody a kind of groping towards the true humanly, valuable concepts of justice and decency and love and kindness and sympathy, which I think are real.
FOUCAULT:
Contrary to what you think, you can’t prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realisation of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilisation, within our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a result form part of our class system; and one can’t, however regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or justify a fight which should-and shall in principle-overthrow the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for which I can’t find the historical justification.
Ya le débat en entier sur yt avec les sous titre français pour Choamsky
Kinda disappointed The Rock didn't even hit Chomsky with a vintage "It doesn't matter what you think", or at least an eyebrow raise. Didn't know he spoke French though, very cool
can youfeel the enjoyment of Foucault ? This is the purest form of debate. respectful, and both asctually listen to the other.
It's interesting to me that my battle against my school as a child caused me to see these philosophical observations. The education system doesn't measure education more than it does obedience. If you don't do exactly what they ask, regardless of your personal objectives or if you've become educated nonetheless, they will brand you as a failure and see to it that you cannot reach your highest potential.
That seems to be the underlying intention of 'educational' systems in society; to steer the youth to operate in modes of conformity under existing economic, political and religious orthodoxy.
Schools are the biggest scam in history. The way they destroy children's natural desire to learn is unforgivable
Surely if you have become educated nonetheless, you can still pass the exams. If you disagree, then can you give an example of what you mean?
@@omp199 Learning about epistemology doesn't help you pass a high school exam, but is still correctly described as "educated". Having highly intellectual interests nearly guarantees failure in an academic setting as you'll be forced to regurgitate some random historical factoids, name a few countries on a map and, if you're really unlucky, recite a religious text.
@@gessie If a person fails tests of their understanding of history, geography, and religion, then I would have serious doubts about their understanding of epistemology, too. Of course, anyone can claim that they understand any subject that they have never been tested on. In the absence of an objective test, such a claim cannot be falsified. Which is why we should not take such claims seriously.
Pour les Francophones qui auraient du mal à suivre les interventions de Noam Chomsky sans sous-titres, ce débat a été retranscrit et traduit. On peut en trouver le texte dans : Michel Foucault, "Dits et écrits", Paris, Quarto Gallimard, 2001. Volume I (1954-1975), pages 1339-1380, sous le titre "De la nature humaine : justice contre pouvoir".
Thank God, the sound quality is cared about.
Thank you, P.O.
I find it funny how postmodernists deconstruct everything, including human essence and values, and then go on to criticize everything that, according to them, is "wrong", as if criticism didn't need some kind of measuring stick (i.e., values) which allows you to judge things as 'good' or 'bad' (i.e., criticize) in the first place.
That's the swindle of moral relativism: It states that it is absolutely true that nothing is absolutely true.
It's the perfect camouflage - and one that Foucault and his buddies (Deleuze, Derrida, etc.) used countless times: to make any kind of grandiose claim about society, humans, etc., and then, when being called out on it, to state that they were just misunderstood because in reality, their words mean something different, or they were just deconstructing, or, well, there really isn't any truth at all, so you can't judge them based upon truth.
That is the ultimate form of sophistry and psychopathy.
P.S.: No wonder all these morally depraved "philosophers" (they sully that term) signed a petition in 1977 calling for the legalization of sexual relations with minors. Look it up.
Just magnificent 👍Thank you very much for posting this...
In other words, I think that Foucault is or was a realist and Chomsky an idealist. The first one analyzes society as it has been and is or was, from a Western point of view but fully conscient of it, and the second one as it should be, also from a Western point of view but relatively unconscious of it. The first analyzes the human being as it is and the second as it should be.
This debate is relatively obsolete because it took place in an age where the world was clearly divided in two ideology blocks and where Western ideas were prevalent due to the economic power of the West (before the fall of communism, before the energy crisis of the 70's, before the resurgence of China and India, before of the technology revolution and social media... . Since then, one of this blocks has disappeared and now we are living in a much more dangerous world, with the resurgence of nationalism and multiculturalism everywhere.
It's undeniable nowadays that, if one is born in India or in China or in the USA or in Germany or in Nigeria or in Russia or in Saudi Arabia or Thailand, one is going to have a different education based on different human values.
