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“Hermeneutics,” “Death of God” and “Dissolution of the Subject”: A Phenomenological Appraisal

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Crosscurrents in Phenomenology

Part of the book series: Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy ((SSPE,volume 7))

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Abstract

What follows is an attempt to appraise phenomenologically some “structuralist”1 themes present in Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things as they are rooted implicitly or explicitly2 in Nietzsche’s philosophy. The main part of this essay will expose and expand on these themes in as neutral a way as possible, the question of their validity being provisionally bracketed. At the end of the essay, the brackets will be lifted; however, in order for the debate between phenomenology and “structuralism” to be productive, it should not restrict itself to a one-way process. It is my contention that the questioning of “structuralism” by phenomenology can prove to be most fruitful if the latter is also ready to let itself be questioned by the former.

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Reference

  1. I am using quotation marks, since Foucault himself explicitly repudiated the label (The Order of Things, New York: Pantheon Books, 1970, p. xiv). This label is being used mainly by opponents of Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, Barthes, Derrida, etc.

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  2. See especially Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, Barthes, Derrida, etc., pp. 263 and 322.

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  3. Ibid., p. 26.

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  4. Ibid., p. 17.

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  5. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, 1: The Doctrine of Creation, Edwards-Bussey-Knight trans. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1958), p. 117, emphasis added.

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  6. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, 1: The Doctrine of Creation, Edwards-Bussey-Knight trans. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1958), p. 110. Emphasis added.

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  7. Foucault, op. cit., p. 29.

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  8. Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, 1: The Doctrine of Creation, Edwards-Bussey-Knight trans. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1958), p. 194.

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  9. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, R.J. Hollingdale trans. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 121.

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  10. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, W.Kaufmann trans, and ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), p. 327.

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  11. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, The Portable Nietzsche, W. Kaufmann trans. and ed. (New York: The Viking Press, 1968), p. 448.

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  12. Nietzsche, Das Philosophenbuch (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1969), p. 182.

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  13. Foucault, op. cit., p. 29.

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  14. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, W. Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale trans., W. Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 36.

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  21. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pp. 199, 297 and 298.

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  22. Foucault, op. cit., p. 385.

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  23. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 127.

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  24. Foucault, op. cit., p. 54.

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  25. Ibid., p. 263.

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  26. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, W. Baskin trans. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 120.

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  27. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Totemism, R. Needham trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 77.

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  30. The object of mythic analysis does not consist in trying to show “how men think in myths, but how myths think themselves out in men without their being aware of it.” (The Raw and the Cooked, p. 12. My translation. Emphasis added.)

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  31. See, e.g., Jean-Paul Sartre, “Jean-Paul Sartre répond,” L’Arc, 30, pp. 87–96; Mikel Dufrenne, “La philosophie du néo-positivisme,” Esprit, 1967, 5, pp. 781–800; Dufrenne, Pour l’homme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1968).

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  33. Such a possibility remains programmatic and should, of course, be further expanded on as it amounts to a paradox: how can the “subject” of the reduction be at the same time its object? Or, who carries the reduction once its author has been reduced? I am not proposing a ready-made answer to these difficult questions. I am struck by the fact that such questioning is not merely “structuralist” but also phenomenological, as can be witnessed in such statements as: “It is not we who perceive, it is the thing that perceives itself yonder”; “The problems posed in Phenomenology of Perception are insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’-‘object’ distinction.” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, C. Lefort ed., A. Lingis trans., Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968, pp. 185, 200.)

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  34. Paul Ricoeur, Huserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology, E.G. Ballard and L.E. Embree trans., (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967) p. 24

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  35. Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., Phenomenology. The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Its Interpretation, Garden City: Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 183–193.

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  36. Foucault, op. cit., p. xiv; Louis Althusser and Étienne Balibar, Lire le Capital, vol. I (Paris: François Maspéro, 1975), p. 5; Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975), p. 121; etc.

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  37. Ricœur, The Conflict of Interpretations, Don Ihde ed., (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 27–61.

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  38. Lucien Sebag, L’invention du monde chez les indiens pueblos (Paris: Maspéro, 1971), pp. 474–475.

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  39. My essays, “The Dry and the Wet: a Semiological Analysis of Creation and Flood Myths” (forthcoming, Semiotica) and “The Discourse of Penthouse: Rhetoric and Ideology” (forthcoming, Semiotica) may be seen as illustrating this dialectical process.

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  40. On the opposition between “methodological” and “ontological” “structuralism,” see Umberto Eco, La structure absente. Introduction à la recherche sémiotique, U. Esposito-Torrigiani trans. (Paris: Mercure de France, 1972), pp. 321 and 387.

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Authors
  1. Matthieu Casalis
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Kentucky, USA

    Ronald Bruzina (Associate Professor of Philosophy) (Associate Professor of Philosophy)

  2. Rutgers University, USA

    Bruce Wilshire (Professor of Philosophy) (Professor of Philosophy)

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© 1978 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

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Casalis, M. (1978). “Hermeneutics,” “Death of God” and “Dissolution of the Subject”: A Phenomenological Appraisal. In: Bruzina, R., Wilshire, B. (eds) Crosscurrents in Phenomenology. Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9698-4_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9698-4_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-247-2044-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9698-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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