Transcription
In the 17th century, when Galileo discovered that the earth turned around the sun rather than the other way around, many people were in a state of great shock. They had thus far believed that humans were at the center of the cosmos, and around this idea, they had built their whole belief system. Suddenly, this did not seem to be the case anymore.
The theology can be clarified by pointing out that, in relation to culture, he takes a sort of Galileo-type standpoint. Since the time of Galileo, people have thought that, when it came to culture in society, humans were at the center. If one realizes that the rules according to which mankind behaves, for the largest part, were already invented long before one was born, and the name of the inventor remains completely unknown to us—Galileo. But from another perspective, one can also compare Chomsky to Galileo because his work in the science of language, linguistics, has had a great revolutionary influence over the whole world. Chomsky has brought about a major transformation in the field of linguistics. Interestingly, Chomsky's theories point in the exact opposite direction as the theories of Foucault, giving much more primacy to the subject.
The confrontation between these two completely different thinkers is moreover good to remember that they work in very different fields. Chomsky is a language researcher; in other words, Foucault's interest lies in the history of scientific language, while Chomsky's interest lies in the daily language we use. This is interesting, and maybe also not coincidental, that the debate between these two thinkers only really gets exciting in the second half when they start discussing politics. I believe it is good that this is preceded by a theoretical part. This is because, in any discussion about philosophy and society, what matters are not the political standpoints certain thinkers happen to take, but rather on the basis of which arguments they do so. It might be nice to know that this discussion took place in the auditorium of the Technical College of Eindhoven—a discussion between two philosophers, two researchers whose work is characterized by great precision, great detail, and also great clarity. Further, I thought it quite symbolic that it took place in a space with lots of glass; the inner and outer world blended together. During the broadcast, you could see the traffic outside passing by—symbolic indeed, because the relationship between the inner and outer world is central to the first half of the fourth philosopher's debate about human nature and the ideal society.
[Applause] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome at the fourth debate of the International Philosophers Project. Tonight's debaters are Mr. Michel Foucault, the Collège de France, and Mr. Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Both philosophers have points in common, endpoints of difference. Perhaps the best way to compare those philosophers is to look at them as mountain diggers working at the opposite sides of the same mountains with different tools, without knowing even if they are working in each other's direction. All learning concerning men, ranging from history to linguistics and psychology, are faced with the question whether, in the last instance, we are the product of all kinds of external factors, or if, in spite of our differences, we have something we could call a common human nature, by which we can call each other human beings. So my first question is to Mr. Chomsky, because you, Mr. Chomsky, employ often the concept of human nature, and even in this connection you are using terms like innate ideas and innate structures. Which arguments can you derive from linguistics in order to give such a central position to this notion of human nature?
Well, let me begin in a slightly technical way. A person who's interested in studying language is faced with a very definite empirical problem; he's faced with an organism, a mature, let's say adult speaker, who has somehow acquired an amazing range of abilities, which enable him, in particular, to say what he means, to understand what people say to him, to do this in a fashion that I think it's proper to call highly creative. Now, the person who's acquired this intricate and highly articulated and organized collection of abilities—the collection of abilities that we call knowing a language—that person has been exposed to a certain experience; he has been presented, in the course of his lifetime, with a certain amount of data, of info, of direct experience with the language, and we can investigate the data that's available to this person. And having done so, in principle, we're faced with a very clear, a reasonably clear and well-delineated scientific problem, namely the problem of accounting for the gap between the really quite small quantity of data—small and rather degenerate quantity of data that's presented to the person, to the child—and the very highly articulated, highly systematic, profoundly organized resulting knowledge that he somehow derives from this data. Furthermore, even more remarkable, we notice that in a wide range of languages—in fact, all that have been studied seriously—there are remarkable limitations on the kinds of system that emerge from the very different kinds of experience to which people are exposed. Well, this—there's only one possible explanation for, in a one-container, rather schematic fashion, for this remarkable phenomenon—namely the assumption that the individual himself contributes a good deal, an overwhelming part, in fact, of the general schematic structure and perhaps even of the specific content of the knowledge that he ultimately derives from this very scattered and limited experience. That is, to put it rather loosely, the child must begin with the knowledge—certainly not with the knowledge that he's hearing English or Dutch or French or something else—but he does start with the knowledge that he's hearing a human language of a very narrow and explicit type that permits a very small range of variation. And it's because he begins with that highly organized and very restrictive schematism that he's able to make the huge leap from scattered and degenerate data to highly organized knowledge. And I would claim then that this instinctive knowledge, if you like, this schematism that makes it possible to derive complex and intricate knowledge on the basis of very partial data is one fundamental constituent of human nature. But then I assume that in other domains of human intelligence, and other domains of human cognition and even behavior, something of the same sort must be true. Well, the collection of this mass of innate scheme, schematisms, innate organizing principles, which guides our social and intellectual and individual behavior—that's what I mean referred to by the concept of human nature.
