Politics

The point of engaging in political struggles-and Foucault thinks we are engaged in them all the time, hence his disdain for the question about the im portance of politics-is to alter power relations.

For Chomsky, we must struggle against the injustices of our current society in the name of a higher goal-justice. Surely, Chomsky argues, unless we have a guiding principle, we will have no way of judging the actions of others . It is perfectly possible that we may find ourselves in a situation in which a revolution turns out to be worse than the... See more

"It seems to me, " Foucault expounds, "that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the working of institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them in such a manner that the p olitical violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight... See more

One of the hallmarks of Western political philosophy, in Foucault's interpretation, has been its devotion to such abstractions, first principles, and utopias-i . e., theory . In the West we have consistently approached the problem of political order by building models of the just social order or searching for general principles by which to evaluate... See more