Foucault, Cryptonormativity (via Kolodny and Lorenzini)

Almost thirty years ago (1996), Niko Kolodny published “The ethics of cryptonormativism A defense of Foucault’s evasions” in Philosophy & Social Criticism (here). Kolodny’s paper is framed as a response to Nancy Fraser’s and Habermas’ famous criticism of Foucault’s purported cryptonormativism. While starting his response Kolodny (Berkely) writes:

The later Foucault had stronger reasons for being cautious of theory than these pseudo-strategic and pseudo-methodological arguments would suggest. Foucault was haunted by the truism that sound theory is insufficient to guarantee sound politics. What he wanted his critics to appreciate was not, as the infantile leftist (and perhaps the early Foucault) would have it, that theory is essentially oppressive, but rather that theory is uncertain and incomplete, that it depends for its historical effect on something untheorizable: something he enigmatically called ’ethos’ or ’philosophical life’.

It is crucial to distinguish this concern, that theory insufficiently guarantees political morality, from a claim often associated with Foucault, that theory is inherently oppressive.—p.67

By ‘uncertain’ here Kolodny means ‘possibility of misuse,” (p. 68). On Kolodny’s account, Foucault takes what I like to call ‘the demands of responsible speech’ seriously. It’s not sufficient to have the right or true normative theory, but one also must take into account its impact (“historical effect.”) Now even consequentialist and utilitarian philosophers get very uneasy about the suggestion to take the so-called ‘inductive risk principle’ into account. Usually, professional philosophers sound like paid-up members of the NRA: it’s not theories that harm, but downstream users. So, I was very pleased to note (recall) a few weeks ago that Williamson (who I will treat as proxy for mainstream views) has begun to concede it’s completely legitimate to claim that where “practical consequences are objectionable, so are the theories that entail them.” (2022: 399)

Back in 1996, Kolodny protects Foucault from the then very current NRA style objection as follows: “the fact that what people do with a theory is not the theorist’s problem does not mean that it is not a problem. And it is this problem that Foucault takes up, that fascinates him and that motivates his suspicion of theory.” (p. 69) At this point of my re-telling of Kolodny’s defense of Foucault it’s important to signal that this suspicion does not entail a rejection of normativity as such.

Rather, and to simplify, the use of normative theory requires “good judgment,” an ethos, and even a practice of truthsaying with (what I tend to call) ‘integrity’ that Foucault explored (as Kolodny notes) in his studies of different kinds of parrhesia. As Kolodny reports, rather than allying with a particular theory, Foucault invites us to reflect on how all kinds of truthsayers “harmonized” bios with logos, (including Foucault’s practices warts an all).

As an aside, somewhat surprisingly, Foucault’s late embrace of the significance of ethos within liberalism (as Kolodny suggests) brings him somewhat close to the liberalism of Camus (in the version documented by Josh Cherniss recently). My own suspicion is that Foucault’s grappling with the effects of Weberianism on the birth of neo-liberalism in the late 1970s is one causal vector in this surprising rapprochement.

Be that as it may, drawing on, in particular, the posthumously published, “What is Enlightenment?” (yes, a kind of commentary on Kant), Kolodny suggests that “Cryptonormativism was Foucault’s response to precisely this problem of criticizing reason from within the tradition of reason” (p. 78) and so does not involve an abandonment of reason (truth, liberty, normativity, etc.) I have long admired Kolodny’s essay (recall), but it does leave open the question what exactly to do with normative theory on Foucault’s account.

For, in Kolodny’s reconstruction there is a risk of encouraging a relatively tidy division of labor — so tempting in the modern university — between theorists (his language) devoted to developing normative theory and those devoted to harmonizing the demands of theory with practice. I use this language also to allow Kolodny’s further contrast with the “contemporary anti-theorists,” (p. 69) that is, the heirs of Wittgenstein. (Lurking here is, of course, the question whether there is a disciplinary place for the harmonizers and anti-theorists within professional philosophy. But lets leave pay-checks aside momentarily.)

I had to think of all of this because my friend Catarina Dutilh Novaes got me to read Daniele Lorenzini’s (2023) The Force of Truth: Critique, Genealogy, and Truth-Telling (The University Chicago). I hesitated a bit to read it because while I have started to use (and publish on) Foucault, Foucault-Forschung is not my highest priority. Luckily, The Force of Truth is an elegant and slender work, so the opportunity costs turn out to be modest.