Well, Mr. Foucault, if I'm thinking at your books like *L'archéologie du savoir*, I got the impression that you are working on a completely different level and also just—visit opposite aim, opposite goal. If I am thinking about the word schematism in relation to human nature, then you are just trying to work out that there are several periods, several schematisms. What do you think about this?
Well, if you permit, I will answer in French because my English is so bad that I would be ashamed to answer in English. Il est vrai que je me méfie un peu de la notion de nature humaine, et pour la raison suivante: je crois que les concepts ou les notions dont une science peut se servir n'ont pas tous le même degré d'élaboration. Prenons l'exemple de la biologie. Dans le domaine de la biologie, il y a des concepts plus ou moins bien établis, comme le concept d'un réflexe. Il existe aussi des notions périphériques qui ne jouent aucun rôle organisateur au sein de la science. Ce ne sont pas des instruments d'analyse, et ce ne sont pas non plus des descriptifs. Ces notions servent simplement à signaler certains problèmes, ou plutôt à signaler certains champs qui ont besoin d'être étudiés. Un concept très important dans le domaine de la biologie, aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, la notion de vie était à peine utilisée lorsqu'on étudiait la nature, on classait les êtres naturels, vivants ou non-vivants, dans un vaste tableau hiérarchique. La vie était un concept qu'ils n'utilisaient pas et dont ils n'avaient pas besoin. À la fin du XVIIIe siècle, un certain nombre de problèmes se sont posés, par exemple en ce qui concerne l'organisation interne de ces êtres naturels qui avaient été jusqu'alors obscurs et qui n'avaient pu être perçus jusqu'alors. Soudainement vint... [Music] en chimie ont aussi mis en évidence certains problèmes en relation avec les liens entre les réactions chimiques et les processus physiologiques des organismes, et c'est ainsi qu'est apparu tout un domaine, complètement nouveau pour les biologistes, qui est aujourd'hui connu sous le nom de vie. La vie était un concept qui servait à signaler de nouveaux champs d'étude que la science devait encore découvrir. Je dirais, en tant qu'historien des sciences, que le concept de vie était un indicateur épistémologique, un index des problèmes qui restaient à découvrir, et je me suis demandé si l'on pouvait peut-être dire la même chose de la nature humaine. Est-ce donc comparer le concept de nature humaine de Chomsky avec le concept de vie tel qu'il est utilisé en biologie et dans l'histoire de cette science? Il fait cela parce qu'il voit le concept de nature humaine davantage comme une indication d'un programme de recherche que comme une indication du potentiel de réalisation de l'humanité. Pour lui, la nature humaine agit comme une liste de courses scientifiques et rien de plus. Tant qu'il est clair que les domaines de la biologie, de la physiologie et de la neurologie n'ont toujours pas les moyens de décrire adéquatement la nature humaine et la capacité humaine de langage.
