Hegel's Phenomenology and Foucault's Genealogy by Sembou Evangelia Ms;

Author:Sembou, Evangelia, Ms;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Published: 2015-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Toward a Non-Foundational Knowledge

In the foregoing I have shown how Hegelian phenomenology and Foucauldian genealogy respectively cast doubt on the ‘correspondence theory of truth’. I suggest that therein lies their common contribution to philosophy. By challenging the aforesaid model of knowledge, they point they way towards a re-conceptualization of the relation between the theorist (the subject) and the object of analysis (or knowledge). I have also argued that they question such dichotomies as subject/object, universal/particular, mind/body and reason/nature – dualisms that have underlain much philosophical thinking as well as social and political theorizing. The ‘correspondence theory’ and the above-mentioned binary oppositions are typical of foundationalist thinking. Foundationalism starts from the assumption that there is a fundamental distinction between the subject of knowledge (the Cartesian ego) and the objective world. So, according to foundationalism, there must be some standard independent of knowledge by means of which this knowledge can be tested. The test consists in determining whether there is a correspondence between knowledge and the object. This means that foundationalism is trying to do two things at the same time: it must retain the distinction between knowledge and the object, so that the comparison between knowledge and the object can be carried out; simultaneously, it aims to show that knowledge and the object match. In other words, foundationalism wants to demonstrate that there is a difference between knowledge and the object, and yet that they coincide.25 However, as it has been remarked:

The problem … is that if we have simultaneous identity-and-difference, we no longer have anything that can be picked out and identified as ‘knowledge’, on the one hand, and as the ‘object’ on the other. The state of identity-and-difference between knowledge and object which must be required in order to found knowledge is one in which ‘knowledge’ and ‘object’ disappear, for insofar as both are identical and different at once, they are neither the same nor different.[ … ] The fatal problem for foundationalism is that both the identity of knowledge and object and the difference must, but cannot, be attained at one and the same time, if this model of knowledge is to be grounded. (Maker 1994: 62–63)

According to the ‘correspondence theory’, knowledge is descriptive; that is to say, knowledge is a mirror of objective reality. However, as I have shown above, both Hegel’s phenomenology and Foucault’s genealogy question this conception of cognition; Hegel’s phenomenology by showing that conscious experience is a dynamic interrelationship of subject and object; Foucault’s genealogy by demonstrating that both the subject of cognition and the various objects of knowledge are constructed – more precisely, they are constituted in discourses. By questioning the idea of an objective reality apart from human experience and activity, both the aforesaid approaches query the notion of the ‘given’. They thus challenge one more feature of foundationalism, namely, the view that all knowledge rests on (certain) presuppositions. For foundationalism, there cannot possibly be a presuppositionless knowledge for at least two reasons: first, because, as I said above, there must always

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