Lorenzini (Penn) draws on one of those ‘contemporary anti-theorists,’ Cavell, to interpret Foucault’s stance on truth with the tools of philosophy of language. In fact, he inscribes his own approach also as response to the criticisms of Fraser and Habermas noted above (p. 2, p. 9, p. 106ff.) Some other time, I hope to explore the details of Lorenzini’s reading a bit more in detail because the status of ‘truth’ generates wider issues than those explored by Kolodny back in the 90s.

Despite using Cavell, Lorenzini also does not end up treating Foucault as an anti-theorist. In fact, despite being rooted in a wider number of texts (not all of which available to Kolodny back in the day), Lorenzini’s interpretation of Foucault also repeatedly emphasizes the significance of ethos and the harmony between bios and logos. (Lorenzini seems to have been unaware of Kolodny’s piece, by the way.)

Lorenzini does try to offer a more substantive positive account on behalf of Foucault. He calls this constructive role ‘possibilizing.’ To explain it, it’s crucial to understand that for Lorenzini, one of Foucault’s key insights is that truth is neither self-actualizing nor (and this is crucial) self-justifying. Truth’s authority — a term Lorenzini uses sparingly — always requires a (forced) choice to submit — a term frequently used — to it. (Notice how existentialist this now becomes.) And Lorenzini (again to simplify) treats Foucault’s writings as exploring the effects of such submission and the attempts to resist/counter these.

Okay, so much for set up. Let me quote Lorenzini now on ‘possibilizing:’

[Possibilizing] allows us to “separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think.” This “possibility,” far from just being abstract, is to be conceived in terms of the elaboration and practice of concrete forms of counter-conduct in the present. And even though genealogy does not legislate the specific content of these counter-conducts, it does define their form, since each aims to criticize and destabilize a given power/knowledge apparatus, or better, a given regime of truth with its “therefore” that still governs (certain aspects of) “our” conduct today.—pp. 104-5

So, according to Lorenzini, Foucault’s project keeps his distance from one feature of normative theory, namely legislating content. However, it does point the way toward forms of conduct. I have to admit that I don’t quite understand the distinction Lorenzini offers here. But in wider context, it’s clear he treats Foucault as wishing to contribute to the (possible) constitution of the future “formation of a ‘we’.” (p. 105; Lorenzini quotes here an interview with Foucault.)

Not to put too fine point on it, in his closing argument, Lorenzini offers a kind of apologia of Foucault to those who see their task as writing from the left. (Lorenzini does not use that terminology, but daringly compares Foucault to Walter Benjamin while acknowledging Foucault’s criticism of class struggle (p. 114.)) For Lorenzini, Foucault’s (genealogical) writings are supposed to produce a distinct effect in its audience: “a sense of ethico-politico commitment” for a certain ‘we’ after a “choice” or judgment to “determine what is the main danger.” (p. 117, Lorenzini is quoting Foucault.)

As I said, some other time more on the technical distinctions Lorenzi offers of Foucault on truth. Here I close with a two-fold observation: first, it would have been nice if Lorenzini had offered a bit more reflection on how we should evaluate the effects of engendering such “a sense of ethico-politico commitment” in a newly constituted ‘we.’ After all, as Lorenzini acknowledges, unlike Benjamin, Foucault cannot take for granted that such a commitment is on the right side of history (as those nobly writing from the left also tend to forget, alas). One can be disastrously wrong about where the true danger lies.*

Foucault strikes me as a bit more judicious on this score than Lorenzini allows. Lorenzini only sees an invitation to “commit us to carrying on, in one form or another, the (collective) struggle against the subjugating effects of the governmental mechanisms and regimes of truth that still permeate our lives.” This is true enough, but in Foucault this struggle is also clearly tempered by the further though that governmental mechanisms and regimes of truth may well be ineliminable. As he put it famously, rather than abolishing governmental mechanisms he was interested in “the art of not being governed like that and at that cost” or the “art of not being governed quite so much.” This is, as Lorenzini notes, Foucault’s definition of critique.

Second, not unlike Kolodny, Lorenzini leaves Foucault’s project partially removed from, even parasitic on, normative theorizing. To what degree this division of labor is judicious is, I suspect, an open question.

To be continued.

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*I think in Foucault’s better moments this inclines him to more skepticism than Lorenzini allows. But that’s for another time.