The moderator, Mr. Elders, finds it difficult to keep the interaction flowing between the two speakers. This is partly due to the different languages they speak, importantly due to the fact that Chomsky and Foucault inhabit such different worlds of thought, to the point in which their ideas easily slide past each other. We actually observe the curious phenomenon of two brains thinking simultaneously. In order to further elucidate it from his own system of that thought, Chomsky, the concept of creativity plays an important role, and the following part of the debate will be largely dedicated to this issue. For Chomsky, creativity is actually a characteristic of all human beings; everybody uses it—people stuck in traffic who unexpectedly and on the spot have to think about what to do next, the educator who doesn't want to fall into a pattern of authoritarian behavior and when confronted with a difficult pupil has to invent new behavior, but above all this creativity applies to the child who learns a language and who curiously learns to produce new languages; she constantly emphasizes the so-called epistemological field in which human activity takes place. Of this epistemological field or episteme is described as the totality of unconscious rules that manage the totality of all separated fields of knowledge and also calls it a system of elements, and in the debate the word grill is mentioned—bar or grid. Perhaps it's best to speak of a network within which everybody in a particular culture thinks, whether they want it or not. It is a certain set of rules to which everybody's thinking obeys and with which people search for identity, coherency, and so forth, and the network, the system, is not a creation of particular individuals; it decides the rules of the think and do habits we call culture, which every individual is subjected to. Such a system is not a thing or idea but lies precisely in between. These days, the history of thought is not to be associated with the history of ideas or even the development of the mind, but rather it should be understood as discontinuous transformations transitioning from one network to another network. That is a totally different approach from that of Chomsky, for whom creativity plays a central role. At this point, we encounter Foucault's dethroning the subject, as already illustrated with the example of Galileo. One could say that, paradoxically, it is a philosophy without philosophers—an idea to be generalized because humans are, according to Foucault, greatly absent within their own culture. In this respect, Foucault's strong and negative reaction towards the moderator who showed interest in private matters of his life. This is an introduction to the following quite detailed theoretical part of the debate, which seems to mainly focus on one question: To what extent is the individual able to discover something new, and if so, how should we make sense of this? This seems to me a very relevant question, especially if we remind ourselves that we need quite some new forms of behavior, knowledge, and science if we want to survive together in this world.
We resume the debate where Foucault explains why he doesn't pay much attention to the creativity of the individual. From a historical perspective, within the traditional history of science, the creativity of individuals has been accorded maximum importance. The history of science, up until recently, essentially consisted of showing how an individual, whether it was Newton or Mendel, had been the creator or rather the discoverer of a reality that was already existing in things and in the world—a reality that no other person had previously discovered. I believe the postulate that lies at the core of the traditional history of science is that truth exists in order to be known, yet the human mind, due to the effect of a number of inhibitions or obstacles, has not managed to see this truth. The mind is made to see the truth, and a contingent obstacle is impeding him to see it. According to some historians, this obstacle could be linked to socioeconomic conditions, or to different forms of mentality, or to a belief and naivety in the old religious myths and moral themes; all of these could act as obstacles, as blinders to those who want to see the truth. Reality, the mind is meant to see it, is made to have access to the truth. In this traditional conception of the history of science, on the one hand, there is an emphasis on the creativity of the individual who has the right to possess the truth, and yet a system of obstacles will prevent him from capturing, formulating, and constructing this truth to which he is essentially entitled to possess. I believe the problem that is being posed is the exact opposite. What happens when we witness a great scientific transformation? In the great scientific transformation, for instance, the birth of biology mid-17th century, or the birth of philology at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, it is true that a number of obstacles, prejudices, preconceived ideas tumble and disappear. What strikes me, however, is that science, at the moment of its birth, not only gets rid of a certain number of obstacles but also eliminates and masks a certain amount of existing knowledge. It's as if applying a new grid which allows for the appearance of phenomena that had been previously masked while at the same time masking already existing knowledge. Therefore, a science, the advancement of science, and the acquisition of science is not simply the oblivion of old prejudices or the fall of certain obstacles; it is a new grid that masks certain things while allowing for the appearance of new knowledge. Therefore, when I criticize the notion of creativity, what I mean is that truth is not acquired through a kind of continuous and cumulative creation, but rather through a set of grids stacked on top of one another which leak old and collect new knowledge.
I think in part we're slightly talking in cross-purposes because of a different use of the term creativity. In fact, I should say that my use of the term creativity is a little bit idiosyncratic, and therefore the onus falls on me, not on you, in this case. But when I speak of creativity, I'm not attributing to the concept the notion of value that is normal when we speak of creativity; that is, when you speak of scientific creativity, you're speaking properly of the achievements of a Newton. But in the context in which I've been speaking about creativity, it's a normal human event. I'm speaking of the kind of creativity that any child demonstrates when he is able to come to grips with a new situation, describe it properly, react to it properly, tell us something about it, you think about it in a new fashion for him, and so on. These are—I think it's appropriate to call those creative acts—but of course without thinking of those acts as being the acts of a Newton. It's the lower levels of creativity that I've been speaking of. Now, as far as what you say about the history of science is concerned, I think that's correct and illuminating and particularly relevant, in fact, to the kinds of enterprise that I see lying before us in psychology and linguistics and the philosophy of mind. That is, I think there are certain topics that have been—what was your word?—depressed or put aside during the scientific advances of the say past two centuries, a century ahead, but now I think we can overcome those; it's possible to put aside those limitations and forgettings and to bring into our consideration precisely the topics that animated a good deal of the thinking and speculation of the 17th and 18th century and to incorporate it within a much broader and I think deeper science of man that will give fuller role—though certainly not hope that will not hope to give complete understanding—to such notions as innovation and creativity and freedom and production of new entity, new elements of thought and behavior within some system of rule and schematism. Those are concepts that I think we can come to grips with in reality.
