Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Power vs Justice (1971)
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Published 2021-07-20
The debate was about human nature and took place in November 1971 at the Eindhoven University of Technology, in the Nederlands, as part of the “International Philosophers Project” initiated by the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation and arranged by the Dutch philosopher Fons Elders, who was also the moderator.
Chomsky on the "limits" of knowledge: • Chomsky on the "Limits" of Knowledge ...
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All Comments (20)
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It’s such a relief to not have to hear applause in between each speakers points. A time where intelligent debate wasn’t a point scoring, moneymaking, gameshow and was for the pure pursuit of truth is sorely missed.
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No one's gonna mention that these two had a high-level philosophical debate in two different languages without missing a beat?
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As an English speaker, I greatly appreciate the Foucault translation. I feel that not Translating Chomsky into French is a great opportunity lost.
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You'll never know how much im excited to the fact Foucalt is a real person and actually speaks
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I love how they are patiently listening and considering one another's time, voice, and theories. The moderator has nothing to do but sit back and listen.
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I love the duality of Chomsky talking calmly as Foucault smiles like a maniac while picking his teeth
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It's the silence when someone is speaking. The attention given to the speaker you can feel in debates and discussions years ago like this that is so special.
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When Foucault makes Chomsky look like a moderate, you know you're in deep revolutionary territory.
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Foucalt: Because our ideals of human nature are based on the beliefs of our society, we shouldn't use these to create a new society which hopes to remove the brutalities of our current society. Chomsky: We have only our current ideals, and we should use them to create a more advanced society which attempts to remove the inequalities of our current society.
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It’s so apparent that these guys were having a great time, despite their disagreements. I hope we see more of this in our time
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Jokes apart. I am at such a high level of intellectualism that I can't comprehend a single word of these legends
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Never ask a man his salary, a woman her age, Michel Foucault which petition he signed, and Noam Chomsky which genocides didn't happen
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We need both kinds of intellectuals. The ones who can not formulate concrete solutions, but who can see clearly what's wrong. And those which may miss some of the sofisticated details of society functioning, but can devise practical and mostly realizable ways of improving structures and life.
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It's truly a sign of our times that a conversation so relevant is clearly absorbed by its listeners as nothing more than an example of good conversation. Surely something is very broken in our society, when a video of two incredible intellects discussing the very moral foundations of our society plays more as an example of a bygone intellectual era than as a reference point on 20th century moral philosophy.
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With all the comments on how great their discussion was, I just want to say how refreshing and wonderful a commentsection full of seemingly intelligent and interested people is. Thanks to everyone here making this a great experience
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This exchange crystallizes the differences in approach between these thinkers. Chomsky is working within a scientific tradition, in which we understand that we must base our knowledge and our ideas on contingent assumptions subject to later correction—and that, nevertheless, we may speak of such concepts as human nature and universal qualities. Foucault, by contrast, is so radically wedded to the notion that every thought is historically determined—in particular, by the evolution of economic and social class relatons—that there can absolutely never be anything universal, that even provisional assumptions of universal foundations are hopelessly deluded. In this regard, Chomsky offers a progressive vision of political aspirations and activism, whereas Foucault offers a path of endless critique. I think one should also note that Foucault does not seem to acknowledge the paradox at the core of Derrida's understanding of how thoughts are shaped: that the critique itself is also already part of the "system" being criticized.
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Foucault: "Everything is socially constructed" Chomsky: "No, some things are human universals"
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You've done a great service posting this to YouTube.
