Criticism without Critique: Power and Experience in Foucault and James

Auteurs-es

  • Jeffrey S. Edmonds Vanderbilt University

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i11.3204

Résumé

Through an analysis of philosophical temperaments, I argue that both William James and Michel Foucault believed the central task of philosophy not only to be the generation of new ideas or ways of thinking, but also to create new temperaments, new ways of inhabiting the world. Though James and Foucault in many ways agree on the ends of philosophy, the methods and strategies that they developed differ according to the problems with which each philosopher was concerned. Although James gives a rich account of what it means to see philosophy as the reconstruction of temperament, Foucault’s genealogical method explains concretely how temperaments might be reconstructed through the use of history. Raising questions of how this work might effectively continue today, I argue that Foucauldians and Jamesians, Continental philosophers and American pragmatists, might find common cause in exploring the production and reconstruction of democratic temperaments in response to social problems.

Biographie de l'auteur-e

Jeffrey S. Edmonds, Vanderbilt University

Jeff Edmonds is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. His dissertation Power and Pure Experience: a Metaphysics of Education, written as a fellow at the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, draws on the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze as well as American pragmatists such as William James to elaborate a theory of educative experience. He is at work on a series of articles that bring together European, North American, and Latin American philosophers on issues of globalization and migrant communities.

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Publié-e

2011-02-01

Comment citer

Edmonds, J. S. (2011). Criticism without Critique: Power and Experience in Foucault and James. Foucault Studies, (11), 41–53. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i11.3204

Numéro

Number 11: February 2011: Foucault and Pragmatism

Rubrique

Special Issue on Foucault and Pragmatism

Licence

Authors retain copyright to their work, but assign the right of the first publication to Foucault Studies. The work is subject to a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, but despite these restrictions, authors can take for granted that Foucault Studies will permit articles published in Foucault Studies to be translated or reprinted in another format such as a book providing a full reference is made to Foucault Studies as the original place of publication.