I believe there is a quite strong similarity between what Mr. Chomsky said and what I have tried to show. In other words, there exist, in fact, only possible creations, possible innovations. One can only, in terms of language or of knowledge, produce something new by putting into play a certain number of rules which will define the acceptability or grammaticality of these statements, or which will define, in the case of knowledge, the scientific character of the statements. We can roughly say that linguists before Mr. Chomsky mainly insisted on the rules of construction of statements unless on the innovation represented by every new statement or the hearing of a new statement. And in the history of science or in the history of thought, we placed more emphasis on individual creation and we had kept aside and left in the shadows these communal, general rules which obscurely manifest themselves through every scientific discovery, every scientific invention, and even every philosophical innovation. These are not only linguistic rules but also epistemological rules which characterize contemporary knowledge.
Perhaps I can try to react to those comments within my own framework, in a way which maybe will shed some light on this. How is it that we're able to construct any kind of scientific theory at all? How is it that, given a small amount of data, it's possible for various scientists, for various geniuses even, over a long period of time, to arrive at some kind of a theory—at least in some cases—that is more or less profound and more or less empirically adequate? This is a remarkable fact, and in fact, if it were not the case that these scientists, including the geniuses, had—if they didn't have built into their minds somehow, obviously unconscious specification of what is a possible scientific theory—then this inductive leap would certainly be quite impossible. Just as if each child did not have in-built into his mind the concept of human language in a very natural way, in a very narrowing way, then the inductive leap from data to knowledge of a language would be impossible. So even though the process of, let's say, deriving knowledge of physics from data is far more complex, far more difficult for us, for organisms such as us, far more drawn out in time, requires intervention of genius, and so on and so forth, nevertheless, in a certain sense, it rel—the achievement of discovering physical science or biology or whatever you like—is based on something rather similar to the achievement of the normal child in discovering the structure of his language. That is, it must be achieved on the basis of an initial limitation, an initial restriction on the class of possible theories. And the fact that science converges and progresses, that itself shows us that such initial limitations and structures exist. That is, I don't think that scientific progress is simply a matter of accumulative addition of new knowledge and absorption of new theories and so on. Rather, I think it has this sort of jagged pattern that you described—forgetting certain problems and leaping to new theories and so on and so forth and transforming the same knowledge. But I think that the explanation for that—so I think one can perhaps hazard an explanation for that fact—and oversimplifying grossly, I really don't mean what I'm—I'm not going to say literally—it's as if, as human beings, a particular biologically given organism, we have in our heads to start with a certain set of possible intellectual structures, possible sciences, okay? Now, in the lucky event that some aspect of reality happens to have the character of one of these structures in our mind, then we have a science. So, and it's because of this—it's because of this limitation, initial limitation in our minds to a certain kind of possible science—it's precisely that that provides the tremendous richness and creativity of scientific knowledge. That is, if it were not—it's important to stress that this has to do with your point about limitation and freedom—if it were not for these limitations, we would not have the creative act of going from a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of experience, to a rich and highly articulated and complicated array of knowledge. It's precisely because of that that the progress of science, I think, has the erratic and jagged and transformational character that you describe. And that doesn't mean that everything is ultimately going to fall within the domain of science; quite the contrary. Personally, I believe that many of the things we would like to understand, and maybe the things we would most like to understand, such as the nature of man or the nature of a decent society or lots of other things, might really fall—be outside the scope of possible human sciences.