Nowadays, even the UNO is struggling to find its raison d'être, because States don't respect international law any more (or they have ceased to pretend to respect human rights) and associate with each other to pursue their economic egotistic and cultural interests. Aggressors call themselves victims everywhere, we are living in the Age of Cynicism, Narcissism and Relativism. Like always, the ones that suffer are the ordinary citizens, the dispossessed, children, women, men of low condition, people without military power or social connections.
One tragedy chases another tragedy, people get desensitized after watching tragedies again and again, the focus of attention of the world changes to new entertainments and so play the powerful their game, diverting attention away from their deeds using other actors on the international stage.
It seems to me that, while the world has advanced technologically and economically, it has regressed in terms of environmental issues, political insecurity and human values to the age before First World War. We are in times of permanent showdown.
Nowadays, even traditional democratic values are becoming relative, as we see in the USA with insane figures, unthinkable in times of Eisenhower and Reagan, but also in many other European countries (even Reagan looks like a weak moderate guy compared with what we see nowadays and he would have no say whatsoever in his own camp. At least his jokes sounded much better than the ranting, insulting, lying and accusing we hear at present moment).
People want to feel secure at home and to be entertained and people want to consume above all, to show their ape-like social status within the community. People are more than ever manipulated with social media, which offer a perfect platform for liars and manipulators.
The summary of all this chaos we are experiencing now is this one: all human conquests are not definitive, unquestionable, secured and obtained for ever. We can easily revert to barbarism to defend our turf and we could easily erase ourselves from this planet. In fact, we are slowly erasing ourselves already, by way of destroying Nature. Only, because our lives are relatively short, no one sees or will see the whole process in its entirety.
I greatly appreciate the efforts of the translator who sort of mediated between the two. In such debates, a lot can be lost in translation.
For me, a french who lived in Anglo-Saxon countries for quite some time, it's fun to see the french guy being reactive and debating for the sake of debating, and the American dude being affirmative and debating as a means to get somewhere.
nice one, @BurtAlexis
Wait, could you please explain? I have America brain and cannot comprends-pas what you mean. Please help lift me up out of the ignorance and parochialism of the American Anglosphere, sir
Foucault was and IS a filthy HOMOSEXUAL PREDATOR pedophile rapist anarchist POS.
HIS "IDEAS" ARE FOR THE SCUM OF THE EARTH.
Lol get bent you smelly Frog.
50 years later and we're still asking these same questions
That's the nature of philosophy.
if we ever stop, that's toralitarianism and stagnation
We’ve answered them to some degree.
I don't know about any of you but I find this hella exciting to watch!
No friend not excited at all. I just came with my bag of popcorn to read the comment section.
Chomsky is a hack and Foucault was a pedophile. Nothing more to see here
I love how Chomsky is talking about the practical reality and benefits of decentralization back in 1971. He is probably onto something with his original comments, if you consider that at it's functional core a human being's mind seeks to anticipate, so that creativity and the need to nourish its expression becomes an instinct being human as core as the need for food or water. Had we all an inalienable right to such, could make it easier, for instance, to argue for resources to be made accessibly available to encourage the arts; or even make it more apparent we simply need to make sure everyone has access to enough food and water if we want to even begin to consider what the real possible capabilities of the species are.
Great thoughts
I basically agree with what you say and I think it is an important point of view. The basis of the discussion between Foucault and Chomsky, at that time, however, was based precisely on that point you make, to know exactly where we are going and what we want to claim and protect. In order to legally configure a basic right to creativity, so to speak, we would have to be clear, each and every one of us, about what creativity is, and unfortunately, we didn't know in 1971 and we don't know now. Perhaps because we have not moved an inch forward or because we never really wanted to discuss the subject, even though we pretended otherwise.
@@guapelea I believe the context of artificial intelligence (or as I like to call it autonomous intelligence) provides a context for identifying and recognizing creative agency, be it human or not. Hopefully one could make both more clear.
