Foucault: What is Enlightenment (Part 1)
Author: Foucault
Translator: Li Kang
Source: Zhesi Station
Caption: This article is based on The Queenine Porter's English translation of "What is Enlightenment?" (In Paul Rabinow, ed. M. Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, The New Press, 1997, pp. 303-319.) translated, revised according to the French text (Dits et ecrits, vol. IV., pp. 562-578,\'Qu’est-ce que les Lumieres?’,Paris,Gallimard,1994）。
Today, if a magazine asks its readers a question, it does so only to solicit opinions on a subject on which everyone already has an opinion, so it is unlikely that something new will be derived from it. Editors in the 18th century preferred to ask the public questions that had no solution. I don't know if this habit is more effective, but one thing is for sure, it will be more appealing.
In any case, in line with this fashion, in November 1784, there was a German periodical, the Berlin Monthly, which published an answer to a question. The question is: What is enlightenment? Respondent: Kant.
This may be just a small article. But, in my opinion, it marks the history of ideas that has quietly cut into a certain problem. Modern philosophy is neither incapable of answering this question nor has it succeeded in getting rid of it. It is this question that has been repeated in many different forms for two hundred years. Since Hegel, through Nietzsche or Max Weber, and then to Horkheimer or Habermas, almost no philosophy can avoid this same question, and has had to face it in some direct or indirect way. So what is this event, known as the Aufkl rung, which determines, at least to some extent, what is the event that we are, think, and act for today? Imagine if berliners were still alive today and are asking its readers the question: What is modern philosophy? Perhaps we will reply in a similar way: modern philosophy is such a philosophy that it has been trying to answer the question that was very hastily raised two hundred years ago: What is enlightenment?
Let's take a moment to look at Kant's article. There are several reasons why it deserves our attention.
1. Just two months before Kant's publication, Moses Mendelssohn answered the same question in the same magazine. However, Kant had not yet read the former's article when he wrote his reply. The philosophical movement in Germany, of course, did not coincide with the new development of Jewish culture from that very moment. Mendelssohn, like Lessing, had been at that intersection for about 30 years. But until then, the problem had only been to make a place for Jewish culture in German thought (which Lessing had tried in his Jewish book), or to determine the problems faced by Jewish thought and German philosophy, which Mendelssohn did in Fedo or on the Immortality of the Soul[1]. Through these two articles, published in the Berlin Monthly, it became clear that "Aufkl rung" in German and "Haskala" in Yiddish belonged to the same history, and that the two words were trying to identify the common processes that produced them. Perhaps it was also a claim to accept some kind of common destiny[2] – now we know what kind of tragedy it will lead to.
2. However, the reason is more than that. Both in itself and in its place within the entire Christian tradition, Kant's article raises a new question.
This is certainly not the first time that philosophical thought has tried to reflect on its own present. But, in general, we can say that this reflection has previously taken the following three main forms:
(1) The present can be expressed as a specific era that belongs to this world. It distinguishes itself from other eras by certain intrinsic characteristics, or by certain tragic events. Based on this realization, in Plato's The Statesman, the interlocutor recognizes one of the cycles of the world in which he finds himself. In this cycle, the world is gradually degenerating, and it will trigger various negative consequences.
(2) The present can be questioned through such an effort as to try to decipher from the present the indicative signs of an upcoming event. Here we grasp a certain principle of historical hermeneutics, which Augustine may cite as an example.
(3) The present can also be analyzed as a turning point in the dawn of the new world, as Vico describes in the last chapter of The New Science. What he sees as "today" is "a complete humanity ... Elephants are everywhere in the nations of the world, for there are a few great dictatorial monarchs who rule over this world of nations"; Everywhere shines with the brilliance of humanity, and the abundance of goods that constitute the happiness of human life." [3]
Now Kant draws the question of enlightenment in a completely different way: it is neither a world era to which a person belongs, nor an event from which to perceive signs, nor the beginning of some achievement. Kant defined enlightenment in an almost entirely negative way, as "Ausgang", i.e., "exit", "way out". In other essays on history, Kant occasionally explores the origins of a certain historical process, or determines the teleology inherent in that process. In his article devoted to enlightenment, he deals only with questions about presentness, and does not want to understand the present on the basis of some wholeness or ultimate purpose. What he seeks is a certain difference: what kind of difference is elicited today compared to yesterday?