Well, I think we have now two—two questions out of this statement. One question is if you can agree, Mr. Foucault, do you agree with this statement about a combination of limitation, fundamentally—combination? It's not a matter of combination; creativity only becomes possible thanks to a system of rules. It's not a mixture of order and freedom; freedom can only be exercised thanks to a system of regularity. Where perhaps I don't completely agree with Mr. Chomsky is when he places these regularities within the sphere of the human mind or human nature. I would like to know whether one cannot discover the system of regularity and of constraint which makes science possible somewhere else, even outside the human mind—in social forms, in relations of production, in class struggles, etc. But what does this theory of knowledge mean for your theme of the death of man or the end of the period of the 19th and 20th centuries? But this is not related to what we are talking about. I don't know because I was trying to apply what you have said in relation to your anthropological concept. You've already refused to speak about your own creativity and freedom, haven't you?
Well, I'm wondering what are the psychological reasons for this. You can wonder about it, but I can't help that. But what are the objective reasons, in relation to your perception of understanding of knowledge of science, for refusing to answer these personal questions? Does it have to do with your conception of society? When there is a problem for you to answer, what are your reasons for making a problem out of a personal question?
No, I'm not making a problem out of a personal question; I make a personal question an absence of a problem. In the entire tradition of the history of thought, ideas, and sciences, one has always questioned the problem of knowing: At what age was Newton weaned into conceiving the universal law of gravity? At what period did Cuvier meet his first mistress in order to finally discover fossils and comparative anatomy, etc.? I believe these types of analyses, which I'm now simplifying, are not very interesting. On the other hand, it is much more interesting to understand the transformation of a certain knowledge within the general field of science and within the so-called vertical field which consists of a society, a culture, a civilization at a particular moment in time. Once we finally grasp the totality of this transformation, we realize that the little individual moments of a wise man's life are not important.
Again, Foucault's last comment suggests how the individual life of the researcher tends to disappear from sight. But how do we explain then the relation of man in relation to its culture in politics, and maybe even the question about how to change this culture and society? After all, one can show within the history of science and culture the input of the individual is almost negligible. The question, how do I act, the political question, rapidly develops into how far can mankind escape from its own culture. It's important to note that Foucault doesn't want to distance himself from politics. He says, "I would have to be ideologically blind to not interest myself for that which is most substantial to human existence—economic relations, power relations, you name it." Therefore, Chomsky and Foucault do agree on the importance of the political question. In his opinion, it is required to abolish and destroy the different forms of capitalism in order to favor direct workers participation. It may also be informative to explicitly mention that Chomsky defines his political standpoint as anarcho-syndicalism in workers councils and so on.
On and so forth. Decentralization, socialization, and participation are key words in Chomsky's political program. Chomsky might say he sees no obvious relation between his scientific and political views, but the following opening statement reveals that he had straight from his scientific conceptions to politics. His political and scientific views may not flow logically one from the other; they do certainly head in the same direction.
Well, let me begin by referring to something that I've already discussed. That is, if it is correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of human nature is the need for, uh, creative work, for creative inquiry, for, for free creation, uh, without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions, then of course it will follow that a decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized. That means trying to overcome the, uh, elements of repression and oppression and destruction and coercion that exist in any existing society—ours, for example—as a historical residue. Not a federated, decentralized, uh, system of free associations incorporating economic as well as social institutions would be what I refer to as anarcho-syndicalism, and it seems to me that it is the appropriate, uh, form of social organization for an advanced technological society in which human beings do not have to be forced into the position of tools or cogs in the machine; in which the creative urge, the, uh, that I think is intrinsic to human nature will in fact be able to realize itself in whatever way it will. I don't know all the ways in which it will. I would say that I'm much less advanced than Mr. Chomsky in this respect; that is, I admit not being able to define, not even to propose an ideal social model for the functioning of our scientific or technological society.
Scientific technology, on the other hand—one of the tasks that seems immediate and urgent to me, over and above anything else, is this: It is the custom, at least in our European society, to consider that power is localized in the hands of government and that it is exercised through a certain number of particular institutions, such as the administration, the police, or the army. One knows that all these institutions are made to transmit and apply orders and to punish those who don't obey. But I believe that political power also exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions that look as if they have nothing in common with political power and as if they are independent from it. And more generally, all teaching systems, which appear to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power. Another example is psychiatry, which in appearance is also intended for the good of humanity and for the knowledge of psychiatrists, but in reality is another way to bring to bear the political power over a social class. Justice is yet again another example. It seems to me that the real political task in our contemporary society is to criticize the workings of institutions, particularly the ones that appear to be neutral and independent, and to attack them in such a way that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will finally be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.