@@aaattteeennn It is true that artificial intelligence designers have seriously considered what creativity is and how to differentiate it from the usual functions of human intelligence such as organization and complex decision making, but when we speak, as in the video, of a "right to creativity", that is, of making sure that every individual has the opportunity to understand what it is to be creative and to train in it, we are talking not about differentiating a function that might deserve the name creative, but about the place that creativity should and can have in an overall design of what we call a dignified human life.
Chomsky gate...
Can you imagine what the entropy on this discussion will be like in a another 3000 years?
I think at the very end of the debate I agree with Foucault. The substructure really does determine the superstructure. "Justice," "Peace," "Happiness," cannot mean the same thing for the elite and the working minions
I agree with you. However, although the WORDS have different meaning their is a reality beyond the words. If I burn my hand I can call it "painful" or an "unwanted challenge". The reality is that some things are preferable and others aren't no matter what you call them.
Giving certain things certain names might make them APPEAR easier to accept but those policies, no matter how they are understood, will create a situation that is preferable or not.
what joy when you are bilingual and you can understand what these two intellectuals are saying
Hats off!
Well, even after understanding every words they said, it doesn't mean I was thinking fast enough to properly assimilate everyhing they threw at each others 😅That was brutally challenging, no matter the language used.
and it's BS in both languages...lol!!
i have english french and Chinese yeah feelinggood
@@RottenMuLoT I don't remember precisely who or where this was said but it was probably a TED talk or a book. "Once the brain learns to incorporate on some level the basic structures/characteristics of multiple languages (far beyond the 'hello/goodbye/how are you starter) neural pathways are formed where ideas can be transmitted without fully having to process them." This is also true of reading and speed reading in a similar way. The window dressing tends to fall away. The descriptors of how the drop or torrent of rain fell and was absorbed by the grass stops mattering and all that's left is the understanding that it rained and there just happened to be grass on which it fell.
This does not mean to imply that careful articulation is pointless or lacks beauty/clarity. The main linkage here is "what is the simplest explanation of why someone says a sentence that is then proceeded by another?". The gaps get filled in, not through some random/tangential speculation but rather by the overarching structures/pathways that allow the brain to stop focusing on "window dressing" and to focus primarily on the idea itself.
Once that hurdle is passed (it's huge and can take more than an entire lifetime without effort) these types of debates become as simple as "i believe there's an overarching structure that governs this..." "nah that's highly unlikely..." and off to the races.
(Focault spoke both French/English fluently while Chomsky understood french but wasn't fluent--as far as a I remember about them. the idea was could they have a debate in multiple languages and it work.)
It's also interesting considering Foucault is from Europe and Chomsky was educated in the USA. You can definitely tell which one was educated in the continent home to both World Wars. Foucault is far more cautious of new formulas that call humans by nature good, as his country knows the horrors of what humanity can achieve. In this way, Chomsky is a bit naïve.
Very interesting indeed. Collective history and representations influencing their own thesis, perhaps.
However, I'm not sure I'd call "new" the philosophical idea of human being inherently good. It was pretty much the basis of the Enlighnment, and of positivist philosophy in the XIXth century. Chomsky is still on that line, Foucault, like many Europeans, definitely left it behind.
I live for these kinds of conversations
Foucault trusts critique to do its job, but what makes him think that critique itself is not just another tool the use of which is another ruse of power? He seems to think that exposing the pathologies of power is then tantamount to the production of tools to oppose that power. It seems to me that he fails to appreciate the complexities of power itself, its capacity to maintain itself through all critique, its ability to produce the semblance of "fighting" it while masking the instrumentalization of critique and its supposed production of tools in order to maintain itself, and perhaps even perpetuate itself. In this sense, Foucault remains trapped in a Platonist and Hegelian framework...
Could you explain more specifically what you mean by the instrumentalization of critique?
@@tameshrew469 it is pretty straightforward. if one listens carefully to the discourse of Foucault in this video, the one thing he does not acknowledge is that critique itself can be instrumentalized by power... critique in his view is meant to start and promote and sustain emancipation from the ruses of power, but what if critique itself is precisely a ruse of power???
