foucault, dewey, and the history of the present dewey, and the history of the present randall e....

Foucault, Dewey, and the History of the PresentRandall E. Auxier

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series, Volume 16, Number 2,2002, pp. 75-102 (Article)

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Foucault, Dewey, and theHistory of the Present1

RANDALL E. AUXIER

Southern Illinois University

In pursuit of the perils of history we have found ourselves mostacutely exposed to them; we ourselves bear visibly the traces ofthose sufferings which afflict contemporary mankind as a resultof an excess of history . . . And yet I trust in the inspirationalforce . . . when I demand that man should above all learn to liveand should employ history only in the service of the life he haslearned to live.

—Nietzsche

Prologue

Essays comparing thinkers are, at best, of scholarly interest only, andoften not even useful or enlightening even for that limited audience. Ihope to evade that shortcoming in what follows, and strive even to gobeyond scholarly interest. When I wrote the first draft of this study in1988, the Cold War was in its fourth decade and Foucault had onlyrecently passed away. As final revisions are being made, we find our-selves in a different world, one in which scholarly interest seems quitetrivial as passenger planes are being flown into tall buildings by peo-ple who see this as an acceptable way to serve a cause, killing them-selves along with others who think that business as usual is fairlyremoved from its own political implications. I have no specific solu-tions to problems like these, but I do firmly believe that the problem arisesin part from ways of thinking that are overly narrow, and that this nar-rowness comes at least in part from a failure of historical understanding.

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2002.Copyright © 2002 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

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One simply need not think in the ways that terrorists or capitalists habituallythink. There could be commerce without widespread injustice, and there couldbe nonviolent loyalty to a cause. Here philosophy has some value and some prac-tical function. As Foucault put it, “the object [is] to learn to what extent the effortto think one’s own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and soenable it to think differently” (1985, 9). I do deeply wish that those who thinkbusiness as usual is something entirely independent from politics and injusticewould think again, but not as ardently as I wish those who think that the takingof life is a morally acceptable way to serve a cause would rethink their views.Let us rethink two histories, then, and see whether they contribute anything tofreeing our thinking. Dewey and Foucault were both enormously adept at thetask of rethinking, and perhaps we can learn to be better at it ourselves by study-ing and rethinking them. Perhaps not.

The comparison of thinkers in the classical American tradition and the con-temporary Continental tradition brings its own difficulties. In his bookGenealogical Pragmatism, John Stuhr has undertaken a generalized comparisonof these traditions, and has pointed to a number of common failings he finds inother such comparisons.2 Stuhr, in short, says that pragmatists who look at post-modern and Continental thought suffer from four basic weaknesses: being (1)overly general, (2) overly abstract, (3) overly modernist, and (4) overly theoret-ical. Before saying a word about each of these, let me state that I concur withStuhr’s observation, and will seek to provide a comparison which does not fallinto any of these difficulties. By “overly general,” Stuhr means that it is com-mon among pragmatists to group together, under blanket headings, Continentalthinkers who have little in common, and then simply to generalize about them.No single thinker is taken seriously on his/her own, and the subsequent gener-alizations are of limited or no value. The remedy to this problem here will be totreat only two thinkers, Dewey and Foucault, and to pursue them each in depth.By “overly abstract,” Stuhr means that pragmatists have often detached the the-ories of postmodernist philosophers from their historical contexts and tempera-ments for comparison purposes—something contrary to the contextualistcommitments of both traditions, but common in the literature in spite of that.The remedy here will be to provide an extensive account of the context and tem-peraments of Dewey and Foucault to support the statements of comparison. By“overly modernist,” Stuhr means that metanarratives and foundationalism some-times creep back into pragmatic accounts of postmodernism. The remedy forthis, as Stuhr puts it, “is to recognize and critically consider the differences, dis-tances, destructions, violence, interests, agonies and foreignness at work in prag-matism’s own will to intimacy”(110).3 In other words, pragmatists must learn tosee the fault lines in their discursive practices and be prepared to accept the like-lihood that a disintegration of their theories may be needed in order to preservethe integrity of their own aims. Here I shall attempt to see the limits of my dis-course and not claim more for it than it can sustain. As Stuhr rightly observes,


metanarratives are unavoidable, but fortunately we may be aware of their limitsand employ them responsibly (102).4 Finally, by “overly theoretical” Stuhr meansthat, for pragmatists, philosophy must “bake some bread,” must attend to prac-tical consequences, and cannot allow itself to be merely a clever or edifying con-versation. Here indeed is the most difficult task, for if the freeing of thought fromthe habits that have led it into things like Cold War and terrorism is a practicalactivity, would it not be even more practical to take this message directly to peo-ple like terrorists and capitalists rather than to academics? I do not personallyknow how to find the audience that could benefit from such a liberation of theirthinking, but I do know that neither Foucault nor Dewey failed to recognize theproblem with Stalin or Hitler at times when many people followed these exem-plars of the power of narrow thinking, and that both succeeded in finding theaudience I do not expect to find. But, as Dewey and Foucault showed in theirlives and work, perhaps even professors are not wholly useless in the widerworld; hopefully they are not.

So, this essay strives (whether it succeeds or not) to be a piece of Wirkungs-geschichte, effective history, but not precisely in Nietzsche’s or Gadamer’s sensesof that term. Until we near the end of this effort, I will not be able to make itclear why I think the connection between Dewey and Foucault is an importantevent in the development of the story of Spirit, by which I mean the evolutionof human consciousness, nor how in offering a piece of historiography I havealso tried to write a history of the present. Perhaps the reader will tolerate theinterim discussion upon this promise, and upon the well-established importanceof both Dewey and Foucault to twentieth-century philosophy. Their importancefor the twenty-first century is, however, the underlying motif of the essay.

Background

There are some philosophically interesting affinities in the methodology and his-torical philosophies of Dewey and Foucault. There is, superficially at least, ade-quate motivation to explore these affinities, for they may offer insight into someintricate questions that are not trivial to scholars in the present. For example, isevolutionism a philosophy of science or a philosophy of history? Is it neither orin some sense both? Is evolutionism a kind of historicism, or is historicism a typeof evolutionism? In pursuing the philosophical problems this raises in the casesof Dewey and Foucault, a rather intricate historical question arises, one I neverexpected to encounter in turning over these questions initially, and the historicalquestion demands treatment alongside any viable philosophical analysis of theimportance of their respective views of change, evolution, and history. The his-torical question is that of a direct (albeit unacknowledged) influence of Dewey’slife and work upon Foucault. This in turn raises all the historiographical problems

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that accompany any serious attempt to write about historical influence. I haveargued elsewhere that the old concept of historical influence is no longer viable,and that we ought instead to seek and write according to an ideal of “confluence”(Auxier 1999, 301–38). Yet confluence includes influence as a special case ofitself, and must still be taken up.

Significant, direct, unacknowledged influence in this case is difficult to estab-lish, but it is a distinct possibility in this case, which will come as a surprise tomany scholars. Foucault said in his last interview that, for him, “there are threecategories of philosophers: the philosophers that I don’t know; the philosophersI know and of whom I have spoken; and the philosophers I know and aboutwhom I don’t speak” (1988, 250). I believe I can build a plausible case that forFoucault, Dewey falls into the third of these categories. This raises the questionas to how Foucault viewed this third category, and why he said little or nothingabout the philosophers in it. The most obvious answer—that these philosopherssaid nothing of crucial importance to Foucault’s development or work—is notan adequate answer. Foucault strikes it down himself in the same interview. Hesays that in spite of the fact that he had written nothing on Heidegger and only“only a very small article on Nietzsche,5 these are nevertheless the two authorsI have read the most.” “I think,” Foucault continues, “it is important to have asmall number of authors with whom one thinks, with whom one works, but aboutwhom one does not write” (250).

It would be going much too far to claim that Dewey was among this “smallnumber” for Foucault, but these statements are quoted to bring to light some-thing about Foucault’s tendencies in citing and writing about philosophers whoinfluenced him, viz., that they need not ever show up by name, no matter howmuch influence they exerted.6 Their ideas well up and come to the surface, butthe names sometimes remain submerged. This is as it should be, in Foucault’sown view.

Thus, the case of Dewey’s influence rests on what can be established histor-ically with regard to determining which of Foucault’s three “categories” Deweyfalls under. If it is the third, as I claim, then the key questions become (1) whatcan be established about Foucault’s reading of Dewey? and (2) what concreteideas do we find in Foucault’s life and work that seem plausibly traceable to hisreading of Dewey? The coincidences I will point out could, in the end, prove tobe purely fortuitous, although I am inclined to think otherwise.