3. I don't want to go into the details of this article here. However, although it is short, it is not always clear. I would like to make only three or four points of what I consider important in order to understand how Kant raised philosophical questions about the present.
Kant begins by pointing out that the "way out" that characterizes enlightenment is a process of liberating us from our "immature" state. By "immaturity," he means a particular state of our will that makes us accept the authority of others in the realm where reason is needed. Kant gives three examples: when a book replaces our intellect, when a priest replaces our conscience, and when a doctor prescribes meals for us, we are in a state of immaturity. (Incidentally, although the article itself does not explicitly state it, it is easy to see the meaning of these three points of criticism.) In any case, what prescribes enlightenment is a certain transformation of the existing relationship that links the will, authority, and the use of reason.
We must also note that Kant's way of expressing this way out is rather ambiguous. He summarized this way out as a phenomenon, a process in progress, but also expressed it as a task, an obligation. He began by pointing out that people are responsible for their own immaturity. Thus we have to presume that only by changing oneself on one's own can one get rid of this state of immaturity. Remarkably, Kant argued that this enlightenment had an optional slogan: it now became a sign of signs, a certain characteristic by which people could identify each other; it was also a proverb, a teaching that people could use to warn themselves and advise others. So, what is this teaching? "Aude sapere": "Dare to know", "Have the courage and determination to know". We must therefore understand enlightenment both as a process of collective human participation and as an act of courage and individual fulfillment. Man is both the constituent element of the process and the actor in the same process. They are involved in the process and are therefore actors in the process, which in turn presupposes that people decide to be their voluntary actors.
The third difficulty arises here in Kant's article, namely, the way the word "Menschheit" is used. It is well known that in Kant's view of history, this is an important term. Should we understand it this way: All of humanity is involved in the enlightenment process? If this is the case, then we must see the Enlightenment as a historical change affecting the political and social conditions of existence of all the peoples of the planet. Or, can we also understand that it was the changes brought about by the Enlightenment that made human beings truly human? But this brings us to another question: What is this change? Kant's answer here is rather vague. In any case, the problem seems simple and clear, but the connotation is quite complex.
Kant stipulates that in order for human beings to escape from their immaturity, they must have two basic prerequisites: they are both spiritual and institutional, and have both ethical and political implications.
The first premise is to make a clear distinction between the realm of obedience and the realm of the application of reason. Kant briefly summed up the characteristics of immaturity in the well-known expression, "Don't think, just obey orders"; in his view, this is the form of thinking that is usually exercised in military discipline, political power, and religious authority. Man is to reach maturity not when he is no longer required to obey, but when he is told, "Obey, but think with reason as you wish." We must note that the original German word used here is "r sonieren", which Kant also used in the three Critiques. The word does not refer to any one of the applications of reason, but to a particular way of applying reason: apart from itself, the rational sex has no other purpose, that is, to apply reason for the sake of its use. Pay your own taxes, but at the same time be able to explore the tax system as you wish, or, if you are a parish pastor, do your parish service and be free to use reason in religious doctrine. Through these seemingly trivial examples, Kant tries to tell us that they are the signs of reaching a state of maturity.
This is nothing particularly new, we might think, that freedom of conscience has meant since the 16th century that a man should have the right to think as he wishes as long as he obeys what he must obey. But it is also at this point that Kant, in a rather astonishing way, leads to another distinction, namely the private application of reason and its public application, but he then adds that reason must be free in its public application, and its private application should be obedient. In its literal sense, this is the exact opposite of what is commonly called freedom of conscience.
But we must make the problem more precise. What constitutes the private use of reason for Kant? In which area is reason used privately? Kant believed that when man became "a cog in the machine," his use of reason was a private one. That is to say, when he plays a certain role in society, or when he does a certain job, such as as a soldier, a taxpayer, a parish priest or a servant of society, he is a special link in society; he finds himself in a position of limitation, compelled to adopt certain rules and seek a specific purpose. In saying this, Kant is not asking people to be blindly obedient, but to adapt themselves to these prescribed situations in the exercise of their reason; that is, reason must be subordinate to the specific purpose under consideration. At this point, we can say that reason cannot have any free use.
On the other hand, when a person applies reason only for the sake of applying his own reason, when he is a being who has the capacity to use reason (not as a cog in the machine), as a member of the human beings who have the ability to use reason, then the application of reason must necessarily be free and open. Enlightenment, then, is not just a process by which individuals realize that their own freedom of thought is guaranteed. Enlightenment arises when the universal, free, and open use of reason is superimposed on each other.
