The pragmatism of the late Foucault

Abstract

Foucault underlined, throughout his whole intellectual activity, the question of truth as an effect of power-knowledge. There are not properly truths as substances, but effects of truths as incorporeal practices of discourse, that change slowly, but inevitably, the limits of our knowledge. We can say then that he has always been a pragmatist, unbeknown to him. However, it was during the last two courses delivered at the Collége de France, recently published with the title of The Government of Self and Others and The Courage of Truth, that he recognized explicitly his pragmatic vein. I will show two specific points of his philosophical testament (as we can consider the two courses). Commenting Plato’s Seventh Letter, he said the philosophy coincides with “its practices” (pragmata). Philosophy is an ergon, a work, a labor, a practical and “real” activity, that must undergo the test of praxis (and of politics). Secondly, commenting Platos’ Lachetes and the Cynical attitude, he referred to the Greek Parrhesia, the will to speak freely. It has evidently a pragmatist imprint: the philosopher who serves to find the truth must manifest in his way of life a congruence, a tuning between bios and logos, gestures and meanings, between the body, with its bearings and manners, and the truth conveyed. The real correspondence is not between words and facts, but between words and actions. It is not, therefore, sufficient a truth be expressed by words: it must be acted. It must transform into habits, take form in a corporeal life, in an existence, in a praxis: this is the teaching not only of the pragmatist school, but also of the hermeneutical one starting from Nietzsche to the last Foucault. Philosophy must return to be a form of life, and to witness in practice its ideas.