@@anthonydecastro6938 perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly enough. Could you explain exactly some of the ways critique can help power. I'm sure it can but it is quite bold to claim that critique helps power since the unfashionable truth is that critique often is not good for power. Critique even in itself undermines any democracy and furthermore is the first stepping stone towards "real action" such as protests, strikes and voting. Even in a complete dictatorship, critique may not undermine the power structure directly, but just having the ability to criticise the government is an improvement for those who are oppressed. Sure it's not much, but let's be honest those people are f*cked if they do f*cked if they don't.
@@tameshrew469 in a nutshell, the crucial and critical concept is the "RUSE OF POWER". The powers that be may and could allow critique, but only as an indirect way of actually promoting themselves. It is naive to think that the powers that be, very much in the manner that liberal democracy and capitalism are able to re-occupy territories subjected to critique, are not astute enough to subtly subvert critique not by denying it but by appropriating it and using it so that they can re-morph into something else that perpetuate these same powers. that all the critique of the American establishment has not produced any permanent change in the system is proof of such.
@@anthonydecastro6938 it has produced change though? America may be in an awful state right now but it would be even worse without the changes critique has made. Women's rights, black rights, gay rights etc. Sure, the system may still be corrupt, but I think critique makes is harder for the government, think about how easy it would be if noone protested anything - they could get away with everything and anything without any risk to their position. The problem is not that critique itself is ineffective, but that it is usually performed ineffectively, where people are not properly united and end up mostly fighting amongst themselves. All those on the left who are meant to criticise the right and fight against them, end up just fighting amongst themselves and making each other look bad.
Foucault saying nothing at all really. An example of the French intellectual class of that era, the post-socialist/communist deconstructionist types who were masters of empty sophistry and contrarianism for its own sake. 'well we can't know that human nature is human nature so.....' is not a reason to dismiss alternative propositions to the current socio-political paradigm. But there he is saying it all the same. Intellectual debate became a sort of competitive sport amongst those of the Sorbonne it seems to me. Endless pontification on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis and how nothing means anything and everything is oppression. Talk about a mechanism of distortion and obsfucation
Lots of them were communists or/and pedophiles , Foucault, matzneff , simone de beauvoir just to name a few . In France we admired them , were influenced by them … simply disgusting
Does that mean Zizek is also whithin the spectrum that you are talking about?
@@iamleoooo possibly. He has a much more pragmatic and 'brass tacks' approach, even if I may disagree with some of his assertions. I'm not deeply familiar with his work anyway, but of what I know this is what I'd say
we urgently need more debates, discussions and knowledge interchange between the best minds of our time without any ideological or political agenda, just for the sake of finding the truth, auditing the power groups all around us, etc. great video much appreciated!
Chomsky-There are such things as human decency and justice and they’re reflective of the essentially positive values that humans feel internally and strive to obtain within our institutions. And these values of justice and decency are appropriate goals for humanity to be working to try to perfect as much as that’s possible, while remaining open to the idea of evolving what our values and goals are based upon evidence that we will receive at future times while working to achieve these stated ends.
Foucault-Because we currently are and always have lived in a class society as humans, any value or any possible notion of what is right or wrong for humanity to try to strive towards that we know of at this point in our specie’s history cannot be used as a measuring stick or as a goal for humanity to work towards in any future classless society that we could ever try to commit to achieving, because of this supposed inability to transfer knowledge pertaining to our class based society and have it be applicable in a future classless society.
I hope that’s fair to both parties. Especially Foucault, who I am much less familiar with…That is a good summary of what Foucault was saying though, right? That’s what I got out of it.
Both are progressive idiots who embrace some form of moral relativism because they essentially despise religious morality and HAVE TO oppose it at all costs. That's where their fundamental opposition to moral absolutism stems from. Their own psychological inadequacy.
It's also interesting considering Foucault is from Europe and Chomsky was educated in the USA. You can definitely tell which one was educated in the continent home to both World Wars. Foucault is far more cautious of new formulas that call humans by nature good, as his country knows the horrors of what humanity can achieve. In this way, Chomsky is a bit naïve.