The actual historical relationship is worth treating (and at greater length thanI will do here) in part because this affords, I think, the best means of seeing whereDewey’s and Foucault’s philosophies are continuous, and where they genuinelypart ways, which will help me evade, I hope, Stuhr’s complaints about pragma-tists who write on contemporary Continental thought. This historical research,in turn, serves largely to help situate what is living in the contemporary Americanand French traditions in each other’s terms, at least in part. Perhaps settling thehistorical question would constitute a step in the direction of reestablishing the


close and fruitful relation between French and American thought that existed inthe early days of the twentieth century, prior to the First World War, when anattitude of interest and curiosity was more pervasive than the tendency to dis-miss or ignore each other.7

I will later focus upon one of Foucault’s key concepts, which I think almostassuredly came from Dewey, “history of the present,” and which had significantconsequences for Foucault’s philosophical development. The most obvioussource for this idea, other than Dewey, is Nietzsche, but here Dewey and Nietzschecoincide to some extent, a point often noted by scholars of both Dewey’s andNietzsche’s thought. By examining the time during which the concept emergesin Foucault’s thought, and by examining what he means by it, I believe it willbecome clear that on this point Foucault is much more Deweyan thanNietzschean. This is important because Foucault’s philosophical developmenthas had a tremendous impact upon the lives of many persons whose politicalcauses he took up in the 1970s and early 1980s.8 Nietzsche was not a politicalreformer. His insights into the nature of history drove him away from his timeand place, not into it. Initially this was Foucault’s response as well, but unlikeNietzsche, he changed and gradually became more involved. Dewey andFoucault were not driven away from the academy and the political culture oftheir times by their views of history, but right into the midst of it. One cannotdiscern in Nietzsche’s view of Wirkungsgeschichte a practical political strategy,but in Dewey’s “history of the present,” as in his life, one can. Further, Nietzscheshunned the media of his day and the sort of popular attention it brought, whileDewey and Foucault never did.9

It might be thought by those well-versed in Foucault that my thesis runscounter to James Miller’s view, so thoroughly argued (albeit controversial), thatthe dominant influence in Foucault’s life and thought was Nietzsche.10 Millerranks Heidegger’s influence a close second, and rightly so, in my view. I haveno quarrel with Miller; rather, I aim to supplement his view, and I offer here togive an account of certain of Foucault’s views regarding which Miller strains hisNietzschean framework to explain, such as why Foucault entered into politicsafter his two years in Tunisia. It is interesting that while Miller claims the stu-dent revolt of May 1968 in Paris was intensely interesting to Foucault and per-haps responsible for his political “awakening,” his other two major biographerssuggest it was, more likely, the political upheaval in Tunisia during the sametime that drew Foucault out of his well-established pattern of academic seclu-sion and apolitical stance.11 Foucault’s “politicization” came as a surprise evento some of those close to him, and stands in need of explanation.12 All three biog-raphers agree that Sartre, as a model, held an ambiguous place of both disgustand admiration in Foucault’s heart, but none seems to recognize Dewey’s poten-tial presence in the mix as a role model.

Yet Foucault’s awakening may be, at least partially, a continuing manifesta-tion of Dewey’s immense influence on the world beyond academia; and



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Foucault’s own political activism, if it is influenced by his way of interpreting“effective history” as “history of the present” (and I will argue that it is), is muchmore in line with Dewey’s “take” on this idea than Nietzsche’s. I cannot hereenter as deeply as I would like into the philosophical questions that are raisedby this evidence, so I must content myself with pointing out where the interest-ing questions lie, in my view. I should also point out in advance that a good manyprofound differences between the thought of Dewey and Foucault will not findvoice here either. Hence, this article should not be taken to suggest that they areany more similar than the present evidence warrants, and that is not too much atthis stage of the investigation. At all events, it is clear that Nietzsche was nofriend to the weak and dispossessed, while Dewey and Foucault were. This forcesus to question the completeness, if not the accuracy, of Miller’s view.

Foucault’s Reading of Dewey

In March 1990, Gérard Deledalle presented a paper before the Society for theAdvancement of American Philosophy on the state of American philosophy inwestern Europe, particularly France. In this paper, he remarked that Foucaulthad read some of Dewey’s work. No more details were offered at the time, butthey are as follows:13 Deledalle had come to the University of Tunis in 1963 asits first Professor of Philosophy (Eribon, 187). With Jean Wahl acting as inter-mediary, Deledalle invited Foucault to come to Tunis to teach.14 Foucaultaccepted, and thus began a crucial four-year period of transition in Foucault’sthought and in his life. That this was a crucial transition in Foucault’s life andthinking no biographer doubts.

Prior to his stint in Tunis, Foucault had pursued an academic life in prettymuch the academic way. As Miller puts it, he “seems to have played the aca-demic game with genuine relish and a certain cunning” (172). He was not polit-ically active, but rather intellectually engaged and motivated. After a very briefmembership in the Communist party in the early 1950s, he took no further partin political activism until after his return from Tunis in the fall of 1968 (and hehad missed the student revolt in May of that year almost entirely). Didier Eribonclaims that Foucault’s 1968 reentry into politics was due to fate: “Since the dayhe had stepped back from politics [when he left the Communist Party] it hadbeen just a matter of time before he was sure to become caught up in it again.Existence fated that this would happen in Tunis” (192). On the contrary, how-ever, given that there was nothing in Foucault’s past to indicate that this reentrywas destined to occur, and fate is hard to believe in, this seems a very slimthought. If anything, his Nieztschean tendencies (which Eribon does not empha-size) should have driven Foucault away from politics and public life. He was a


somewhat self-absorbed and enigmatic creature, showing no particular inclina-tion to speak for the oppressed, or for anyone but himself, when he spoke at all.

Foucault’s previous involvement with the Marxists had more to do with hismegalomania (Eribon) or alienation from the mainstream (Miller) as a youngman than with his social conscience or some selfless vision of the Good he mighthave held. The Marxists provided him with a bad experience that he later remem-bered with bitterness (Miller, 172; Macey, 193–94). The antithesis of an activevoice of conscience, Foucault was, according to Eribon, cold, cynical, secretive;a deeply self-alienated man who was, strangely, also quite ambitious in a secu-lar sense. Whether accurate or not, this is not at all the picture of the manFoucault eventually became. So many downtrodden people benefited fromFoucault’s entry into political life that one is led to wonder whether the good hedid makes it seem, to his admirer Eribon, as if the gods intended it. Yet Foucaultheld something akin to Nietzsche’s view of genius as simultaneously made andfated, as Miller points out repeatedly (70–72). The “fated” part, if there really issuch a thing, will not be subject to much analysis, but the “made” part may be.I would like to offer a little more in the way of concrete evidence about whatmay have set Foucault to thinking, and brought out his latent social conscience.

It is fair to say that, while the signs of a basic change in Foucault’s work onlybegan to show up after his election to the Collège de France in 1970 (two fullyears after he returned from Tunisia), still the change in his political activitybecame evident immediately upon his return.15 Serious changes had already takenplace during the time in Tunis.

There was considerable political unrest in Tunisia in 1967–1968, betweenTunisian students and the government. The French professors at Tunis were moreor less outside of these disputes, but their sympathies were, one would judgefrom the accounts given by Foucault’s biographers, largely with the students.Foucault used his protected status (for he was not only a French citizen, but afamous one) to assist students who had been reduced to fugitives in their ownland by the heavy-handed response of the Tunisian government. There was riskin what Foucault did, but initially it seemed that deportation would have beenabout the extent of what the Tunisian authorities would dare to do to someoneso prominent.16 However, Foucault was beaten by persons who may or may nothave taken their orders from the Tunisian government, apparently as a warningto stay out of the situation (Macey 1993, 205). This is indeed a serious challengeto one’s complacency.

At the same time, Foucault was engaged in a most unpolitical activity, writ-ing L’Archéologie du savoir. This is largely held to be the transitional text fromFoucault’s “archaeological period” to his “genealogical period,” although theseconvenient categories grossly oversimplify what was happening within his work.Nevertheless, the book he wrote in Tunis was clearly a rethinking of his earlierefforts. As he said:


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What was my aim in writing this book? . . . By going a little farther in the samedirection [as Les mots et les choses], and coming back, as if by a new turn inthe spiral . . . I hoped to show the position from which I was speaking . . . togive a content to the word archaeology, which I had so far left empty.17

In brief, he was stepping back and reassessing how he had done the things hehad already done. He was seeking a broader point of view from which to under-stand history and historiography (and the problems that accompany the latter),as the book reveals.

