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Chomsky and Foucault on Human Nature and Politics: an Essential Difference?

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Chomsky and Foucault on Human Nature and Politics: an Essential Difference? Chomsky and Foucault on Human Nature and Politics: An Essential Difference? Foucault: "On the other hand, when we discussed the problem of human nature and political problems, then differences arose between us. And contrary to what you think you can't prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realization of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilization, within our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a result form part of our class system; and that one can't, however regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or justify a fight which should—and shall in principle—overthrow the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for which I can't find the historical justification. That's the point." Chomsky: "It's clear."' "Any serious social science or theory of social change must be founded on some concept of human nature." — Noam Chomsky 1. Introduction In 1971, Dutch television held a series of interviews and discussions with noted intellectuals of the day to discuss a wide range of issues regarding contemporary social and philosophical affairs. Perhaps the most significant of these encounters was the meeting between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. It brought together arguably the two most prominent Western intellectual-activists of the day in a debate that illustrates clearly the lineage of thought within which each writer is situated. Nominally the discussion was in two parts: the first an examination of the origins or production of knowledge, with particular concern for the natural sciences, the second explicitly focused on the role and practice of oppositional politics within Western capitalist democracies—in part a response to the unfolding Vietnam War. As a glance at the transcript of the discussion between Chomsky and Foucault reveals, the debate was a fascinating insight into many features of their work, and there is far too much of interest in the discussion to be conveyed within the limits of a single article. While the discussion raises much of interest to contemporary debates in social and political thought, I want to examine a limited number of themes in this article. The title of the discussion, "Human Nature: Power vs. Justice," conveys in itself a great deal about the respective Copyright 1999 by Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer 1999) 177 178 Peter Wilkin antimodemist and modernist positions of Foucault and Chomsky. The discussion touches on past and present debates about ideas of essen- tialism that are particularly pertinent for the social sciences.^ In this article I will set out what I take to be the three main strands of Foucault's anti-essentialist critique and its implications for social and political thought. This, of course, is only one strand of Foucault's rich and powerful work, but it is only these specific themes that I am concemed with here. I will then tum to Chomsky's rationalist account of human nature in order to set out its implications for social and political thought and the ways in which it might be able to counter the powerful anti-essentialist critique made by Foucault. In so doing I will outline three aspects of Chomsky's work as a defense of a rationalist understanding of epistemology and what I take to be his implicit realist ontology. I am arguing, then, that an understanding of some form of essentialism is a methodological requirement for social and political thought and that Chomsky's ideas provide some useful insights into what form this might take. Ulti- mately, Chomsky's work provides good grounds for rejecting the dualism of either strong essentialism or anti-essentialism. Foucault and Chomsky are perhaps the major intellectual-activist figures of the past thirty years in the Westem world, and as such, their discussion is of some significance in setting out not only their intellectual differences, which I take to be quite profound, but also their similarities. As the discussion reveals, Chomsky and Foucault share a similar understanding of the history of scientific knowledge and its development and also its misapplication in the social or human sciences. In the political realm, both men recognize the need to challenge sources of illegitimate power and authority within their own societies. In addition, they also share an opposition to vanguardist political strategies, an anarchist theme that connects their social and political thought. Ultimately, however, and what I will illustrate in this article, their respective positions rest on ftindamen- tally different conceptions of human nature, epistemology, and ontology. In many respects, it is when they tum to questions of social and political theory and practice that these differences are most starkly exposed and what I take to be their respective modernist and antimodemist positions are clearly revealed.'* Thus, their ideas about politics and emancipation are related to their respective essen- tialist and constructivist or anti-essentialist philosophies.^ I want to begin, then, by giving an overview of the anti-essentialist critique of Chomsky's ideas that Foucault sets out in the discussion. Chomsky and Foucatilt on Human Nature 179 2. Problems of Essence in Social and Political Thought Foucault is the key figure in what is often described as the linguistic tum in modern social theory, and the impact of his ideas has envel- oped a wide range of disciplines within the social sciences. His analysis of discourses and discursive practices raises significant problems for the approach to knowledge and being that runs through Chomsky's work and is, in my view, the most important strand of anti-essentialist thought in modem social theory. In this respect, Foucault is the perfect foil for Chomsky, and in this article it is my intention to use his ideas as a counter against what Chomsky describes as his own Enlightenment heritage. From their debate, I take it that there are three related but distinctive anti-essentialist criticisms that Foucault makes of Chomsky's position and that these feed into his understanding of the theory and practice of politics. These three criticisms do not exhaust the anti-essentialist canon, but they serve to stmcture the main thmst of Foucault's disagreement with Chomsky. a. Reductionisni/Biologism Foucault: "Yes, but isn't there a danger here? You say that a certain human nature exists, that this human nature has not been given in actual society the rights and possibilities which allow it to realize itself . that's really what you have said, I believe." Chomsky: "Yes." Foucault: "And if one admits that, doesn't one risk defining this human nature —which is at the same time ideal and real, and has been hidden and repressed until now—^in terms borrowed from our society, from our civilization, from our culture?"'' A familiar theme in anti-essentialism is that approaches to social science that draw on the notion of the essential qualities of people, society, or institutions tend to make two major errors. The first of these is to assume that all social and political phenomena can be understood by reducing them to some transcendent and essential fact about people or institutions in general that cuts across differences of culture, history, and society. This kind of reductionism seeks to set out the universal characteristics of people and their institutions as though they do not change over time and space. A good example of this can be drawn from a quote by James Rosenau about the way in which we should understand states in intemational relations: As a focus of study, the nation-state is no different from the atom or the single cell organism. Its pattern of behavior, idiosyncratic traits, and internal structure are as amenable to the process of formulating and testing hypotheses as are the 180 Peter WUkin characteristics of the electron or molecule ... in terms of science-as-method, [physics and foreign policy analysis] are essentially the same.* On this understanding, the state becomes a reified object that can be studied like any other feature of the natural world and has a brute facticity about it that is more important than any superficial differences of culture, ideology, knowledge, history, and so on. By reducing social and political life to its universal, unchanging, and constituent components, we hope to move towards a social science that is predictive and probabilistic, based on the assumption that we have uncovered the key variables with the greatest force in deter- mining outcomes. Rosenau's approach is ah extreme but illustrative example of scientistic attempts to model the social sciences on a natural science such as physics, and rests on the assumption that there are no substantive differences between either the objects of study in the natural and social world or the methods by which we might interpret and explain them. As Foucault has observed through- out his work, this kind of scientism, presented as a neutral and ob- jective science of people and society, has emerged in the wake of what he calls govemmentality and bio-power.^ In this sense, these terms refer to the (mis)application of science and its prestigious authority to an understanding of politics and society. These reduction- ist moves are synonymous with essentialism for many of its critics, and they provide governing institutions and their agents with allegedly scientific tools by which to classify and order society into simple components that deny, in practice, its rich diversity and complexity. Related to this is the second theme of Foucault's anti-essentialist criticism, that of biologism. Biologism is the assumption that we can understand the behavior and motivations of people by reducing them to their fundamental biological drives and dispositions.^^ Thus, the nature of institutions and the way in which the agents who exercise power within them choose to act can be understood by locating the latent factors of human nature as biological principles that constrain and shape such outcomes.
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