@@kaidenkondo5997 It's no mere coincidence that Chomsky was portrayed as the proverbial paradigm to avoid in two books by Sowell and Hollander ("Intellectuals and Society" and "Pilgrims...", respectively). These two are not the great thinkers everyone takes them to be because they lack fundamental economic literacy which spills over to the rest of their worldview.
''economic literacy'' is not everything my dude. in fact economics is quite an unstable field of study. in fact, economists have a humorous depiction of people who blindly follow economics: homo economicus.
@@kaidenkondo5997 economic literacy is everything my dude. You just haven’t realized it yet as you probably still vote on instinct instead of looking who’s BSing you with false and unrealistic promises (that involve YOUR and MY money).
When I first discovered this debate some years ago, I thoght that Chomsky lost bc his "Human Nature" argument was week and Foucault was right about it dont being a thing.
Today... I think Chomsky is correct. We are creative animals, and all the comprehension of power structures Foucault brought is useless, if not used in a political strugle for emancipation.
Thanks for uploading this, many more people should see it
I thought the human nature argument was very weak. Basically, humans are intrinsically creative -> we should foster it as an ideal society -> a decentralized system and probably a very capitalist system is the way to do it. I don’t think Foucault would disagree with humans’ natural creativity at all, and I thought he was much more insightful with his idea that every system is tainted by politics and class (even education, etc). I think he was just saying that even our definition of ideal is tainted by our experiences to show that just letting human nature work is impossible. At least that’s how I took the information, but I have no prior knowledge of these two
Both make good points...
One my favourite interviews ❤
I love Foucault’s point about the impossibility of defining tomorrow’s society, because we only have today’s cultural norms of thinking available in our language. 🤔
He doesn't say it is impossible but that it is risky. That good old "fear the unknown" idiom. Chomsky is on the "give society a chance" side of the discussion because sometimes the only way to learn is by doing mistakes. "Practice makes perfect" idiom.
@@RottenMuLoT Yes, both are agreeing that you can’t plan a society in advance, at least Chomsky gives a pragmatic way out of it.
Yes it's impossible to know what society would look like if we abolish slavery
@@ЯСмерть-ф5п until you can abolish the slavery of the mind, the concept will remain with us
This is what debates are supposed to be.
They once used to be genuine, good-faith discussions trying to understand different perspectives and to reach a consensus on a murky topic, and not simply a performance in persuasion and optics for a neutral audience to pick sides.
That was the case with this debate, indeed.
We see almost no more such a respectful debate..the moderator is there just enjoying being surrounded by two great minds
0:20 why is Adam Driver here
TARDIS
The logical conclusion of Foucault’s final point seems absurd as his criticism of his civilization necessarily takes place within the language (spoken and symbolic) of the same civilization. That would almost totally limit the possibilities of emancipatory action.
By definition Foucault's emancipation is death
@jgtemperton It seems like a manifestation of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, that you can’t prove something by reference to itself. I get it’s an examination of language, but you’re always within some tradition, as Gadamer said.
I rather understood it as follow: let's be extra careful about the coding language we want to use to build the new world, because if we use the same old coding language, we might create something even more flawed.
As a French speaker that translation is on point. That is seriously impressive, the subtles of Foucault's speech are perfectly repressented
Hugh Laurie playing Foucault on 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie' was an opportunity missed.
From a time when the students of Philosophy had enough time to learn the languages of the big philosophers, Foucault obviously learned English, but Chomsky taught himself French as well. Foucault even calls this very thing "disciplinary time": we need to effectivize our time, separating it into smaller and smaller categories as even the movement of our hands and fingers that write on the page becomes more perfect. Ideas are already translated into words and we lose even more of the original meaning when we translate those words into yet another language.
Wow, never thought I'd agree with Foucault
I didn't know Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson time-travelled back to 1971 and started speaking French, but here we are.
I rather thought about Vin Diesel actually but it kinda works too ;)
Foucault suggests "exposing" and "unmasking" institutions so that we can "critique" and "fight" them. But without SOME kind of vision, assertion, or even implication of preference against which to compare those institutions - how can one have any basis for critique or any notion of what to fight for? Foucault is right to caution against going down yet another dogmatic path based on our own ignorance and limitations - but how can we do anything but this in any practical way? This, I think, is why Chomsky's suggestion is appropriate, so long as we take Foucault's concerns to heart and proceed with diligent care, provisional flexibility, compassion, and humility.