If this were all there was to the context in which Foucault developed beyondacademia and into political life, then it would hold little interest for those whofollow the classical American tradition. But a third factor—aside from the polit-ical unrest around Foucault and his efforts to rethink his earlier work—was pres-ent during this time when he was searching for a new standpoint. This factorwas Gérard Deledalle and his work. As Eribon puts it, “Foucault consulted withhim as an expert on English and American philosophy, which he [Foucault] didnot know well. Deledalle talked with him almost daily during his walks throughSidi Bou Saïd, and he watched the stack of papers, black with notes, growhigher with every visit” (192). The stack of papers was the manuscript forL’Archéologie du savoir.

Deledalle has provided further details regarding what passed between themduring these two years, and has generously offered evidence of what he says.Foucault’s familiarity with American philosophy (and Deledalle’s work) datedback to 1954. In that year, Deledalle published his Histoire de la philosophieaméricaine, and Foucault wrote the first review of it (1955, 7).18 For twenty yearsprior to 1967, Deledalle had been researching and writing his book L’idee d’ex-périence dans la philosophie de John Dewey, and it was in the final stages whenFoucault arrived in Tunisia. According to Deledalle, Foucault read this book, aswell as the French translation of Dewey’s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, whichDeledalle was also finishing at the time.19

This information greatly focuses the question of the extent of Dewey’s pos-sible influence on Foucault. It gives two primary sources that can be consultedfor comparisons. Regarding the first text, if Dewey had any influence onFoucault’s decision to branch out from academia and into political life, it musthave come through Deledalle’s book on Dewey. This question would be diffi-cult to settle to anyone’s satisfaction, but I will point out some coincidences thatsupport the thesis that Dewey’s influence was indeed felt here. Regarding thesecond source, the Logic, if there was any detectable philosophical or method-ological influence, this probably came by way of Dewey’s later Logic. I thinkthis level of influence is more easily demonstrated, but as always with histori-cal evidence, doubt remains. Let me address each of these in turn.

Because Deledalle’s book on Dewey has not yet appeared in English, it hasnot been widely read and discussed on that side of the Atlantic. It is important


to understand just what Foucault read. Deledalle’s book on Dewey is the mostcomprehensive treatment of his philosophical development ever written.20 Thereis nothing to rival it in English. Herbert W. Schneider’s description of the bookputs it well:

This volume . . . gives us by far the most comprehensive exposition of thegrowth and substance of Dewey’s philosophy that has appeared to date, andthat probably ever will appear. Few historians have the interest and patience toexplore in such minute detail, not only Dewey’s concept of experience, but therelationship of its own development to Dewey’s own experience. The themewhich the author takes very seriously and which gives exceptional vigor to thevolume is stated in Dewey’s own words as a kind of frontispiece: “Better it isfor philosophy to err in active participation in the living struggles andissues of its own age and times, than to maintain an immune monastic impec-cability. . . . To try to escape from the snares and pitfalls of time by recourse totraditional problems and interests—rather than that, let the dead bury their owndead.” (55)21

Schneider was a scholar whose own patience and sobriety were legendary. In thethree and a half decades since this book appeared there has never been a morecomprehensive exposition of Dewey’s philosophy.22

The point here is twofold. First, this is significant because, without having toread Dewey’s massive corpus, one derives from Deledalle’s book a complete pic-ture of what each of Dewey’s books and articles accomplished. Foucault got athorough account of Dewey’s philosophical development, his reading, and influ-ences at each stage. All significant articles and all of Dewey’s books are treatedsynoptically by Deledalle, as well as critically analyzed and contextualized.

Second, Deledalle also gives careful attention to relevant biographical infor-mation, and this is how Foucault would have been informed about the nature andextent of Dewey’s political activism; what Deledalle calls Dewey’s “penchantfor defending the cause of those who do not enjoy the full benefit of their rights”(1967, 54).23 Deledalle traces Dewey’s activism and social conscience back tohis experiences growing up in Burlington, Vermont, during the industrializationof the northeastern United States (with all the social problems that resulted).Poverty and oppression of the working class were what Dewey saw growing up,and this is vividly portrayed in Deledalle’s account of Dewey’s early life.24 Thispoverty and decay are treated as a primary motivating force through Dewey’searly years, and one that reemerges in an important way in later years.

The point is that in reading Deledalle’s book, Foucault could not have failedto see the continuity between Dewey’s academic philosophy and his leftist, socialactivism. This experiential nexus is the focal point of Deledalle’s book. In see-ing this continuity, Foucault could not have failed to see the discontinuitybetween his own cloistered academic existence, and the sorts of things that



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followed from his own rewriting of history as the history of the institutionalexclusion of difference.25 Dewey’s words condemning “immune monastic impec-cability” from Deledalle’s epigraph must have stung Foucault just a bit, partic-ularly when there were suffering student activists at his doorstep. That “monasticimpeccability” described him perhaps too well, up to that time.

There is also some reason to think that Foucault might have identified withDewey to a degree. Both had come to their philosophies through a predilectionfor Hegel, and a slow evolution beyond it.26 Each had a Hegelian “mentor,” soto speak. In Dewey’s case this was George S. Morris, and in Foucault’s case itwas Jean Hyppolite.27 Both had gotten Hegel “secondhand” early on, through theeyes of a benevolent—but powerful—guide with a specific slant on Hegel. BothDewey and Foucault had encountered difficulty getting into graduate school,28

and both had come into their own, philosophically speaking, by reading Hegelprior to entering graduate school. Foucault and Dewey both grew up in theshadow of a great war in which they were too young to fight. Yet they were dif-ferent in at least the following way: Dewey had used his philosophical promi-nence to effect social change all the way from his own doorstep in Chicago orNew York to the far reaches of the world—Turkey, China, Russia, and Japan.

Did Dewey’s life give Foucault ideas about how to use his own recentlyachieved prominence? This is at least possible. Foucault read many books, andit is difficult to tell which ones might have stood as object lessons to him, andthere is no question that Nietzsche was heavily in his thinking during these sametwo years. We may never know, but one parallel between Foucault’s and Dewey’sactivities warrants particular mention. Foucault knew that Dewey, along withjournalist Franklin Ford, had tried to start an intellectual newspaper in Michigan.Deledalle gives the following description:

[In 1892] Ford tried to carry out his project of starting a free newspaper. It wasto be called Thought News, and the prospectus announced that “the immediateresponsibility for its conduct . . . [is] in the hands of John Dewey of the philo-sophical department of the University of Michigan” . . . Dewey was obliged toexplain, in defense of his desire to reform journalism, that . . . what he wantedto do was “transform philosophy somewhat by introducing a little newspaperbusiness into it,” and “to show that philosophy has some use.” Dewey said that“when philosophic ideas are not inculcated by themselves, but used as tools topoint out the meaning of phases of social life, they begin to have some life andvalue.” (1967, 89)29

After reading Dewey, Foucault had also been “closely involved in launchingLibération” (Eribon, 281), a free, intellectual newspaper of the French left wing.Compare what Dewey said above about philosophic ideas being “tools” withwhat Foucault says regarding his own journalistic enterprise:


There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas aremore active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think.We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force:not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in strugglescarried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. Butit is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) thatit is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would liketo teach it, once and for all, what it must think. This is the direction we wantthese “journalistic reports” to take. An analysis of thought will be linked to ananalysis of what is happening. Intellectuals will work together with journalistsat the point where ideas and events intersect. (Eribon, 282)30

Dewey could not have expressed his own projected plans any better thanFoucault did here. This may be sheer coincidence, but what is more compellingis that Foucault must have taken away from his reading of Deledalle’s bookthe idea of an intellectual who was socially involved through his journalisticactivities.

As Foucault would have known from reading Deledalle, Dewey’s journalis-tic efforts hardly ceased with Thought News (which never actually appeared atall). Mainly through his contributions to the New Republic and other popularmagazines Dewey became a visible and active intellectual force behind intelli-gent social, political, and educational reform in America.31 Foucault was privyto this twentieth century example of a politically involved intellectual throughDeledalle’s book, and the example was impressed upon him at just the rightmoment—the moment when Foucault’s thinking was ripe for a broadening influ-ence and he was forming a sense of social responsibility in response to the vio-lence and oppression all around him in Tunisia.

