293 t 23 An
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211
19 How Much Does it Cost to Tell the Truth? . . . 233
20 An Ethics of Pleasure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
? 21 What Calls for Punishment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 5
? 22 The Concern for Truth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
293 t 23 An Aesthetics of Existence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 ' 24 The Return of Morality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
? References and Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
? ? Foucault Live
? 1
The Order of Things
? ? Q: How is The Order of Things related to Madness and Civilization?
? MF: Madness and Civilization, roughly speaking, was the history of a division, the history above all of a certain break that every society found itself obliged to install. On the other hand, in this book I wanted to write a history of order, to state how a society reflects upon resemblances among things and how differences between things can be mastered, organ- ized into networks, sketched out according to rational schemes. Madness and Civilization is the history of difference. The Order of Things the history of resemblance, sameness, and identity.
? Q: In the sub-title that you have given the book one again encounters this word "archeology," which appeared in the sub-title of The Birth of the Clinic and again in the Preface to Madness and Civilization.
MF; By archeology I would like to designate not exactly a discipline, but a domain of research, which would be the following:
? ? 2 The Order of Things
? In a society, different bodies of learning, philosophi- cal ideas, everyday opinions, but also institutions, commercial practices and police activities, mores--all refer to a certain implicit knowledge (savoir) special to this society. ' This knowledge is profoundly different from the bodies of learning that one can find in scientific books, philosophical theories, and religious justifications, but it is what makes possible at a given moment the appearance of a theory, an opinion, a prac- tice. Thus, in order for the big centers of internment to be opened at the end of the 17th century, it was necessary that a certain knowledge of madness be opposed to non-madness, of order to disorder, and it's this knowledge (savoir) that I wanted to investigate, as the condition of possibility of knowl- edge (connaissance), of institutions, of practices.
? This style of research has for me the following inter- est: it permits me to avoid every problem concerning the an- teriority of theory in relation to practice, and the inverse. In fact, I deal with practices, institutions and theories on the same plane and according to the same isomorphisms, and I look for the underlying knowledge (savoir) that makes them possible, the stratum of knowledge that constitutes them historically. Rather than try to explain this knowledge from the point of view of the practico-inert, I try to formulate an analysis from the position of what one could call the "theoretico-active. "^
? Q: You find yourself therefore confronting a double problem; of history and formalization.
? MF; All these practices, then, the`se institutions and theories, I take at the level of traces, that is, almost always at the level of verbal traces. The ensemble of these traces consti- tutes a sort of domain considered to be homogeneous; one doesn't establish any differences a priori. The problem is to find common traits between these traces of sufficiently
? The Order of Things 3
? different orders in order to constitute what logicians call classes, aestheticians call forms, men of science call struc- tures, and which are the invariants common to a certain num- ber of traces.
Q: How have you posed the problem of choice and non-choice?
? MF: I will respond by saying that in fact there must not be any privileged choice. One must be able to read every- thing, to know all the institutions and all the practices. None of the values traditionally recognized in the history of ideas and philosophy must be accepted as such. One is dealing with a field that will ignore the differences and traditionally impor- tant things. Which means that one will take up Don Quixote, Descartes, and a decree by Pomponne de Belierre about houses of internment in the same stroke. One will perceive that the grammarians of the 18 th century have as much impor- tance as the recognized philosphers of the same period.
? Q; It is in this sense that you say, for example, that Curier and Ricardo have taught you as much or more than Kant and Hegel. But then the question of information becomes the pressing one: how do you read everything?
MF: One can read all the grammarians, and all the economists. For The Birth of the Clinic I read every medical work of importance for methodology of the period 1780-1820. The choices that one could make are inadmissable, and shouldn't exist. One ought to read everything, study every- thing. In other words, one must have at one's disposal the general archive of a period at a given moment. And archeol- ogy is, in a strict sense, the science of this archive.
? ?
19 How Much Does it Cost to Tell the Truth? . . . 233
20 An Ethics of Pleasure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
? 21 What Calls for Punishment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 5
? 22 The Concern for Truth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
293 t 23 An Aesthetics of Existence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 ' 24 The Return of Morality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
? References and Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
? ? Foucault Live
? 1
The Order of Things
? ? Q: How is The Order of Things related to Madness and Civilization?
? MF: Madness and Civilization, roughly speaking, was the history of a division, the history above all of a certain break that every society found itself obliged to install. On the other hand, in this book I wanted to write a history of order, to state how a society reflects upon resemblances among things and how differences between things can be mastered, organ- ized into networks, sketched out according to rational schemes. Madness and Civilization is the history of difference. The Order of Things the history of resemblance, sameness, and identity.
? Q: In the sub-title that you have given the book one again encounters this word "archeology," which appeared in the sub-title of The Birth of the Clinic and again in the Preface to Madness and Civilization.
MF; By archeology I would like to designate not exactly a discipline, but a domain of research, which would be the following:
? ? 2 The Order of Things
? In a society, different bodies of learning, philosophi- cal ideas, everyday opinions, but also institutions, commercial practices and police activities, mores--all refer to a certain implicit knowledge (savoir) special to this society. ' This knowledge is profoundly different from the bodies of learning that one can find in scientific books, philosophical theories, and religious justifications, but it is what makes possible at a given moment the appearance of a theory, an opinion, a prac- tice. Thus, in order for the big centers of internment to be opened at the end of the 17th century, it was necessary that a certain knowledge of madness be opposed to non-madness, of order to disorder, and it's this knowledge (savoir) that I wanted to investigate, as the condition of possibility of knowl- edge (connaissance), of institutions, of practices.
? This style of research has for me the following inter- est: it permits me to avoid every problem concerning the an- teriority of theory in relation to practice, and the inverse. In fact, I deal with practices, institutions and theories on the same plane and according to the same isomorphisms, and I look for the underlying knowledge (savoir) that makes them possible, the stratum of knowledge that constitutes them historically. Rather than try to explain this knowledge from the point of view of the practico-inert, I try to formulate an analysis from the position of what one could call the "theoretico-active. "^
? Q: You find yourself therefore confronting a double problem; of history and formalization.
? MF; All these practices, then, the`se institutions and theories, I take at the level of traces, that is, almost always at the level of verbal traces. The ensemble of these traces consti- tutes a sort of domain considered to be homogeneous; one doesn't establish any differences a priori. The problem is to find common traits between these traces of sufficiently
? The Order of Things 3
? different orders in order to constitute what logicians call classes, aestheticians call forms, men of science call struc- tures, and which are the invariants common to a certain num- ber of traces.
Q: How have you posed the problem of choice and non-choice?
? MF: I will respond by saying that in fact there must not be any privileged choice. One must be able to read every- thing, to know all the institutions and all the practices. None of the values traditionally recognized in the history of ideas and philosophy must be accepted as such. One is dealing with a field that will ignore the differences and traditionally impor- tant things. Which means that one will take up Don Quixote, Descartes, and a decree by Pomponne de Belierre about houses of internment in the same stroke. One will perceive that the grammarians of the 18 th century have as much impor- tance as the recognized philosphers of the same period.
? Q; It is in this sense that you say, for example, that Curier and Ricardo have taught you as much or more than Kant and Hegel. But then the question of information becomes the pressing one: how do you read everything?
MF: One can read all the grammarians, and all the economists. For The Birth of the Clinic I read every medical work of importance for methodology of the period 1780-1820. The choices that one could make are inadmissable, and shouldn't exist. One ought to read everything, study every- thing. In other words, one must have at one's disposal the general archive of a period at a given moment. And archeol- ogy is, in a strict sense, the science of this archive.
? ?
