Outline and assess Foucault's critique of modernity Essay - 1

Outline and assess Foucaults critique of modernity - Essay ExampleFinally, the ordinal section will be devoted to Foucaultian critique of institutional basis of modernity and the disciplinary character of its rationality. It will be argued that, while Foucault denounced various aspects of modernity, he did not attempt to idealise pre-modern thought/institutions, and remained unsure about social project alternative to modernity, thus contributing to similar indecisiveness among the following post-modernist thinkers. 1. Foucaults Archaeology of Knowledge A Critique of Rationalist Objectivity The modern account of experience was premised upon the representationalist epistemology founded by Descartes. Rejecting previous assumptions on the temper and purposes of human knowledge, Descartes posited that knowledge is derived from accurate determination of correspondence of authorized representations with the actual objects of external world, a correspondence that can in principle be veri fied by constructing certain methodological arguments (Gutting, 1999, p. 116). Later modern thinkers basically followed this Cartesian epistemology, assuming that representations under consideration are derived from some innate properties of human mind and reality. Foucault based his epistemic critique of modern philosophy on the thorough deconstruction of Cartesian notions of knowledge. He affirms the historically specific character of knowledge, as opposed to ahistorical Cartesian account of epistemological procedures, assuming that development of structures of human knowledge is governed by alterations in episteme, i.e. total set of relations that unite... the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalised systems (Foucault, 2002a, p. 211). Foucault believes that the development of distinctively modern episteme was caused by shift from the Renaissance view of knowledge as system of resemblances that was predicated upon the clari fication of interrelation amidst various objects of surrounding world and mens place in it, to analytical and interpretational forms of cognition (Carrette, 2000, pp. 15-16). The latter were based not on the sudden and lighten up discovery that all thought is thought but on constantly renewed interrogation of the forms of non-thinking that leads to the reduction of empirical world to some universal and mystical dialectics (Foucault, 2002b, p. 353). Foucault surmises that universalistic assumptions of modernitys epistemology are invalidated by the discursive and ultimately relative nature of knowledge as such, for, in his view, the structures of knowledge think on the character of discourse as practice that brings about the very object that are spoken of (Mahon, 1992, p. 11). Here, one may find that Foucault maintains that the discursive nature of language and knowledge practices does not allow for some objective, universal discourse, and therefore that modernitys pretences for f ormulating a transparent methodology of knowledge are unfounded. 2. Foucault on Subject The Rejection of A Priori Subjectivity The modernitys view on subject is generally predicated upon the idea of its universality and humanist character, which means that