You may appreciate Foucault’s point more as a politics of negation if you read Blessed is the Flame. It’s pretty short.
I once read a quote from Chomsky in which he called himself quite conservative. I never quite understood what he meant at the time.
But compared to figures like Foucault, I really understand it.
Chomsky argues for the existence of fundamental human qualities that will always exist in our species across time and space. And I agree with him. It seems obviously correct, with obviously some degree of flexibility which is influenced by culture and environment
This debate is amongst 2 titans in their respective field. Inspiring to see
Or at least one. Foucault's a lightweight.
@@russellharvey7096
oh snap! 😦
Can someone explain why the part from 9:51 to 10:30 is the most replayed part of the video?!
it's about justice and class struggles for power.
classes are all about enjoying life and being happy.
the higher your class the more likely it is you'll be happy and enjoy life, although not guaranteed, but you have more opportunity for happiness as you move up the class structure. justice favors those in a higher class
This is cool. I disagreed with the final point here that we cannot justify crusading for a new system outside of ours because we can't see clearly the way forward. If this were true then the advice for depressed people would be to sit and ruminate forever.
I guess you and I have a different understanding of what the final point is. I don't think that is actually Foucaults point, I think he is making a different point than that. I'll give you a contemporary analogy that might not work, but here goes. It's kind of like the electric car thing that is going on right now. Chomsky is pointing out that yes, our understanding of these larger systems are flawed, and that we will need to press forward anyway. Foucault is making the point that the change we see in electric cars, still reflects the authoritarian systems at large, namely in the car centric view, rather than significantly changing the status quo.
He isn't saying that our attempts to change the system are doomed, he's saying that they are flawed, and we run the risk of further adding to the sunk cost. I believe Chomsky is right in this, but that doesn't mean that Foucault isn't right either, it just means Chomsky is more correct.
In those days enemies could talk through their differences. Though why Lex insisted on speaking in French to Clark was never determined.
Where's the rest of the conversation. I HAVE to hear more! Thank you.
Bonjour, serait il possible d avoir des sous titres en français lorsque Chomsky parle ? Merci beaucoup !
this balance is paramount for one to understand, the freedom to learn
Foucault feels like the pessimist to Chomsky’s optimist. Or the destroyer to Chomsky’s creator.
I mean this not in a bad way, just that Foucault’s focus seems to be pointing out and rooting out problems in society, but can’t bring himself to meet Chomsky at the point of creating solutions.
"I cannot help but think that the notion of human nature, the notion of goodness, of justice, of human essence and its realization, are all notions and concepts that have been formed within our civilization, in our type of knowledge, in our form of philosophy, and as a result, they are part of our class system. And we cannot, however regrettable it may be put these notions forward to describe or justify a fight that should or shall in principle overthrow the very foundations of our society."
Uh...why not? Is Foucault implying here that you can't use an idea generated by a superstructure to dismantle that same superstructure? Even if he is correct that these notions are completely dependent on the civilization from which they spring (as in, not inherent to humanity at all), then can we not still use them to overthrow, leading to a hypothetical classless society in which new and different notions of justice, goodness and human essence will develop?
I think he means these notions are product of the system and can only lead the way to more of the same.
@@googlygoo9472 Ok, but then, what notions do we use to reform the system? Were are we supposed to take our ideas from, if not from ourselves? Because even if we skew all our notions of morality in order to create something new, at this point, that would still be a rational choice to choose the "bad" instead of the "good" and, therefore, would still be within the frame of social construct.
@@bebelc2l To go back on the Foucault argument, he beleives our notion of goodnes was created by the system and for the system. These same ideas then can't create a classless society because they are of the class system. But I can't comment on what notions of good he is contemplating since i'm a not that familiar with is work. For myself many notions goodness are incompatible with a classless society.
First problem: He's making claims but not justifying them.