Naturally, Foucault had many other potential examples of activist intellectu-als he could have followed—Sartre, Bourdieu, Dumézil, Althusser, etc.—so thisargument settles nothing, but the facts are as I have reported. Before readingDewey, Foucault was a typical academic. These other examples were availablebefore Foucault read Dewey, but evidently did not inspire him to enter the polit-ical fray any earlier. Immediately after reading Dewey, Foucault began doing thethings Dewey had done, beginning with educational reform and forming a phi-losophy department at Vincennes (as Dewey had done in Chicago), organizingintellectuals in support of social reform (as Dewey had done in helping to foundthe American Association of University Professors, the Outlawry of War move-ment, and the effort to form a new political party), founding a newspaper, engag-ing personally in investigative inquiries,32 and doing journalistic writing for thepeople. Foucault had done none of these things before,33 and his friends and col-leagues were at first greatly astonished at his newfound activism.34 Sartre in par-ticular was also involved in all of these sorts of things, but the timing of events



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renders it highly unlikely that he served as a model for Foucault (they partedways over Stalin long before that), or as a goad into activism. In an interviewwith La Quinzaine littéraire in March 1968, Foucault basically renounced Sartre.35

The fact is that Foucault’s transformation occurred in Tunisia, when he wasspeaking with Deledalle almost daily, reading Deledalle’s and Dewey’s work,writing L’Archéologie du savoir, and watching the trouble among the Tunisianswith a keen eye. Thus, perhaps Foucault’s political transformation was at leastencouraged to some degree by his exposure to Dewey. Much more could be saidfor and against the idea, but at this point, it is a matter for trained historians to settle.

The History of the Present

What is of more philosophical interest is the way in which Foucault’s reading ofDewey’s 1938 Logic may have influenced him philosophically and method-ologically. The historical connection of Foucault to this particular book ofDewey’s has been made, and shown to have occurred at a time when Foucaultwas changing both personally and intellectually. Can any further elucidation begiven to the extent of Dewey’s influence? It can indeed. A number of things canand should be said, but here I will examine only one idea from the 1938 Logic,an idea that plays a key role in all of Foucault’s later work and that I think he gotfrom Dewey, either unconsciously or consciously.36

In searching through Foucault’s published works, I have not found a singlereference to Dewey, save the one in Foucault’s 1955 review of Deledalle’sHistoire de la philosophie américaine (cited above). Although Foucault, as anhistorian, was notorious for under-documenting his sources, he was never oneto shy away from citing sources on account of their being obscure or unauthor-itative. Yet the 1984 interview (quoted at the outset) suggests that some keynames might be missing. Naturally, we cannot rule out the possibility that, ifFoucault appropriated a central idea from Dewey, he did so unconsciously.

Foucault was evidently not given to thinking about Dewey, or talking abouthim. For example, following study with Foucault that included extended dis-cussion of pragmatism, John Stuhr observed that Foucault was “genuinelyintrigued” by connections between pragmatism and his own work, but concludedthat “I have no evidence that Foucault even carefully read the pragmatists.”37

David Macey says that “it is obvious from [Foucault’s] lectures [in Tunisia in1968] that Foucault was reading widely in the area of analytic and linguistic phi-losophy, and his study of these topics would have a marked impact on L’Archéo-logie. It appears that most of his knowledge on this subject was acquired in Tunisiaand derived from books lent him by Gérard Deledalle” (Macey, 190). ApparentlyMacey considers pragmatism and analytic philosophy as of a piece, but at leastit is clear that a foreign influence was coming into Foucault’s thinking, and that


it was not all secondhand. Yet, in line with Stuhr’s doubts, in an interview con-ducted in America in 1971, Foucault made the point that in France, “One doesnot read American philosophy, history and criticism at all; American books aretranslated only after an enormous delay.”38 Foucault had left Tunis less than threeyears before this, and it is clear that one example of the delay in translation hehad in mind was Dewey’s Logic, being translated almost thirty years after it hadfirst appeared. Yet, back in France, and away from Deledalle, American philos-ophy was not being discussed, and it would not have been in the fore ofFoucault’s mind. As the years passed between his time in Tunisia, his reading ofDewey could have lost its identity in the vast pool of ideas swirling about in hismind. All this indicates rather strongly to me that I can only defend a claim thatFoucault unconsciously appropriated a key idea from Dewey’s Logic.

But a singular idea does in fact emerge. The idea is that of a “history of thepresent.” The Archaeology of Knowledge is not by any stretch a “Deweyan”book. Deweyans will find little there that they would recognize or with whichthey could agree. It is a metamethodological rumination on the sorts of thingsFoucault had been doing up to that time. It cleared away the messy rubble of aset of forays into the meaning and activities of institutions from the Renaissanceto the modern era. Only after this had been accomplished did Foucault feel “free”to go on to other things; a sentiment he expressed in interviews. Nevertheless,the degree of similarity in the points made, the images invoked, the schools ofthought referred to, and the general position held between Foucault’s fourteen-page methodological manifesto at the beginning of The Archaeology ofKnowledge and Dewey’s fourteen-page treatment of historical judgment in the1938 Logic—this similarity is too extensive to be accidental.39

I cannot here undertake a lengthy systematic exposition of these two piecesof work, but I encourage readers compare for themselves, and I will offer a morelimited summary of the most poignant similarities. These passages are largelywhat persuade me that Dewey’s philosophical hand is also among the manyhands that rest upon Foucault’s (somewhat crowded) shoulder—with Nietzsche,Heidegger and Hegel, Dumézil and Hyppolite, among others.

The idea of “history of the present” occurs in The Archaeology of Knowledge,but only briefly, and it is not thematized. Discussing the various archaeologicallevels at which a history can be written, Foucault remarks in passing that “his-torical descriptions are necessarily ordered by the present state of knowledge,they increase with every transformation and never cease, in turn, to break withthemselves”; he goes on to say that “the great problem presented by such his-torical analyses is . . . one of transformations that serve as new foundations, therebuilding of foundations” (1971a, 5). The danger is that every new historythreatens to offer itself as a new foundation to replace the old foundation it hasonly just undermined.

Dewey’s antifoundationalism is well known, and clearly expressed in his 1938Logic. Those who claim Dewey did not consistently maintain this stance, such



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as Richard Rorty (1982a, 72–89), usually do so on the basis of things said inExperience and Nature, and not the later Logic. Foucault shares this antifoun-dationalist sentiment with Dewey, as Rorty points out:

Dewey and Foucault make exactly the same criticism of the tradition. Theyagree, right down the line, about the need to abandon traditional notions ofrationality, objectivity, method, and truth. They are both, so to speak, “beyondmethod.” (1982b, 204)40

It is not insignificant that Foucault’s repudiation of structuralism also came atthe time he was reading Dewey. In April 1967, Foucault was still accepting thelabel “structuralist,” and in an interview for a Tunisian newspaper even calledhimself “structuralism’s altarboy” who “shook the bell and the faithful fell totheir knees and the unbelievers cried out”; by 1969, he was clearly refusing thelabel (Eribon, 167). Structuralism is a crypto-foundationalist point of view, atleast regarding the conviction that there are intelligible and reasonable stablestructures within which meaning emerges. It was to France, functionally, whatanalytic philosophy was to American philosophy, although more of a (big) bot-tle rocket in France than the Roman-candle language that analysis is and was inAmerica.

An antifoundational approach to history is only one aspect of “history of thepresent”; however, and as Rorty rightly points out, it was not as novel in Franceas it seemed in the United States (1986, 45). The idea of “history of the present,”hinted at in The Archaeology of Knowledge, was not really embraced in print byFoucault until 1975, in Surveiller et punir; naissance de la prison.41 The lapseof time is long enough that Foucault may have forgotten where he had seen thephrase “histoire du présent,” but in fact, he had seen it.

Dewey and the History of the Present

It would be useful to examine what Dewey says about history, and history of thepresent in the book Foucault read, and then to look at what Foucault said. Deweyaddresses the question of history in terms of the paradox involved in writing his-tory (as Foucault often does)42—the inability of the historian to attain the stand-point necessary to write a history, and the subsequent cover-up or denial of thisdifficulty by the historian in the text that he writes:

Readers [of the historian’s work] have before them the readymade products ofinferential inquiry. If the historical writer has a dramatic imagination, the pastseems to be directly present to the reader. The scenes described and episodesnarrated appear to be directly given instead of being inferred constructions. A


reader takes conclusions as they are presented by the historian to be directlygiven almost as much as he does in reading a well constructed novel. (Dewey1938, 231)

Dewey adds that “it is because of these facts that the writing of history is aninstance of judgment as a resolution through inquiry of a problematic situation”(232). Historiography starts with a problem in the present, even if that problemis that we do not understand a set of past events to our satisfaction. It must be rec-ognized that knowledge of past events is deemed valuable only because we alsosuppose that it leads us to understand ourselves better as creatures of the present.