Naturally, we must then ask a fourth question about Kant's article. Just as we can see with a little thought the universal application of reason (free from any private end) is a matter for the subject itself as an individual; likewise we can easily see how the freedom of this mode of application can be guaranteed in a way that is purely negative without any question. But how is the open use of that rationality guaranteed? As we have seen, enlightenment should not be understood simply as a general process affecting all humanity, nor as merely as some obligation imposed by the individual, but as a political question. Whatever the case, the crux of the matter is to understand how the application of reason can take the form of disclosure it requires, with the individual obeying as carefully as possible, and how can the determination to seek knowledge be carried out in public. Kant concludes with an almost undisguised formulation of Frederick the Great as a contract of rational despotism with free reason: the open and free application of autonomous reason will be the best guarantee of obedience. This, of course, must add a condition: those political principles, which must be obeyed, must themselves be in conformity with universal reason.
At this point, our discussion of Kant's article has come to an end. I have no intention of thinking that this article adequately expresses the Enlightenment; and I think no historian would consider its analysis of the social, political, and cultural transformations of the late 18th century to be satisfactory enough.
Having said that, although the article has its own specific background, and I do not overstate its place in Kant's work as a whole, I believe it is necessary to emphasize the relevance of this short essay to the three critiques. In effect, Kant described the Enlightenment as a historical moment at which man began to apply his reason without surrendering to any authority; now, precisely at this turning point, we need to criticize, for the task of criticism is to determine the preconditions for the proper use of reason, and thus to determine what we can know, what we must do, and what we may want. It is the improper use of reason, coupled with illusions, that give rise to dogmatism and heteronomy; and autonomy can be ensured only when the principles of the proper application of reason are clearly defined. In a sense, criticism records the gradual maturation of reason in the Enlightenment; the Enlightenment, on the other hand, was an epoch of criticism.
I think it is necessary to emphasize, in addition to this, the connection between Kant's article and his other treatises on history. The latter articles can be said to be considerably devoted to determining the intrinsic purposefulness of time and the end of the tendency of human history. Thus, the analysis of the Enlightenment defines this history as the march of mankind toward its own state of maturity, positioning the present in the light of the general movement and its fundamental direction. But this analysis also reveals how each individual at this particular turning point in history assumes responsibility for this general process in a particular way.
I tend to think that, in a sense, this short essay is at the intersection of critical reflection and historical reflection. It is Kant's reflection on the presentness of his career. It is certainly not the first time that a philosopher has given his own reasons for the work he is doing at a particular historical turning point. But it seems to me that for the first time, a philosopher, in this intimate approach from within, explores both the intellectual significance of his work and the reflection on history, as well as the specific historical turning point for which he is and is writing for it. It is in reflection on the opportunity to see "today" both as a difference in history and as an opportunity for a particular philosophical task that I capture the novelty of this article.
I think that if we look at this article in this way, we will recognize a starting point from it: its general appearance can be called the attitude of modernity.
exegesis:
[1] Ph don; oder, über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, "Ph don" canonize Plato's dialogue Phaedo (on the eternity of the soul) – Chinese translator's note.
[2] "Haskala", or "enlightenment" as the Jews call it, comes from the Yiddish word for "Sekhel" (intellect). From the 18th to the 19th century, Central and Eastern Europe was influenced by the Western European Enlightenment, and a cultural enlightenment spread. The goal of "Haskala" was to train the Jews to embody the synthesis of Judaism and general culture, to live according to standards in the ordinary sense, to have a spirit of tolerance, to have the kind of rationality explained by universalist humanitarians. Mendelssohn was the most important representative of the early period (it was he who translated the Jewish Pentateuch into German). Modern scholars generally believe that Jewish modernity began with "Haskala" in the 18th century. People no longer passively wait for the Messiah, but begin to actively pursue the realization of individuals or peoples in this world (that is, in the life of each person). Of course, there are many other issues involved here, such as Horkheimer's discussion, see the chapter "Elements of Anti-Semitism: The Boundaries of Enlightenment" in his "Dialectics of Enlightenment" co-authored with Adorno, see "Horkheimer's Collection" compiled by Cao Weidong, Qu Jingdong and others, Shanghai Far East Publishing House, 1997 edition - Chinese translator's note.