If we seek to advance straightaway a profile or a formula of the future of society without having thoroughly criticized relations between the different forms of political violence that exercise their power within our society, we run the risk of letting them be reproduced, even in the case of the noble and apparently pure forms, such as anarcho-syndicalism. I would certainly agree with that, not only in theory but also in action. That is, there are two intellectual tasks: one, and the one which I was discussing, to try to create the vision of a future just society; another task is to understand very clearly the nature of power and oppression and terror and destruction in our own society, and that certainly includes the institutions you mentioned as well as the central institutions of any industrial society, namely the, the economic, commercial, and financial institutions, in particular in the coming period, the great multinational corporations which are not very far from us physically tonight. Those are the basic institutions of, uh, oppression and coercion and autocratic rule that appear to be neutral. After all, they say, well, we're subject to the democracy of the marketplace. Still, I think it would be a great shame to lose or to put aside entirely the somewhat more abstract and philosophical, if you like, task of trying to draw the connections between a concept of human nature that gives full scope to freedom and dignity and creativity and other fundamental human characteristics, uh, and relates that to, uh, some notion of social structure in which those properties could be realized, in which meaningful human life could take place. And in fact, if we are thinking of social transformation or social revolution, though it would be absurd, of course, to try to draw out in detail the point that we're hoping to reach, still we should know something about where we think we're going, and such a theory may help to us.
Yes, but then isn't there a danger here? If you say that a certain human nature exists, that this human nature has not been given the rights and possibilities that allow it to realize itself in our contemporary society—that's really what you have said, I believe—and if one admits this, doesn't one risk defining this human nature, which is at the same time ideal and real and has been hidden and repressed until now, in terms borrowed from our society, from our civilization, from our culture? I will give an example by greatly simplifying it. Marxism, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, admitted that in capitalist societies man hadn't reached its full potential for development and self-realization; that human nature was effectively alienated in the capitalist system; and Marxism ultimately dreamed of a liberated human nature. On the other hand, what model did it use to conceive, project, and eventually realize that human nature? It was in fact the bourgeois model. Marxism considered that a happy society was a society that gave room, for example, to a sexuality of a bourgeois type, to a family of a bourgeois type, and it is moreover very true that this has happened in the Soviet Union. A kind of society, simultaneously real and utopian, had been reconstituted and transposed from the bourgeois society of the 19th century in which humans finally were able to realize their true nature. The result that you also realized, I think, is that it is difficult to conceive of what human nature precisely is. Isn't there a risk that we will be led into error? Mao Zedong spoke of bourgeois human nature and proletarian human nature, and he considers that they are not the same thing.
Well, you see, I think that in the intellectual domain of political action—that is, the domain of trying to construct a vision of a just and free society on the basis of some notion of human nature—in that domain we face the very same problem that we face in immediate political action. For example, to be quite concrete, a lot of my own activity really has to do with the Vietnam War, and a good deal of my own energy goes into civil disobedience. Well, civil disobedience, uh, in the United States, uh, is an action undertaken, uh, in the face of great uncertainties, of considerable uncertainties about its effects, uh, for example, it threatens the social order in ways which, let's say, might—one might argue—bring on fascism. That would be very bad for the, for America, for Vietnam, for Holland, and for everyone else. So there's a danger—that is one danger—in undertaking this concrete act. On the other hand, there's a great danger in not undertaking it; namely, if you don't undertake it, uh, the society of Indochina will be torn to shreds by American power. And in the face of those uncertainties, one has to choose a course of action. Well, similarly, in the intellectual domain, uh, one is faced with the uncertainties that you correctly pose. Our concept of human nature is certainly limited, partial, socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet, at the same time, it's of critical importance that we have some, some direction; that we know, uh, what impossible goals we're trying to achieve if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge while remaining very open to the, uh, strong possibility—in fact, overwhelming probability—that at least in some respects we're very far off the mark.