In this context, Dewey compares the writing of history to the natural sciencesinsofar as both are a sort of inquiry. He points out that “the formation of histor-ical judgments lags behind that of physical judgments not only because of greatercomplexity and scantiness of data, but also because to a large extent historianshave not developed the habit of stating to themselves and to the public the sys-tematic conceptual structures which they employ in organizing their data. . . .Too often the conceptual framework is left as an implicit assumption” (1938,233). This is, of course, precisely what Foucault was trying to make explicit inThe Archaeology of Knowledge. Dewey concludes that:

The slightest reflection shows that the conceptual material employed in writ-ing history is that of the period in which a history is written. There is no mate-rial available for leading principles and hypotheses save that of the historicpresent. As culture changes, the conceptions that are dominant in a culturechange. Of necessity new standpoints for viewing, appraising and ordering dataarise. History is then rewritten. Material that had formerly been passed by,offers itself as data because the new conceptions propose new problems forsolution, requiring new factual material for statement and test. At a given time,certain conceptions are so uppermost in the culture of a particular period thattheir application in constructing the events of the past seems to be justified by“facts” found in a readymade past. . . . Justification if it is to be had proceedsfrom the verification which the conceptions receive in the present. (233;emphasis mine)43

Foucault would have found these ideas very familiar when he read this in 1967,having based his own most recent work, The Order of Things, upon the premisethat the discursive social practices of an age determine what can and cannot besaid, and therefore thought, in that age. Dewey is asserting this much, and more,however, but without the transcendental argument that there exists somethinglike an “epistêmê” that dictates the terms of thought and discourse in an age. Allhistories are histories of the present for Dewey. All historical judgment is infer-ential, uncertain, and influenced by present cultural values. Moreover, as inquiryof a sort, historiography must be undertaken so as to make its conceptual bias



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plain. Dewey says that history is “constructed,” and not reconstructed. Foucaulthad already hit upon much of this, and a similar form of historicism had been“in the air” on the continent at least since the appearance of Gadamer’s Wahrheitund Methode in 1960 (and perhaps earlier, since Dilthey’s notion of Geschi-chtlichkeit had been taken up and worked out by Heidegger). One can find theidea gaining acceptance in British and American thought as early as 1925.44 Whatwas fairly new in what Dewey said had to do with the logic of inquiry employedby the historiographer, a logic of selective emphasis with regard to the histori-cal document.

Dewey held that the propositions that historians employ to make their con-struction “are not final historical propositions in themselves,” and that “strictlyspeaking, they are not in their isolation historical propositions at all”; rather,“they are propositions about what now exists; they are historical in their func-tion since they serve as material data for inferential constructions” (1938, 232).“In consequence,” Dewey adds, “they are relative to a problem” (232).

The upshot here is that selective historiography is obliged, whether it likes itor not, to serve a purpose higher than academic curiosity. Either by commissionor omission, the historiographer fulfills a socially directed, value-laden, institu-tional function, and it would be better if the ends of this activity were chosenintelligently and then stated explicitly (so that the chosen end may be seen andevaluated for what it is) than for the historiographer to become an unselfcon-scious cog in the institutional machinery. I do not see how Foucault could haveescaped reflecting upon this point in Dewey’s Logic. Had he not allowed him-self to become just such a cog, at the most practical level? Why should he careto write academic histories for the consumption of academic minds? To whatends, then, were his own histories written? Had he chosen those ends? Is suchchoice even possible? The problem of the relation between power and knowl-edge looms on the horizon of this last question.45

Dewey proposes further that the historiographer should emphasize, as muchas possible, the role played by present cultural/social values in the selection ofhistorical data towards a stated goal. We must admit, if we wish to write history,that “the idea of history involves a cumulative continuity of movement in a givendirection towards stated outcomes” (1938, 234). This is not to say that history isnecessarily causal and continuous, but rather that anyone writing a history mustassume this—which goes precisely counter to the presuppositions of Foucault’sarchaeological approach, and calls into question the sincerity of such a methodin the same spirit in which Foucault questioned himself in The Archaeology ofKnowledge. Finally, Dewey says that “if the fact of selection is acknowledgedto be primary and basic, we are committed to the conclusion that all history isnecessarily written from the standpoint of the present, and is, in an inescapablesense, the history not only of the present but of that which is contemporaneouslyjudged to be important in the present” (1938, 235). The problem then has twoloci: the standpoint of the historian and the status of the materials employed by


the historiographer. Foucault calls the latter the problem of the “document” inThe Archaeology of Knowledge (6 ff.). Dewey simply says that “annals are mate-rial for history, but hardly history itself” (1938, 234).

Foucault and the History of the Present

Foucault showed signs of having internalized these ideas soon after returningfrom Tunisia. In a published conversation with militant students in November1971, Foucault pointed out to them that “in a history course, you are asked tolearn certain things and to ignore others: thus, certain things form the content ofknowledge and its norms” (1977, 219). Bringing in the problem of the document,he goes on to say:

As a way of approaching texts—as a matter of choice and exclusion—the pres-entation affects everything that is said and done in the present. The system istelling you, in effect: “If you wish to understand and perceive events in thepresent, you can only do so through the past, through an understanding—carefully derived from the past—which was specifically developed to clarifythe present.” (220)

Foucault thought this claim had to be resisted, and that the reverse was actuallythe case—the past must be understood through the present. This view was notan overt feature of the first three “histories” Foucault wrote. If anything, theopposite assumption was operative. However, his first history after Tunisia (andDeledalle, and Dewey) fell in line with what he said in the passage above. Whydid he think it necessary to criticize his earlier view of history? He had been read-ing Nietzsche all along, and Hegel, and Sartre. These were constants in his edu-cation, while Dewey was a variable.

Foucault often answered questions about why, based on present motivations,he had written on a given historical topic. Prior to his time in Tunisia, the answerswere usually very academic, following the pattern “I wanted to examine the rela-tion between x and y.” After Tunisia this changed. In Discipline and Punish,Foucault did not wait for an interviewer to ask why he had written a history ofthe prison, but offered a statement, or more accurately, a manifesto in introduc-ing the book. Why did he write a history of the prison? “Simply because I aminterested in the past? No, if one means by that writing a history of the past interms of the present. Yes, if one means writing the history of the present” (1979,31). We are given little explanation of what Foucault means by this, but his read-ing audience in France would have needed no further explanation. On 8 February1971, Foucault was involved in founding the Groupe d’Information sur lesPrisons (G. I. P.). In the speech made at Saint-Bernard Chapel, Foucault said:



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We propose to let people know what prisons are: who goes there, and how andwhy they go; what happens there; what the existence of prisoners is like, andalso the existence of those providing surveillance; what the buildings, food andhygiene are like; how the inside rules, medical supervision and workshopsfunction; how one gets out and what it is like in our society to be someone whodoes get out. (1971b, 531–32)46

The G. I. P. quickly became famous for its loud demonstrations, manipulation ofthe media to its ends, and its ongoing war with the penal branch of the government—particularly with regard to political prisoners.47 Discipline and Punish, appear-ing four years later, was an extension of this political activism, and it was to beused as a tool in service of that same activity. In brief, it was a history of the pres-ent, written on the basis of an intelligent principle of selection—one that enabledit to serve the stated ends of the historian. In this way, it was quite unlikeFoucault’s earlier institutional histories.

The cofounding of the G. I. P. was Foucault’s first self-initiated step into polit-ical activism, and it surprised many people. He remained active in this generalcause until his death. The difference between a history of the present and an ordi-nary history of the past is that the former can resist institutional inertia, whilethe latter either consciously or unconsciously capitulates to the discursive prac-tices and institutional structures that give rise to it. History of the present choosesits battles and its region of resistance carefully, intelligently. History of the pastis an instrument of institutional memory that covers over its own selective activity—it has been taught to do so through institutionalized discursive practices them-selves. History of the present can be either conservative or liberal, active or pas-sive. History of the past is always already conservative and passive.