[3] Giambattista Vico，The New Science of Giambattista Vico, 3rd ed., (1744), abridged trans. T. G. Bergen and M. H. Fisch (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. 370, 372. - English translator's note. According to Vico's New Science, translated by Zhu Guangqian, The Commercial Press, 1989 edition, pp. 594 and 596 - Notes from the Chinese translator.
Foucault: What is Enlightenment (Part 2)
I know that people often refer to modernity as an era, or at least a series of characteristics that mark an era. As far as the chronicle orientation of modernity is concerned, it precedes it with a somewhat naïve or archaic premodernity, and after it is a certain unfathomable and head-scratching postmodernity. From this, we find ourselves wondering whether modernity constituted the consequences of the Enlightenment and its development, or whether it should be seen as a rupture or deviation from the basic principles of the 18th century.
Go back to Kant's article. I don't understand why we can't see modernity more as an attitude than as a historical period. By "attitude," I mean a pattern associated with the present, a voluntary choice made by certain people, in short, a way of thinking, feeling, and even behaving, which embodies a certain relationship of belonging at every turn and manifests itself as a task. Undoubtedly, it is a bit like what the Greeks call ethos. So I think it is more revealing for us not to strive to distinguish "modern" from "pre-modern" or "postmodern", but to try to find out how the attitude of modernity has been in a struggle with various "anti-modernity" attitudes since its formation.
I intend to sketch this attitude toward modernity by taking an almost negligible figure, whose conscious consciousness of modernity is widely regarded as one of the sharpest consciousnesses of the 19th century. He was Baudelaire.
1. Modernity is often summed up as a conscious awareness of the discontinuity of time: a break with tradition, a vertigo for novel emotions, a vertigo before moments that are constantly passing. When Baudelaire defines modernity as "transitional, transient, and accidental",[4] it seems to be what it means. But in his view, it is not to become modern is to recognize and accept this endless movement, but to adopt a certain attitude towards it. There is something eternal that is neither outside the present moment nor after the present, but in the present. It is in the recapture of this eternal thing that a cautious and unyielding attitude is embodied. Modernity differs from fashion, which is limited to the passage of time; modernity is an attitude that enables people to grasp the "heroic" side of the present. Modernity is not a sensitivity to the fleeting present, but the will to "heroize" the present.
I will limit myself to Baudelaire's comments about the art of painting of his contemporaries. Painters of Baudelaire's contemporaries thought the 19th-century costumes were crude and wanted to depict ancient robes. But Baudelaire teased them. In his view, modernity in painting is not reflected in the introduction of black clothes to the canvas. Modern painters can express black dresses as "the necessary garments of our time", and can know how to use the fashion of their time to show the essential, permanent and lingering relationship between our time and death. "Tuxedos and blacks have not only the political beauty of universal equality, but also the poetic beauty of the soul of the public – it is a long list of morticians (love morticians, political morticians, bourgeois morticians ...). ）。 We're all having some kind of funeral." [5] To describe this attitude of modernity, Baudelaire sometimes uses rhetoric of indirect affirmation, meaningfully presented to us in the form of an exhortation: "You have no right to despise the present."
2. This heroization is undoubtedly ironic. The attitude of modernity does not elevate the passing moment to the sacred in order to perpetuate it. It certainly has no intention of capturing the passing moments as a fleeting novelty, a gesture that Baudelaire wishes to call a spectator. These wanderers (flàneurs), these idle, wandering bystanders, are content to keep their eyes open and concentrate on growing the storehouse of memories. In contrast to these wanderers, Baudelaire portrays the man of modernity this way: "He just walks, runs, searches... To be sure, this person ,...... This imaginative solitary, this wanderer who for a moment traverses the vast desert of human nature, has a nobler purpose than a pure wanderer, it is more universal, different from the fleeting pleasure that arises from circumstances. He's looking for some kind of trait that you have to allow me to call 'modernity'... He took it as his job to extract from fashion the poetic elements implicit in history." [6] Baudelaire took the sketcher Constantin Guys as a model of modernity. Under the appearance of a bystander, a collector of novelty, Guy "will dwell to the end in any place that flashes with light, reverberates with poetry, leaps with life, trembles with music; anywhere wherever there is a passion that can be presented before his eyes, wherever there are natural and traditional people in a peculiar beauty, where the sun shines on the momentary joy of the depraved animal." [7]
But make no mistake about it. Gunstaine Guy was not a wanderer; Baudelaire regarded him as a brilliant modern painter because when the whole world sank to sleep, he began to work, changing the face of that world. The change he causes does not involve the cancellation of reality, but a complex interplay between the truth of reality and the practice of freedom; what is "natural" is "more than nature", and what is "beautiful" is "more than beautiful", and the object of the individual seems to be "endowed with a vibrant life like the soul of [their] creator". [8] For the attitude of modernity, the rich value of the present is inseparable from an extreme desire for it: to imagine the present as something different from itself, but not to destroy the present, but to change the present by grasping its own state. In Baudelaire's practice of modernity, the extreme concern for reality here corresponds to a practice of freedom, which is both a respect for and an assault on this reality.
