http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kawGakdNoT0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Ai5...eature=related Since I apparently can't post youtube videos in group discussions, I've just posted the links to both parts of a debate between Noam Chomsky and the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The debate begins with Chomsky laying out the system he believes would allow for the fullest expression of human nature, which Chomsky believes is a tendency toward creativity or something of the sort. This system is also known as anarcho-syndicalism. Foucault counters with the argument that our concept of human nature - and our concepts of justice and morality and so on - is a product of the material circumstances surrounding our intellectual development, and the bourgeois power structure and class system behind these circumstances. He then explains how the class system and how the violence of the state apparatus permeates our concepts of justice and morality, and how we can't therefore impose these measurements on future systems where the class system has been abolished - ie communism. Anyway it's a fantastic debate, and in my opinion Chomsky gets pwnt. Several times you can tell he's kind of unsure how to approach foucault's argument (and once he admits it) and once he replies with an almost completely irrelevant point. But this is certainly up for debate, so I'd love to hear your opinions.
Very excellent. I have the book transcription. Chomsky's point is that human's strong creativity in the structure of sentances proves that we have a form of human nature since mimickry can't account for the variation in speech. Foucoult is arguing that human nature as we know it is a very recent concept created through capitalist conditions. Chomsky won this one hands down because Foucaults responses do not disprove that language is built into us, making it, for lack of a better term, human nature.
btw here's the full transcript of the debate if anyone cares: http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm Chomsky won this one hands down because Foucaults responses do not disprove that language is built into us, making it, for lack of a better term, human nature. I guess I just don't see how he makes that jump though. I'm not well versed in linguistics by any means but where he does he derive the notion that an understanding of a given language is an innate quality in humanity, or that this constitutes an inherent tendency to creativity. Furthermore, how does this in turn justify his notion of human nature on which he bases his political beliefs?
On a second reading my view has completely changed. Foucault won because Chomsky never was able to find a response to Foucaults arguement that human nature is a human made category and nothing more.
I empathized with both their arguments, one in turn after the other, almost like the thread of this conversation, I think the split between Foucault and Chomsky lies in Chomksy's trying to argument for a practical, movement based on the partial knowledge we do have, in order to create a better society, where Foucault is trying to take a radical stance on our understanding of the nature of power, and implicitly claims that to act, without this knowledge, will simply regenerate old forms of power in new structures. I am personally right now more inclined towards Foucault, as a matter of personal speculation, but would never dismiss the pragmatism of those like chomsky, out of pure contrarianism.
