MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THOMAS AQUINAS IN DIALOGUE ON THE BASIS AND CONSUMMATION OF INTELLIGIBILITY A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Theology of the Dominican House of Studies in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts in Theology by Elliot Michael Milco Thesis Director: Fr. John Dominic Corbett, O.P. May 2013 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Chapter I. Michel Foucault and the Emergence of Genealogy Section 1. The Pre-History of Genealogical Analysis §1 Descartes and Kant §2 Nietzsche Section 2. Two Post-Nietzschean Developments §3 Structuralism §4 Heidegger Section 3. Three Faces of Michel Foucault A. Moriae Encomium §5 Method and Historiography §6 A New Triumph for Madness B. The Critique of Rationality §7 Dissolving the Transcendental §8 Toward a New Analytical Vocabulary C. The Will to Knowledge §9 Foucault the Nietzschean §10 Power §11 Genealogy and the Genealogist 2 Chapter II. Orders of Intelligibility in Thomistic Ontology Section 1. Defense of First Principles §12 A Foundationalist Dilemma §13 Defense of Non-Contradiction as a Metaphysical Principle §14 Reflections on the Defense of Non-Contradiction Section 2. The Order and Limits of Human Understanding §15 The Nature of Understanding §16 Response to a Kantian Objection §17 The Order of Natural Human Knowledge §18 Implications for Philosophy and Transmitted Knowledge §19 The Consummation of Human Understanding Section 3. The Order of Things §20 Ordo Inventionis and Ordo Rerum §21 A Sketch of the Real Order of Intelligibility Chapter III. In Dialogue §22 Recapitulation §23 An Imaginary Dialogue §24 The Uses of Genealogy Bibliography 3 4 INTRODUCTION Four friends go to see a movie. As they leave the theater, they discuss what they saw. Andy and Ben find that they disagree about what happened in a specific scene, and, as a result, differ on its significance for the story. Did Cinderella leave the ball before midnight, or after? Did she deserve to have her nice things turned back into mice and rags? While Andy and Ben are caught on this point, Charlie enters the fray, and tells them they are both wrong: the story is not about Cinderella deserving or not deserving something. In fact, it is not about Cinderella at all, but the restoration of nobility to its proper place in society. Charlie explains that stories are not really about individual characters in particular situations, but social types and class interactions. Ben retorts that types and classes are grounded in individuals and their behavior, so that stories are first of all about people, and then secondarily about social classes. The three of them shift to this question, and the terms of the debate become more abstract. Finally the fourth friend, David, joins in and says that Andy, Ben, and Charlie are all mistaken: there is no such thing as what the 5 movie was "really" about, or what really grounds its content and holds it together. The movie is just a free-floating network of scenes and dialogue which can be gathered or dispersed along different lines by the person viewing it, and which have no essential meaning. The first three are outraged. Charlie objects that David is hiding what he actually thinks, namely that the essential meaning of the movie lies in its scenes and the arrangement of dialogue, while Andy says that David's account of things is incoherent because it ignores the intention of the director and actors. Ben, however, sees that there's something correct in David's analysis, but worries that David's thesis has made it impossible for the conversation to proceed. This story illustrates a few of the different levels of disagreement people can encounter, across all the sciences and disciplines, and especially in philosophical and theological discussion. On the first level there are disagreements about facts within a shared understanding of their context and meaning, and, slightly above this, disputes about the relationships between accepted facts and the larger whole of which they form a part. For lack of a better term, we will call these particular controversies. Andy and Ben, in our story, agree on what the movie is about, and they agree on what happened in it, but they differ as to the particular thrusts of the narrative: was it exactly this that happened, or something else? Does it bear this particular significance, or some other one? What bears significance, and the means by which it bears it are undisputed, and their agreement on these fundamentals enables conversation to happen rather easily. On the second level, there are disagreements about the fundamental orientation of things and the basic carriers of meaning or existence. We will call these ontological controversies. They are represented in our story by the exchange between Ben and Charlie. Both agree that there is some truth about the subject at hand, and both see the proper understanding of things as grounded in a basic unit from which the order and intelligibility of the whole flow. However, the 6 