I think Dewey is to some degree an influence regarding Foucault’s entry intopolitical life, and that this manifests itself in a broadening of Foucault’s methodin historiography—from passive to active historiography. It would not be diffi-cult to show that Foucault’s penchant for digging up long-forgotten documentsand thematizing them pointed him squarely in the direction of the conception of“history of the present” from the beginning. I cannot deny this, but the circum-stantial evidence suggests that the catalyst may have been Dewey.48 This is thehistorical point to be made, but the philosophical significance of this relationbetween French and American thought must be left unstated for the present. Itcan be indicated, however, by noting that both Foucault and Dewey believed thatphilosophy had to fulfill a role of criticism with regard to culture and society.Philosophy simply is the ongoing critique of the present for both thinkers.49 Inone of his last works, Foucault says:

I have been seeking to stress that the thread that may connect us with theEnlightenment is not faithfulness to the doctrinal elements, but rather the per-manent reactivation of an attitude—that is, of a philosophical ethos that couldbe described as a permanent critique of our historical era. (1984b, 42)


For Dewey as well, philosophy must be transformed into an ongoing criticismof the present that employs that tradition in productive ways:

Philosophy, then, is a generalized theory of criticism. Its ultimate value for lifeexperience is that it continuously provides instruments for the criticism ofthose values . . . that are found in all aspects of experience. (1929, xx)

The most fruitful way to pursue the relation between French and Americanthought in the present is to follow out the implications, politically and philo-sophically, of what Foucault and Dewey say here. Is philosophy now doing whatFoucault and Dewey believed it should do? Are those who specialize in the his-tory of philosophy producing intelligent histories of the present? Are those whospecialize in contemporary philosophy keeping their work close enough to con-crete human experience to make for a meaningful critique of present humanexperience? If the answer is “no,” as I suspect it is in general, then there is muchwork to be done with ourselves. We may begin by asking ourselves: What arethe tacit implications of the last article we each wrote? Are we being pulled alongby the institutional inertia of the university? To what end?

Historicity and the History of the Present

If the philosophy profession, and academia generally, stands indicted for failingto write self-conscious histories of the present, it may be due to the fact that thedevelopment of philosophical consciousness has not spread, or has evenregressed, in the past thirty to forty years. What is required in order to write agenuine history of the present? A part of what previous pragmatists have failedto do in writing about postmodern Continental thought, according to Stuhr, is totake seriously enough the lessons about limits to metanarratives and discursivepractices that postmodernists have right. Pragmatists are loath to examine theirown metanarrative and see the fault lines, to let the dialectic collapse under itsown weight. I claimed I would respect this lesson, and here I shall try to keepthat promise. Perhaps herein also lies the keeping of the promise that somethingphilosophically (not just historically) important can come from an examinationof Foucault and Dewey of the sort carried out above. Do I believe Dewey influ-enced Foucault? Well, what difference would that make? And that is the ques-tion pragmatists can pose to themselves that brings them into dialogue withpostmodern critique. To answer the question, I ought to pose another: Whatwould I do with such a belief if I could engender one? And another: Under whatconditions would anyone be able or likely to agree? The followers of Foucaultwill take no notice of this study, and would take no notice even were it far moredefinitive in terms of evidence than it is. It just isn’t sufficiently French.Pragmatists might notice, but what could they do with the knowledge or the



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belief apart from griping as they already do about the elitist attitudes of theFrench Fog? No, the pragmatists might believe, but not in the best pragmaticsense of belief: a principle of action. If the relationship between Dewey andFoucault can be construed as knowledge, then it will be because some power canbe exercised upon its basis. Let us pursue this in a roundabout way.

What, then, is required to write a history of the present? I mentioned near thebeginning that Dewey and Foucault had both emerged from Hegelian mentor-ing, but a consideration of the ways in which they moved beyond Hegel here isimportant for grasping the history of the present. Had Hegel not already antici-pated this sort of history in his “Introduction” to The Philosophy of History? Indescribing the relations among “original history,” and the four types of “reflec-tive history” (universal, pragmatic, critical, and fragmentary), Hegel might haveappeared to place his weighty attention upon “history of the present” and to clas-sify its natural breaks (1944, 1–8).50 These categories, according to Hegel, wereto be distinguished from “philosophical history,” or the story of the “Bildung”of Spirit.

I do not believe that Dewey’s and Foucault’s notions of history of the pres-ent fall within the schema Hegel developed. I would be inclined to call viewssuch as Dewey’s and Foucault’s “postphilosophical history,” and this points upthe most important difference. For Hegel, the work of the philosopher was notessentially critical (certainly critique was involved, but not the central task, whichwas synthetic); for Dewey and Foucault (as for Kant and Marx), it is, and syn-thesis becomes syntheses. History of the present cannot be “pragmatic” or “crit-ical” history as Hegel described them, not only because these sorts of history aresubphilosophical in his view, but also for a reason he never considered: the imme-diate consciousness and reflective consciousness of the author of a genuine his-tory of the present, in the sense I use the term, is formed in the afterglow of theHegelian achievement itself (and its Marxist consequences). History after Hegelbecomes a weapon as much as a process—or as Dewey called it, a tool. Deweyand Foucault could no more achieve a truly pre-Hegelian consciousness thanthey could achieve a pre-Homeric one. Not only is a certain naïveté lost in post-Hegelian philosophical consciousness, but the historicity—with all its ambiguities—of a history of the present provides the very ground upon which the historyitself is written. Thus, there can be only two sorts of histories written today: his-tories of the present that recognize themselves as such, and histories of the pres-ent that do not. There is no escaping the historicity of our present form ofconsciousness, and regardless of what name we give to this—whether we call itthe universal historical standpoint as Jaspers did, or say with Ortega that humanbeings have no essence, they have a history—the point is the same. The issue isnot whether philosophical history in Hegel’s sense is or ever was truly possible,but what sort of tool history shall be in reforming and criticizing the very dis-cursive practices that made it possible. As Foucault suggested in Les mots et leschoses, the present age is l’âge de l’histoire, one that presupposes the modern


subject as both the object of knowledge and the condition for the possibility ofany act of knowing. We might idly wonder what is beyond such an age, but thebest strategy for the moment is to recognize it for what it is and to work towardsan adequate, which is to say an exhaustive, self-consciousness of it. Ironically,this is what Hegel thought he had achieved. But might it not be possible toachieve for the present form of philosophical consciousness what Hegel achievedfor the last, what Jaspers called a “decisive consciousness” of the age?51 Wouldnot such an achievement necessarily entail a transcendence of the dialecticbetween an immediate (poetic or ironic, with Heidegger or Rorty) consciousnessof the age and the self-consciousness of it?

Yet this is a great deal to hope for, since our historicity is exhibited acrosssuch a broad temporal and spatial field, and not only in a conscious appropria-tion of the totality of the field of relations between immediate consciousness andits dialectical partner (reflective self-consciousness)—which is the dynamicexhausted in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Lectures on the History ofPhilosophy, after which we may shake the Hegelian dust from our sandals.Rather, the historicity of genuine histories of the present, and that which distin-guishes them from merely “reflective histories,” in Hegel’s sense, lies in the self-conscious employment of the metaphors that give the text its basic structure, notjust as intelligible universals (or the concrete Begriff, which Hegel had alreadydone), but as self-consciously intelligible universals. For instance, Dewey knewperfectly well that “growth” (which is an inescapable idea in Dewey) and “a lossof nerve” were metaphors appropriated from the organic domain and superim-posed upon his postphilosophical historical anthropology, such as one finds inThe Quest for Certainty. Dewey did not engage in this exercise as a pre-Hegelian,but as a post-Hegelian. His work in and on history is not innocent reflection; itis work undertaken in full comprehension of the limits of language.52

Foucault, like Dewey and Nietzsche, had an affinity for self-consciouslyemploying metaphors from the natural world. He initially chose archaeologicaland even geological metaphors, but after reading Dewey, shifted to metaphorsthat were more easily imported into the specifically human domain (e.g., “geneal-ogy”). Also an important indicator is that from Heidegger he borrowed themetaphor of “care.” Heidegger had used this consciously as a metaphor in Beingand Time, but Foucault’s use of it is self-consciously metaphorical, a case ofRortyan irony, but not with the end of edification. Foucault’s ends were otherthan Rorty’s. They were more like Dewey’s. Heidegger seemed to believe thathe was literally speaking about “care,” a kind of care that made other kinds pos-sible for das Man. But Foucault knew better.53 Not only does the importance ofthese metaphors from the standpoint of immediate consciousness and reflectiveself-consciousness come into play, but also, Foucault appropriates their signifi-cance for poetic and philosophical consciousness. All of these levels are broughtto bear upon the subject matter of a genuine history of the present. Such a historywas really not a possibility before Hegel had exhausted the structural possibilities



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of what he called “philosophical history.” The road towards this sort of historywas opened by Vico and Hume, and fueled by Herder, but it found its comple-tion in Hegel.54 But it no longer has a place in the world. It is belated.