Well, perhaps it is interesting to, um, to go on a little bit further on this problem of strategy. So, for example, in the case of Holland, we had something like population census; you were obliged to fill in your papers and so on, you know, so this you would call, if you are not filling in your paper, civil disobedience. Right now, I, I would be a little careful about that, because, uh, uh, going back to some very important point that Mr. Foucault made, one does not necessarily allow the state to define what is legal. The state has the power to enforce a certain concept of what is legal, but power doesn't imply justice or correctness. Even so, the state may define something as civil disobedience and may be wrong in doing so. For example, in the United States, the state defines it as civil disobedience to, let's say, derail an ammunition train that's going to Vietnam, and the state is wrong in defining that as civil disobedience because it's legal and proper and should be done. It's proper to carry out actions that will prevent the criminal acts of the state, just as it's proper to violate a traffic ordinance in order to prevent a murder. If I was standing at a street corner and the traffic light were red, let's say I was standing in my car and I drove across the traffic light to prevent somebody from, let's say, machine-gunning a group of people, of course that's not a violation of law; it's an appropriate and proper action. No sane judge would convict you for such an action. Similarly, a good deal of what the state authorities define as civil disobedience is not really civil disobedience; in fact, it's legal, in fact obligatory behavior, in violation of the commands of the state, which may or may not be legal commands. So one has to be rather careful about the, about calling things illegal, I think.
Yes, but I would like to ask you a question. When in the United States you commit an illegal act—which I regard as illegal, not just the state—no, the states—when the state considers it illegal, do you justify your action in terms of justice, of an ideal, or do you justify it in terms of necessary class struggles? Very often when I do something which the state regards as illegal, I regard it as legal, yes, because I regard the state as criminal. But in some instances that's not true; that is, let me be quite concrete about it, uh, and move from the area of class war to imperialist war, where the situation is somewhat clearer and easier. Take international law, a very weak instrument as we know, but nevertheless it incorporates some rather interesting principles. Well, international law in many respects is the instrument of the powerful; that is, international law permits much too wide a range of international forceful intervention in support of existing power structures that define themselves as states and against the interests of masses of people who happen to be organized in opposition to states. But in fact, international law is not solely of that kind, and in fact there are interesting elements of international law, let's say embedded in the United Nations Charter, which permit—in fact, I believe require—the citizen to act against his own state in ways that the state will falsely regard as criminal, but nevertheless he's acting legally because international law also happens to, to prohibit the threat or use of force in international affairs except under some very narrow circumstances, of which, for example, the war in Vietnam is not one. Which means that in the particular case of, let's say, the Vietnam War—the one that interests me most—the American state is acting in a criminal capacity, and people have the right to stop criminals from, from murdering people. Uh, just because the criminal happens to call your action illegal when you try to stop him, that doesn't mean it is illegal. I mean, a perfectly clear case of that is the present case of the Pentagon Papers in the United States, which I suppose you know about. Reduced to its essentials and forgetting legalism, what is happening is that the state is trying to prosecute people for exposing its crimes; that's what it amounts to.
So it is in the name of a purer justice that you criticize the functioning of justice. It is important for me to know about this. In France, there is currently a debate about the problem of justice and that of popular judicial institutions. Believe that in order to make a critique of the current penal system or of police practices, we have to create a kind of tribunal which, in the name of a superior ideal and human justice, will condemn the practices of the French judges or policemen. Moreover, there is another group of people—myself included—who say this shouldn't be done, because when they refer to an ideal justice which the tribunal is supposed to apply, they refer to a certain number of judicial ideas which were formed in our time by a certain number of individuals who are themselves directly or indirectly a product of their societies. We have to attack the police and their practices, but in terms of war and not in terms of justice. I believe that your role in the war is a just role; that you're fighting a just war—to bring in a concept from another domain and that I think has to is, is important. If you thought that you were fighting an unjust war, you couldn't follow that line of reasoning, and the only… I would like to slightly reformulate what you said. It doesn't seem to me that the differences between legality and ideal justice—it's rather between legality and better justice. Now, this better system may have its defects; certainly will. But comparing the better system with the existing system and not being confused into thinking that our better system is the ideal system, we can then argue, I think, as follows: that the concept of legality and the concept of justice are not identical; they're not entirely distinct either, insofar as legality incorporates justice in this notion, in this sense of better justice, referring to a better society, then we're ju—then we should follow and obey the law and force the state to obey the law and force the great corporations to obey the law and force the police to obey the law if we have the power to do so, of course, if—but not inst—just finally—if in those areas where the legal system happens to represent not better justice but rather the techniques of oppression that have been codified in a particular autocratic system, well, then a reasonable human being should disregard and oppose them, at least in principle; he may not, for some reason, do it in fact.