3. For Baudelaire, however, modernity is not merely a form of relation to the present, but also a form of relation to which it must establish a relation to itself. The prudent and calm attitude of modernity maintains an indelible asceticism. To become modern is not to admit that one is in the flow of fleeting moments, but to treat oneself as an object of some kind, carefully shaped with difficult complexity, that is, baudelaire called the dandysme in his fashionable words of the time. I do not intend to go back here to these well-known discourses: on the "coarse, secular, and despicable nature"; on the indispensable self-resistance of man; on "education of grace", which has gradually become more authoritarian than the most terrible religion, imposed on "humble but ambitious believers"; and finally, on the asceticism of the prodigal son. Through asceticism, he transforms his body, actions, feelings, emotions, and even his very existence into a work of art. In Baudelaire's view, as a modern man, he is not to discover himself, to discover his own secrets and hidden truths, but to strive to create himself. This modernity is not meant to "liberate man in his own existence," but to force him to face the task of shaping himself.
4. Let me add one last sentence. In Baudelaire's eyes, the ironic heroism of the present, the free game of changing the face of reality, the ascetic careful shaping of the self, these have no place in society itself or in the state polity, but can only be created in a different field. Baudelaire called this field art.
I do not expect that these few features will encapsulate the complex historical events of the Enlightenment of the late 18th century, or the attitudes of modernity that may have emerged in various guises over the past two centuries.
I have been committed to highlighting two aspects. On the one hand, the extent to which a particular type of philosophical inquiry is rooted in the Enlightenment, and under which the relationship between man and the present, the historical pattern of man's existence, and the composition of the self as an autonomous subject are all incorporated into the field of problems; on the other hand, the context in which we can be associated with the Enlightenment lies not in the adherence to dogmatic principles, but in the constant activation of an attitude, which is a certain philosophical spiritual temperament which we can describe as a constant critique of the historical epoch in which we live. I intend to sketch this spiritual temperament very briefly.
A. Negative aspects
1. This spiritual temperament means, first of all, the rejection of what I call the "hijacking" of enlightenment. It seems to me that, first, the Enlightenment, as a series of political, economic, social, institutional, and cultural events on which we still depend today, constitutes a priority field of analysis; secondly, the Enlightenment is a cause that directly links the progress of truth with the history of freedom, constructing a philosophical question that we still consider today; and finally, it identifies a particular way of philosophical thinking, which I seek to reveal through Kant's essay.
But this does not mean that you have to take a clear position on the Enlightenment, but rather that you have to reject all positions that may take the form of some simplistic arbitrary choice, that is, either to accept the Enlightenment and live up to its rationalist tradition (some consider it a positive term, others use it to blame others), or to criticize the Enlightenment and try to get rid of its rational principles (for which people are equally mixed). We have not been able to escape this hijacking if we merely introduce "dialectical" fine differences into the hostage-making, but still diligently try to determine the merits of those elements that the Enlightenment may have contained.
We must strive to analyze ourselves in depth as a being, to some extent, defined by the history of enlightenment. Such an analysis should include a series of historical inquiries as fine as possible, not retroactively pointing to the "essential kernel of rationality," but to the "contemporary limits of the necessary." The former can be found in the Enlightenment and should be maintained in all circumstances; the latter is the one that is not or is no longer inalienable to our constitution as autonomous subjects.