Therefore, Foucault and Dewey join in creating total histories of the present,postphilosophical histories. In this same sense any story about Dewey’s influ-ence upon Foucault must also be a postphilosophical history. We ought to graspit in terms of its way of employing history self-consciously to an end. In thiscase, I claim that the end is freeing thinking. Whether anyone believes I knowwhat I mean when I say that, or whether this exercise is one of edification, isbeyond my control, but it would be beyond my control even if I claimed it werenot. But whether such a claim as “Dewey influenced Foucault” has powerdepends upon whether it is thought to be knowledge, and in postphilosophicalhistories, that amounts to asking whether the tool of history has been effectivelyemployed upon itself. The claim is more constituted in its historicity than in itshistory, since the former is the condition of the latter. Such is the paradox of post-philosophical histories, and this by way of an admission that I really do not knowif Dewey influenced Foucault, but I think it is valuable to think of their relationin this way for other than simply antiquarian reasons. I do know, in the sense ofbeing willing to act upon, the idea that the Parrhesiast, the “truth-teller,” inFoucault’s sense of the term, is a desideratum today, especially compared withother strategies of deploying power/knowledge, such as flying passenger planesinto tall buildings.

Notes1. I would like to thank my colleague Thomas Alexander of Southern Illinois University,

Carbondale, for reading several versions of this article and offering extensive and useful criticism;Donald P. Verene and James Gouinlock of Emory University also offered helpful guidance in thewriting of this essay. Gérard Deledalle of the University of Perpignan provided me with much-needed information, encouragement, and copies of several of his books. John J. Stuhr ofPennsylvania State University answered important questions for me, and directed me to some valu-able sources. Along with Professor Stuhr, Edmund Jacobitti of Southern Illinois University,Edwardsville, and Robert Hollinger of Iowa State University read and commented on the manu-script. I must also thank David R. Hiley for helping me to initiate this project at the University ofMemphis in 1988, for his sobering and sober advice since, and for directing me to some importantsources I had missed. Paul Rabinow of the University of California, Berkeley, also answered ques-tions, for which I thank him.

2. Stuhr gives particular attention to work by Vincent Colapietro, John Ryder, and Kai Nielson.See Stuhr (90) for a bibliographical survey of the literature.

3. In trying to give philosophical temperament its due in his own thinking, Stuhr distinguishes“will to intimacy” (pragmatism’s dominant temper) from “will to oppositionality” (the dominanttemper of French postmodernism). I have reservations about this way of characterizing the tempersof the two schools, but certainly agree that pragmatists are bad at recognizing what is unpragmaticin their own habits of thinking.

4. A defense of metanarrative in this same context may be found in Steven Best (231–36; cf.also 264).

5. Foucault refers here to his essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (Foucault 1984a, 76–100).Many would beg to differ with the words “very small,” given that this essay is widely taken to beone of Foucault’s most important contributions to the history of thought.


6. Foucault says, “My entire philosophical development was determined by my reading ofHeidegger” (1988, 250), a man he never wrote about.

7. In particular, I have in mind the fecund philosophical exchange brought about through HenriBergson’s contact with William James, and later with Dewey as well. But it is also important toremember how much phenomenology in general owes to James. See the correspondence betweenBergson and James in Ralph Barton Perry (2, 599–636).

8. A good example of this influence can be seen in Foucault’s nearly single-handed creation ofa split between the new Leftist government of François Mitterand (which came to power in May1981) and the French intelligentsia (teamed up with the Conféderation Française des TravailleursDémocratiques). Foucault, who had at first enthusiastically supported the new Leftist governmentin France, became quickly dissatisfied with its policy regarding the military coup in Poland. Hestarted and published a petition (along with Pierre Bourdieu) that inspired so much sympathy thatthe government was forced to abandon its laissez faire posture. For a full account of this, see Eribon(296–308). This biography is the primary (although not the only) source of the historical details ofFoucault’s life given in this section.

9. See James Miller (163).10. See Miller (esp. 66–73). 11. See David Macey (esp. 205–6). 12. See Macey (206–7).13. I wish to thank Professor Deledalle for kindly taking the trouble to provide the details of his

relations with Foucault. I had a short interview with Professor Deledalle in March 1990, and sincethen he has answered my questions through a generous correspondence.

14. See Eribon (187 ff.) for a more detailed account of how and why Foucault came to Tunis.This point about how the invitation was extended is in dispute in the various biographies; cf. Miller(183–85).

15. See the account of Foucault’s activity at Vincennes in 1969 in Eribon (201 ff.), Miller (175ff.), and Macey (209 ff.).

16. See Eribon (194–95) for more details about Foucault’s activities during this time.17. From the book jacket of the Gallimard, Paris, edition of the book, cited by Eribon (191).

Foucault said similar things in a number of other places. For instance, see interviews by J. J.Brochier and Jean-Michel Palmier in Foucault 1989 (45–62).

18. This is a “review” only in the sense that Foucault wrote the summary of the contents, etc.,for advertising and informational ends. His praise is superlative, but little can be concluded fromthis, because the summary aims mainly at informing the public what is being put out by the PressesUniversitaires de France, not at engaging the text in a critical way.

19. Professor Deledalle says he cannot be certain that Foucault read the entire translation ofDewey’s Logic. This information is contained in a letter from Professor Deledalle to the presentwriter, dated 5 May 1991.

20. Deledalle’s treatment is more exhaustive than either of the two large studies published onDewey in 1991, Robert Westbrook’s John Dewey and American Democracy and Stephen C.Rockefeller’s John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism.

21. The allusion is to Jesus’ words to the man who wanted to bury his father before followingJesus.

22. The work is so thorough, clear, and comprehensive that Schneider reported to Deledalle in a31 May 1964 letter that at a meeting he had recently attended, Southern Illinois University Pressrequested that Deledalle’s book be translated so that it could be published as a companion volumeto the planned (now completed) thirty-eight-volume critical edition of Dewey’s collected works. SeeDeledalle 1964 (38–39). As Schneider said, “We would like to have an English translation of yourbook on Dewey as a sort of intellectual biography, to accompany the early volumes of his works.There is nothing comparable to your work being done in this country.” When no translator could befound, the press settled for a volume entitled A Guide to the Works of John Dewey, ed. Jo AnnBoydston.

23. All translations from the French are mine.



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24. In this regard, Deledalle follows George Dykhuizen’s well-known biography, The Life andMind of John Dewey, and disagrees with the accounts of Sidney Hook and Irwin Edman, who erro-neously suggested that Burlington had little poverty and a homogeneous population. See Dykhuizen(2–3, 327–28).

25. Particularly, see Foucault’s Madness and Civilization (1973) and The Birth of the Clinic(1975a), both of which were originally published before he went to Tunisia. These works exploreexclusion and its social function. The practical effect of this sort of work was that Foucault hadbecome a sort of spokesman for the insane, without ever having intentionally undertaken to start areform movement (see Eribon, 125–26). His original interest in these themes, if Eribon is correct(and on this point Miller concurs), was more personal than political, and more academic curiositythan ethical concern.

26. The debate as to whether or not Dewey ever really got beyond Hegel is interminable inDeweyan circles, but Deledalle holds that he did, slowly. From the death of George S. Morris in1889 to Dewey’s reading of James’s Principles of Psychology in 1891, the “organic idealism” ofDewey’s youth began to crack and finally break. See Deledalle 1967 (92 ff.). In Foucault’s case,Rorty has pointed out that there is a strong temptation to lump him with all the other “Hegelian his-toricists,” and “to think of him as a somewhat twitchy and overwrought member of the Hegelianteam.” But we should not make this mistake, he argues; Foucault has gotten beyond Hegel andincluded Hegel within his broad critique of modernity. See Rorty 1986 (45). Foucault himself makesilluminating remarks to this effect (1988, 249–50).

27. See Deledalle 1967 (30–39) and Eribon (16–22).28. See Eribon (13) and Deledalle 1967 (26–27).29. The quote from Dewey is in the Detroit Tribune, 12 April 1892.30. The quote is from the Italian newspaper Corriere della sera, 12 November 1978.31. Many of these articles and essays are collected in two volumes in Characters and Events:

Popular Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, ed. Joseph Ratner (1929). They are also spreadacross several volumes of the critical edition of Dewey’s collected works, but have a greater effectupon the reader in the two-volume Ratner edition.