identification of that primary element or ground of truth and intelligibility differs between them, thus making their discussion more difficult. On the first level, the discussion proceeded with ease, as Andy and Ben were merely tweaking certain points of interpretation within a common framework. Progress could be made because the same ultimate understanding of the story was available to both, and so one view could triumph by virtue of its greater coherence or depth. Progress on the second level is much harder to come by. Here, the discussion is no longer grounded in a shared vision, since each understanding differs so much as to seem (at least potentially) to be about a different object. Instead, the discussion focuses on the interpretive mechanisms (categories, values, vocabularies, prejudices) by which the object is given significance. Ben can try to convince Charlie by explaining to him that Charlie's mode of interpretation is implicitly dependent on his own, but Charlie can do the same thing in turn. Because their fundamental commitments differ, there is no guarantee of progress on this level: each side can always critique the other for failing to sufficiently respect or account for the fundamental elements or grasping points which it takes as self-evident. Vertigo may have already stricken, but we proceed to the third level of disagreement, introduced in our story by David. Where Andy and Ben had disagreed on particulars, they could mediate their discussion through a shared vision of the whole. Where Ben and Charlie had disagreed on what constituted or completed a correct vision of things, they could at least proceed by virtue of their shared groping after the transcendental actuality of the thing. But David is more distant still. He does not accept that there are any fundamental elements or final visions, only a dispersion of indeterminate parts and groupings. The other three, in struggling to come to terms with David's position, resist it by means of various accusations. Perhaps David is not being intellectually honest, or maybe his position is simply absurd. Perhaps David, by moving beyond 7 the ontological level, has implicitly forfeited his right or ability to speak. On this level of controversy, which we will call genealogical, these and related accusations are raised and answered. Genealogical controversy is to be the chief domain of this thesis. In particular, we will be looking at the work of the twentieth century’s greatest genealogist, Michel Foucault. Our goal is to lay the groundwork for a confrontation between Foucault and one of the greatest ontologists, Thomas Aquinas, in order to see how each can respond to the other in dialogue about the basis and consummation of intelligibility. The thesis will unfold in three parts: first, a presentation of Foucauldian genealogy, its origins, forms, key concepts and analytical tools; second, a Thomistic account of the foundations of philosophical and theological discourse: the first principles of metaphysics, the nature and limits of human understanding, and the inner order of intelligibility in things; finally, an exchange between Aquinas and Foucault on the possibility of meaningful dialogue between them, and an analysis of the implications of this exchange. My hope is that this thesis will lay the groundwork for further explorations along these lines. The reader should, in the meanwhile, anticipate three points of interest along the way: first, that the role-model of the pure genealogist is the madman; second, that the Catholic theologian (in our case, the Thomist) has no legitimate disadvantage vis-à-vis the genealogist, but must exercise caution and humility about his own principles and ideas in order to shield himself from the genealogist’s attacks; third, that genealogy is a profoundly useful critical tool, ultimately amenable (when tempered) to the work of the metaphysician and the theologian. 8 CHAPTER ONE MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THE EMERGENCE OF GENEALOGY SECTION ONE: THE PRE-HISTORY OF GENEALOGICAL ANALYSIS Michel Foucault arrived late on the scene of modern European thought, and his identity and methodology are heavily determined by his predecessors. Before examining in detail Foucault's genealogical method of analysis, we will look at a few shifts in the history of philosophy that made a figure like Foucault possible. Our tour will begin with Descartes and Kant, and then shift to Nietzsche. In the next section we will look at two post-Nietzschean developments that are particularly important for Foucault, before turning to Foucault himself. §1 Descartes and Kant Foucault's emergence is part of a series of ruptures that has constituted western "modernity" since Descartes. The Cartesian revolution against baroque Scholasticism introduced 9 two thematic trends into the philosophy of the day: first, a preference for skeptical methodologies that attempt to do away with prejudice and conjecture and arrive at the skeleton of absolute knowledge upon which all other knowledge is based.