2. Humanitarianism[9] and enlightenment are always easily mixed together, which must be avoided in the ongoing critique of ourselves. We must always bear in mind that enlightenment is a series or events, a series of complex historical processes, positioned above a particular node in the process of European social development. Enlightenment itself included the elements of social transformation, the types of political systems, the forms of knowledge, the plans for the rationalization of knowledge and practical activities, technological mutations, and they were far more than one or two, and could not be summed up in one sentence. Although many of these phenomena are still important today, as I have argued above, it seems to me that only the reflective pattern of relevance to the present is the basis for the whole form of philosophical reflection.
Humanitarianism is quite different. It is a theme, or, rather, a series of themes that have recurred over a long span of time, on multiple occasions, in European society, and have always been tied to value judgments. These themes have significant differences in their connotations and the values they uphold. Moreover, they have always served as a critical principle of distinction. Humanism in the 17th century manifested itself as a critique of Christianity or a critique of religion in general, a christian humanism that was far opposed to ascetic humanism, which was far more intensely colored by God-centrism. The 19th century, on the other hand, had both skeptical humanism, which was disgusted and critical of science, and a humanitarianism that pinned its hopes on the same science. Marxism has always been a humanitarianism, as has existentialism and personalism. There was a time when people embraced the humanitarian values embodied in National Socialism, when the Stalinists also called them humanitarians.
But we must not conclude that everything that has ever been associated with humanitarianism needs to be rejected, but rather that the topics of discussion on humanitarianism are themselves too flexible, too complex, too lacking in consistency and not suitable as a reference for reflection. In fact, since at least the 17th century, so-called humanitarian things have relied on ideas about people that have been diverted from religion, science, or politics. The role of humanitarianism is to decorate and validate the ideas of the people concerned, which in any case must be based on the latter.
In view of this connection, therefore, I believe that it is possible to oppose this subject of discussion, which is so frequently and repeatedly highlighted, and so consistently based on humanitarianism, on the basis of the principle that lies at the heart of the Enlightenment's historical consciousness of itself. From this standpoint, I am inclined to think that there is a tension between enlightenment and humanism, not an identical one.
I think it is dangerous to mix enlightenment and humanism in any case; and, from a historical point of view, it is imprecise to do so. If the question of man, humanity, and the humanist has had its importance throughout the 18th century, I think it is hardly because the Enlightenment saw itself as a humanism. At the same time, it is necessary to note that throughout the 19th century, the work of compiling history for 16th-century humanism, which was very important to people such as St. Berw or Burckhardt, was always separate from, and sometimes explicitly opposed, to the Enlightenment and the 18th century. The 19th century also had a tendency to pit the Enlightenment and humanism against each other, at least to the extent that they were mixed together.
In any case, I think that just as we must seek our liberation from the intellectual and political hijacking of the Enlightenment, we must also get rid of the confusion of conflating humanitarian themes with the question of enlightenment, a confusing notion that is both historically and morally confusing. If we are to clarify our conscious consciousness of ourselves and our past relatively clear, the study of the complex relationship between enlightenment and humanism over the past two centuries is a valuable and important subject.
B. Positive aspects
Despite the need to prevent these problems, in the face of what may be a philosophical ethos, we must clearly give it a more affirmative connotation. This philosophical temperament exists through a certain historical ontology of ourselves, in a critique of what we say, think, and do.
1. This philosophical temperament can be summed up as a "limit-attitude." We are not talking about a gesture of rejection. We have to move away from the one-or-out option of the outside and the inside, and we have to be at the border. In fact, criticism consists of an analysis and reflection on boundaries. If Kant's problem, however, is to recognize what boundaries of (savoir) knowledge have to be declared to exceeding; then it seems to me that the key question today must be turned back to a question of certain certainty: what place does all that are the product of unique, accidental, and arbitrary constraints occupy in all that is the product of unique, accidental, and arbitrary constraints? In short, the crux of the matter is to transform a critique unfolding in the form of a bounds of necessity into a critique of practice that takes the form of a certain transgression of possibility.
This, in turn, will lead to a clear consequence: criticism is no longer a practice aimed at seeking a formal structure of universal value, but rather a deep historical investigation of events that have led us to construct ourselves and to know ourselves as subjects of what we do, think about, and say. In this sense, this critique is not transcendent, nor is its aim in promoting a metaphysics, but in having a genealogical scheme and an archaeological approach. The reason why this critique is archaeological and not transcendental is that it is not aimed at determining the universal structure of all knowledge or all possible moral actions, but at exploring as such a multitude of historical events the discursive examples of what we think, say, and act; at the same time, it is genealogical because it no longer deduces what we cannot do and know according to the form in which we are. And there will be a possibility separated from the contingency that makes us who we are. In this possibility, we can no longer be, do, and think according to what we are, do, or think.