Second Problem: What he's proposing, that all our ideas are rooted in a civilization-based class system, is unfalsifiable.
Third Problem: The idea that an idea is invalid or corrupted because of who it came from is both false reasoning, and also poisons the well against anyone who would try to suggest social solutions.
My youngest children attended a local co-op school where the teacher had some very offensive and oppressive beliefs but was also an excellent instructor of classical logic. They then proceeded to use the logical tools he provided them with to dismantle his outlandish belief system. So Yes, M. Foucault, we can use the tools from the oppressive system to overthrow the foundations of that system. It's really quite easy -- and thoroughly enjoyable too!
Imagine how good the interpreters must be to succeed in this exercise, amazing! I am glad I speak both languages
Wonderful discussion. But I must say, Chomsky's view of the justice system and what it embodies is quite warped. It doesn't conform to the lived experience of most who encounter it, although the system may certainly "aspire" to a higher principle. Just not the reality.
For me, Foucault's thoughts seem to be strongly influenced by the French educational and political system at the time (assuming it was similar to nowadays). For example, saying that the educational system is there to "distribute" knowledge is typically French (as opposed to stimulating curiosity and creativity). The French educational system is also quite class-oriented (or limiting) - consider the Ecole National d'Administration (ENA) for example.
wouldn’t the seeking of knowledge not only include those [curiosity and the other] but others?
The "stimulating curiosity and creativity" is the total opposite of in American schools. American schools are dumbing-down institutions of training in compliance and obedience. America is famous for having wishful thinking (the phrases "we should", "we must", "we have a dream" and so on), and doing the direct opposite. Americans understand "knowledge" as information. They measure everything. What they cannot measure, gets dismissed. They measure IQ.
@@gracie99999 I think distribute in this sense means the selection of knowledge for distribution. There are disciplines curated by the state and its institutions as a priority. These disciplines are then taught to students with the objective of fueling stability and order, reinforcing the reigning political system. Anything that is marginal from the state's ideal of education, like literature, philosophy, etc, receives less attention or are outright ignored, worst censored and destroyed.
Although I cannot really say if that is 100% the case with France. I only know that in where I live in we have a massive problem with the education system.
That's his point, he wasn't defending the French system
You got it all wrong.
Foucault created a monster.
I know since I'm French.
I really hope one day Debating can return to this.... Whether we feel strongly about a topic or not, we can be Civil.
I don't get it. How does Foucalt intend to deal with crime. Some men will always want more no matter how classless a society becomes. 'Alpha males' so to speak (not a big fan of the phrase but ehh) will always battle out for power, no matter how utopian a society becomes. Greed and desire and vain impulses will always trouble weaker men no matter their education. How does he intend to deal with them when they cross the line? The current justice system, it could be argued, does protect a class elite people, and argued rightly so, but to argue that the very idea of justice is to protect a class of people is insane. Mr Foucalt goes on to proclaim "...the notion of human nature, the notion of goodness, of human essence and its realization are all notions and concepts that have been formed within our civilization in our type of knowledge, in our type of philosophy, and as a a result, they are part of our class system...." Has there ever been any human civilization that does not have these concepts and notions? I dont think so. Hence they are, in all actuality, rooted in human nature itself.
If you find this discussion intellectually stimulating or highly absorbing, you may find the late 19th century Russian book, "The Possessed" (also translated into English as "Devils", or "Demons") a very serious and provoking read. The author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, was often called prophetic as the story, published in 1871-72, is the collective psychological and social unfolding of the future revolution of 1917 in a condensed geographic location, but on terrifying scaffolding of dimension in the psychological realm. "The Possessed" also lampshades the influence of proceeding generations on establishing the foundation upon which succeeding modern generations thoughts and ideas truly stem. The novel incorporates a depth which is not quickly realised, so it is a very long book. Fear not! Extracting the knowledge in this book does pay off, and you will be able to discuss with other cool humans a classic in Russian and Existential literature. :)
chomsky: "we have to do something bro" foulcault: "but DOING something is exactly what THE MAN wants you to do man!!!"
Darn, Foucault had charisma and presence. If I wasn’t careful I’d buy into every word he says…😅