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Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2023

Falsifying Foucault? Social Sciences as Instrument of Power

Shahid Rahman

Résumé

« Si la connaissance se donne comme connaissance de la vérité, c'est qu'elle produit la vérité par le jeu d'une falsification première et toujours reconduite qui pose la distinction du vrai et du faux. » Leçons sur la volonté de savoir, Gallimard-Seuil, Paris, 2011 (1re éd. : 1971). "If knowledge is given as knowledge of the truth, it is because it produces the truth by the game of a first, primary falsification renewed again and again which raises the distinction of true and false" [my translation]. Michel Foucault, Lessons on the will to know, Gallimard-Seuil, Paris, 2011 (1st ed .: 1971) I wonder how can Foucault, who refers to Nietzsche as source of inspiration, speaks of falsification and deny at the same time objectivity of truthbesides the obvious pun. The challenge of Nietzsche is to contest the objectivity of truth as human desiderata, in such a context Foucault's notion of falsification (of what? falsification of an objective reality?) does either make no sense at all or encodes some other meaning beyond being falsea possible reading would be to take it that Foucault means "distortion", or better "will to deceive " we will come to this further on. Knowledge, Truth-Functionality and Contexts Jacques Bouveresse ("Nietzsche contre Foucault, la vérité en question", Le Monde diplomatique, mars 2016) understands Foucault's dictum as contesting some kind of truthfunctional realism in the form incepted by Frege; and accordingly, accused Foucault of confusing knowledge and belief. Bouveresse's argument is an apt analysis of Foucault's remarks from the Fregean perspective, nevertheless, someone more empathetic with Foucault might fight back in the following way: Foucault's remark is about the taking place of a fundamental distortion that makes up knowledge as a kind of objective parameter or rationality whereby this knowledge assumes that every object of knowledge has a truth-functional feature.
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halshs-04156552 , version 1 (08-07-2023)
halshs-04156552 , version 2 (19-07-2023)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-04156552 , version 1

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Shahid Rahman. Falsifying Foucault? Social Sciences as Instrument of Power. 2023. ⟨halshs-04156552v1⟩
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