This critique will no longer be devoted to the promotion of some metaphysics that will eventually become science, but will provide as widely as possible a new impetus to the uncertain pursuit of freedom.
2. If, however, we are not satisfied with assertions or fantasies about freedom, I think that this historical-critical attitude must also be experimental. I mean, this kind of work on our own boundaries, on the one hand, must open up a new field of historical inquiry, and on the other hand, test ourselves to reality and delivery to the present, both of which must grasp the joint points of possibility and necessity of change and determine the exact form of change. That is to say, the historical ontology of ourselves must be freed from all plans that claim to be universal or thorough. In fact, we can know from experience that the so-called general situation is to get rid of the present situation in order to formulate another way of thinking about another society. The general planning of another culture or another worldview can only lead to the restoration of the most dangerous traditions.
I'd rather choose some specific conversion method, over the past 20 years. They have proven viable in certain regions, including the way we live and think, the connection to authority, the relationship between the sexes, and the way we understand madness and the sick; I would rather choose those partial transformations that stem from the interconnection between historical analysis and practical attitudes, rather than accept the planning of shaping new people that the worst political systems have repeated throughout the 20th century.
I would therefore like to summarize this philosophical temperament, which is suitable for the critical ontology of ourselves, as a historical-practical examination of the boundaries over which we are likely to cross, and thus by our own work on ourselves as free beings.
3. Moreover, the objection is undoubtedly entirely justified: If we ourselves are limited by this always partial, partial questioning or testing, is there no danger of being swayed by a more universal structure that we are neither conscious nor controlling?
There are two responses to this question. We do have to give up on this, no longer expecting any complete and certain knowledge of what might constitute the boundaries of our history. According to this view, our experience in both theory and practice always has its external and inner limits for our own boundaries and the possibility of crossing them; therefore, we always return to the starting point.
This does not mean, however, that all work can only be carried out in a state of disorder and chance. The work we are exploring has its own generality, systematicness, homogeneity, and key points.
(1) It's key.
These key issues are embodied in what might be called the "paradox of the relationship between power and power." We know that the great promises or hopes given in or in part of the 18th century as a whole were based on the simultaneous growth of the effects of technological faculty on things and the simultaneous growth of individual freedom relative to others. Furthermore, we can also see that in the history of Western societies as a whole, the acquisition of power and the struggle for freedom constitute an eternal element, which may be the root of their unique historical destiny, which is so special, and the trajectory of evolution is so special compared to other societies, and so universal and dominant. Now, the relationship between the growth of ability and the growth of autonomy is not as simple as the 18th century would have assumed. Whether we are talking about production aimed at the economy, institutions aimed at social regulation, or technologies for communication, we can already see that all kinds of technologies transmit a wide variety of power relations, such as collective or individual discipline, normative procedures exercised in the name of the power of the state, society or the needs of the community. The crux of the matter, therefore, is how can the growth of capacity be freed from the strengthening of power relations?
(2) Homogeneity.
This leads us to an examination of what could be called a "system of practice." The homogeneity we are talking about here is not the presentation of people themselves, nor the conditions under which they are determined by knowing nothing about them, but the content and manner in which they act. It can be said that the technical side of people's actions lies in the rational forms in which they organize their own ways of doing things; the strategic side of these practical activities lies in the relative freedom to react to the actions of others and change the rules of the game when they act in these practical systems. With these technical and strategic factors in place, this area of practice ensures the homogeneity of a critical analysis of these histories.
(3) Systematic.
These systems of practice are rooted in three broad areas: relationships of control over things, relationships to the actions of others, and relationships with oneself. This is not to say that these three areas are unrelated to each other. It is well known that the control of things is mediated by relationships with others, and relationships with others always involve relationships with oneself, and vice versa. What we need to consider, however, is the particular nature of the three basic axes of knowledge, power and ethics, and their interrelationships. In other words, the ontology of our own history has to answer a series of open-ended questions, asking a multitude of questions. These questions can be complex and ambiguous, or they can be specifically limited, depending on our choices. But they all involve the following systematic question: How can we be constructed as subjects of our own knowledge? How can we be constructed as subjects exercising power relations or succumbing to power relations? How are we constructed as moral agents of our own actions?