32. In particular, Dewey was involved in the Trotsky Commission in 1937 (see Deledalle 1967,479 ff.), and Foucault in the infamous Bruay-en-Artois affair (see Eribon, 248 ff.).

33. Foucault actually had been involved in governmental efforts to reform French education, andhe was in part responsible for drafting the plan that inadvertently motivated the student revolt inMay 1968. His activities were Rightist if anything (see Eribon, 164, and Miller, 172–73), and hewas largely thought to be a conservative due to this one limited political project in which he tookpart. See Eribon (135 ff).

34. See Eribon (132) and Macey (206).35. This interview, by J.-P. El Kabbach, is in Foucault 1989 (35–43; see esp. 40). Cf. also Macey

(193–94), which makes clear that while Foucault did not deny saying these things, he was not happyto see them printed.

36. A stronger case can actually be made for the claim that Foucault reformed his idea of “expe-rience” in response to Dewey than can be made for the idea of “history of the present.” Both Millerand Macey notice and document this transformation without making the connection to Foucault’sreading of Dewey. Miller points out: “Criticizing his [Foucault’s] own previous preoccupation with‘what I called an “experience”,’ he now maintains [in The Archaeology of Knowledge] that it wouldbe ‘vain to seek, beyond structural, formal, or interpretive analyses of language, a domain that is atlast liberated from all positivity, in which the freedom of the subject, the labor of the human being,or the unfurling of a transcendental purpose could be displayed’ . . . as he deliberately admits in hisconclusion, he has deliberately ‘ignored’ the phenomenon of ‘transcendence’” (160).

Dewey had also begun with a transcendental view of “experience,” as is detailed in Deledalle’sbook, and moved towards a “genetic” view instead. Had reading Dewey undermined Foucault’s wayof seeing experience as a transcendental phenomenon? As Macey notes, in The Archaeology ofKnowledge, Foucault had criticized his earlier habit of “giving too great and too enigmatic a role to


‘experience’ and for thereby coming dangerously close to accepting that history had an ‘anonymousand general subject’” (Macey, 200). Here Foucault is avoiding what Dewey called “the philoso-pher’s fallacy,” of taking abstract philosophical concepts for realities. The trick was to articulate aview of experience that did not commit this error, and scholars are not in agreement as to whetherDewey or Foucault ever succeeded in doing this. Yet it was a common concern of both, and morethan an accident that Foucault’s rejection of his own earlier tendency to use transcendental argu-ments coincided with his reading of Dewey’s arguments for rejecting this approach.

This topic is actually of greater philosophical importance than the topic of this article, and adetailed study of Foucault’s use of the idea of “experience” before The Archaeology of Knowledgeand after it needs to be done. However, because it does not fit directly into the aims of this article itwill not be undertaken here.

Another significant study has been carried out by Frank J. Mackie (155–76, 301–4). Mackieemploys Thomas Alexander’s general approach to Dewey in an effort to see the rapprochementbetween Dewey and Foucault on the relations among inquiry, art, and the human sciences—especially as these issues congeal around the question of the body. Finally, another important partof the story one needs to connect Dewey to Foucault is provided, unknowingly, by Robert Castel(237–52). Naturally, the case that Foucault used the technique of the “problematic situation” in writ-ing histories helps the case that Dewey influenced him, since the most extensive treatment of theproblematic situation is in the very book by Dewey that Foucault read, the Logic. Castel is not evi-dently aware of or interested in any of this.

37. Letter from John Stuhr to the author, dated 10 December 1990.38. This interview, by John K. Simon, is in Foucault 1989 (63–72; quotation, 71).39. The similarity in vocabulary becomes still more striking when one compares L’Archéologie

du savoir to Logique: La théorie de l’enquête, the French translation of Dewey’s Logic.40. Cf. also 207. In both the case of Dewey and that of Foucault, Rorty is only right if one under-

stands “method” to mean “traditional Cartesian method.” Both Dewey and Foucault employed avariety of methods, and were hardly averse to the idea of “method” as such.

41. This idea was central enough to Foucault’s view that the group he founded in Berkeley, Cali-fornia (which continues to this day) calls its newsletter “History of the Present” (see Eribon, 314).

42. See for example, Foucault 1984a (90–93).43. It bears mentioning that Dewey used the same phraseology in a much more widely read

work, Democracy and Education: “The segregation which kills the vitality of history is divorce frompresent modes and concerns of social life. The past just as past is no longer our affair. If it werewholly gone and done with, there would be only one reasonable attitude toward it. Let the dead burytheir dead. But knowledge of the past is the key to understanding the present. History deals with thepast, but this past is the history of the present” (1916, 213–14). Deledalle also translated this bookof Dewey’s into French (first appearing in 1975), but I have no concrete evidence that Foucaultread it.

44. In a fascinating passage in Religion in the Making, of which Dewey was very likely aware,Alfred North Whitehead had stated in 1926: “It is a curious delusion that the rock upon which ourbeliefs can be founded is an historical investigation. You can only interpret the past in terms of thepresent. The present is all that you have; and unless in this present you can find general principleswhich interpret the present as including a representation of a whole community of existents, you can-not move a step beyond your little patch of immediacy. Thus history presupposes a metaphysic” (84).

This is, of course, not an idea that was new by any stretch even at this time. Whitehead, forexample, had given clear voice to this idea as early as 1916 in “The Aims of Education,” and JamesHarvey Robinson, Charles A. Beard, and Carl Becker had said similar things in the nineteen teens,twenties, and thirties. One also finds such ideas as history of the present in Emerson’s controversial1838 Harvard Divinity School Speech. If one is willing to understand “history of the present” inbroad enough terms, one even finds it in Saint Augustine’s Confessions: “What is now evident andclear is that neither future nor past exists, and it is inexact language to speak of three times—past,present and future. Perhaps it would be exact to say: there are three times, a present of things past,



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a present of things present, a present of things to come. In the soul there are these three aspects oftime, and I do not see them anywhere else. The present considering the past is memory, the presentconsidering the present is immediate awareness, the present considering the future is expectation”(235; bk. 11, chap. 26). The connection between historicity and history of the present is a complexone calling us towards the most complex issues surrounding the nature of time.

45. As tempting as it is to enter into an analysis of power in relation to Foucault and Dewey, Ishall have to leave this off for the present. Of course, the definitive collection of Foucault’s writingson the topic of power in English is Essential Writings of Foucault, Volume 3: Power (2000). A num-ber of excellent studies in this subject have been published in the past. See Todd May 1993, KarlisRacevskis 1983, and Randall McGowen 1994 (91–112).

46. Cited by Eribon (225). Cf. also Macey (257–59) and Miller (187–94).47. A full summary of the G. I. P.’s activities and Foucault’s role in the group can be found in

Eribon (224 ff.).48. Upon surveying the evidence and comparing this to his personal recollections, Professor

Deledalle was led to say that Foucault “probably owes to Dewey his idea of a history of the pres-ent, and possibly, partially at least—and to Sartre—the idea of playing a leading role (which wasrepugnant to him) . . . among the Parisian intelligentsia” (personal letter to the author, dated 14November 1991).

49. As nearly as I can determine, the most likely source of this idea in Dewey is Josiah Royce,who observed in The Philosophy of Loyalty that “philosophy is essentially a criticism of life” (1908,14). Whitehead asserted the same thing about the function of philosophy in The Principle ofRelativity: With Applications to Physical Science (1922, 5), while Dewey was writing Experienceand Nature, but I do not know whether Dewey read it; he never cited it, in any case.

50. For a more recent translation, cf. Hegel 1953 (3–10).51. See my analysis of Jaspers on this point (Auxier 1995). 52. Stephen Pepper seems to have been thinking along the same lines in his notion of the “root

metaphor” (1942, 1996). The contemporary work in cognitive linguistics by such thinkers as GeorgeLakoff and Mark Johnson (1981), while it does not rise to quite the same level of understanding asone would find in Foucault, Dewey, or Pepper, is nevertheless a good example of the self-consciousemployment of intelligible universals. Stephen Fesmire has done a good bit of work towards relat-ing this general viewpoint to a more Deweyan context (Fesmire 1994a, 31–44; 1994b, 149–54).

53. See Foucault 1986 (43–45). Here Foucault alludes to Heidegger by bringing up the “art ofexistence,” but does not name him in explaining his employment of the term “care.”

54. An interesting book by Leon Pompa, Human Nature and Historical Knowledge: Hume,Hegel, and Vico (1990), compares the philosophies of human nature and history among these threethinkers. I have many reservations about Pompa’s views and the quality of his research, but the factthat a scholar has noted this connection is important in my view.

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