(4) Universality.
Finally, given that these critical in-depth examinations of history have always been aimed at a particular material, era, or limited system of practice and discourse, they are all very specific and certain. But, at least as far as the Western societies from which we come are concerned, the following problems confronted by these investigations have their own universality, for they are constantly repeated and highlighted in our time, such as the relationship between sound mind and insanity, the relationship between illness and health, the relationship between crime and law, and the role of sexual relations, and so on.
However, I do not lead to this universality by thinking that it is necessary to trace the problem we are trying to explore through its super-historical continuity across the dimension of time, nor do I think that it is necessary to explore its variations. What we must grasp is the degree of our understanding of the problems we are discussing, the forms of power exercised in them, and the experience we have in them, through a certain problematization—the patterns of determining objects, the rules of action, and the relations with ourselves—can only construct a qualified historical image. Problemization processes are neither the norm in the anthropological sense nor variations in the nature of chronicles, so we have to examine problemization [modes de problématizations] in order to analyze the universal implications contained in their unique forms of history.
Finally, make a brief summary and return to Kant. I don't know if we'll be able to reach adulthood in a mature state. There are many experiences that lead us to believe that the historical events of the Enlightenment did not make us mature adults, and that we have not yet reached such a state. But in any case, it seems to me that the critical inquiry that Kant constructed through reflection on the Enlightenment has its own significance. I think that for the past two centuries, Kant's reflection has been a philosophical way of thinking that does not lose its importance or validity. We certainly cannot regard the critical ontology of ourselves as a theory or a teaching, or even as an eternal system of knowledge that is constantly accumulating, but as an attitude, a spiritual temperament, a philosophical life. In this attitude, spiritual temperament, or philosophical life, the critique of what we are becomes at the same time a historical examination of the limits imposed on us, an experiment in the de leur franchissement possible .e.
We must translate this philosophical attitude into a multiplicity of questioning tasks. The methodological logic of these inquiries lies in the synthesis of archaeological and genealogical methods to examine the practical activities of free games that are simultaneously imagined as technical types of reason and strategic; the theoretical logic of these inquiries lies in the unique historical form of determining the universality of our relationship with things, others, and ourselves, which is the problematic treatment; and the practical logic of these pursuits comes from the process of focusing on the trial and testing of the critical reflection of history to concrete practical activities. I don't know if it must be said today: the task of criticism still contains faith in enlightenment; I insist that it requires examining our boundaries, in other words, it is a labor that requires patience, and it is a patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty.
[4] Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1964), p. 13. - English translator's note. According to the fourth section of "Modernity" of "Painters of Modern Life", the Chinese translation is included in "Selected Papers on Baudelaire's Aesthetics", translated by Guo Hong'an, People's Literature Publishing House, 1987 edition, p. 485 - Notes on the Chinese translator.
[5] Charles Baudelaire, “On the Heroism of Modern Life,” in The Mirror of Art: Critical Studies by Charles Baudelaire, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1955), p. 127. - English translator's note. The Chinese translation refers to the Salon of 1846, section 18, "On the Heroes of Modern Life", ibid., p. 301, with changes – Notes to the Chinese translator.
[6] The Chinese translation refers to Page 484 of Guo Hong'an's Translation of Baudelaire's Selected Aesthetic Papers and Wang Hui's translation, and the underlined part is Guo Ben's missing translation - Notes from the Chinese Translator.
[7] The Chinese translation is based on Guo Hong'an's translation of Baudelaire's Selected Essays on Baudelaire's Aesthetics, p. 483, with slight changes. According to Guo's translation of "depraved animal": Rousseau wrote in On the Origin and Basis of Human Inequality: "... The state of thinking is an anti-natural state, and the contemplative person is a fallen beast" – Chinese translator's note.
[8] See Ibid., p. 484 – Notes to the Chinese translator.
[9] Depending on the specific historical context and intellectual context, the term "Humanism" can be translated as "humanitarianism", "humanism", and "humanism", respectively. For the purposes of this article, "Humanism" in the 16th century should be translated as "humanism," while "Humanism" in the 18th century is best translated as "humanism." But in this way, there will be confusion in the writing, so we will translate it as "humanitarian" in its entirety, but at the same time draw attention to the historical variation of the word.
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