I would simply like to reply to your first sentence when you said that if you didn't consider the war you wage against the police to be just, you wouldn't wage it. I would like to reply to you in terms of Spinoza and tell you that the proletariat doesn't wage war against the ruling class because it considers such a war to be just; the proletariat wages war against the ruling class because it wants, for the first time in history, to take power, and because of its will to overthrow power it considers such a war to be just. Yeah, I don't agree. One wages war to win, not because it's just. I don't personally agree with that. For example, if I could convince myself that attainment of power by the proletariat would lead to a terroristic police state in which, uh, freedom and, uh, dignity and decent human relations would be destroyed, then I wouldn't want the proletariat to take power. In fact, the only reason for wanting any such thing, I believe, is because one thinks, rightly or wrongly, that some fundamental human values will be achieved by that transfer of power. Hello. When the proletariat takes power, it may be quite possible that the proletariat will exert towards the classes over which it has just triumphed a violent, dictatorial, and even bloody power. I can't see what objection one could make to this. But if you ask me what would be the case if the proletariat exerted bloody, tyrannical, and unjust power towards itself, then I would say that this could only occur if the proletariat hadn't really taken power, but that a class outside the proletariat, a group of people inside the proletariat, a bureaucracy or petite bourgeois elements had taken power.
Well, I'm not at all satisfied with that theory of revolution for a lot of reasons, historical and other, but even if one were to accept it for the sake of argument, still that theory, uh, is holding—that is maintaining—that it is proper for the proletariat to take power and exercise it in a violent and bloody and unjust fashion because it is claimed—in my opinion, falsely—that that will be—that that will lead to a more just society in which the state will wither away, in which the proletariat will be a universal class, and so on and so forth. If it weren't for that further justification, the concept—the concept of a dictatorship of the proletariat, violent and bloody—would certainly be unjust. At least, I, I, for example, am not a committed pacifist; that is, I don't say I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though the use of violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one has to estimate relative injustices, but the use of violence and the creation of some degree of injustice can only itself be justified on the basis of the claim and the assessment—which always ought to be undertaken very, very seriously and with a good deal of skepticism—that this violence is being exercised because a more just result is going to be achieved. Uh, if it does not have that grounding, it really is totally immoral, in my opinion. As far as the aim of the proletariat in leading a class struggle is concerned, I don't think it would be sufficient to say that it is in itself a greater justice. What the proletariat will achieve by expelling the ruling class and by taking power is precisely the suppression of class power in general; that is the further justification; that is the justification. But one doesn't speak in terms of justice but in terms of power. It's because the end that will be achieved—it is claimed—as a just end. If the [Music] No, you know, Leninist or whatever you like would dare to say, we have a right to take power, let's say we, the proletariat, and then throw everyone else into crematoria, let's say. I mean, if that were the consequence of the proletariat taking power, of course it would not be appropriate. The idea is—and the, as for reasons I mentioned, I'm skeptical about it—that, uh, a period of violent dictatorship, of perhaps violent and bloody dictatorship, is justified because that will mean the submergence and termination of class—of class oppression—a proper end to achieve in human life. But it seems to me that in any case the notion of justice itself functions within a society of classes as a claim and as a justification for it made by the oppressed class—justification—and in a classless society, I'm not sure that we would still use this notion of justice.
I, well, here I really disagree. I think that there is a sort of an absolute basis, uh, if you press me too hard I'll be in trouble because I can't sketch it out, but some sort of an absolute basis ultimately residing in fundamental human qualities, in terms of which a real notion of justice is grounded. And I think that our existing systems of justice can—I think it's too hasty to characterize our existing systems of justice as merely systems of class oppression. I don't think that they are that—I think that they're—that they embody systems of class oppression, and they embody elements of other kinds of oppression, but they also embody a kind of a groping towards the, uh, true human—humanly valuable—concept of justice and decency and love and kindness and sympathy and so on, which I think are real. Well, do I have time to answer? Yes. How much? Because two minutes. But I would say that that is unjust, absolutely. I will simply say that I can't help but to think that the concepts of human nature, of kindness, of justice, of human essence and its actualization, all of these are notions and concepts that have been created within our civilization, our knowledge system, and our form of philosophy, and that as a result they form part of our class system, and one can't—however regrettable it may be—put forward these concepts to describe or justify a fight which should and shall, in principle, overthrow the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for which I can't find the historical justification.
Well, um, I think we can start immediately the discussion, and, uh, Mr. Chomsky, I would ask you one question. In your discussion you had the vocabulary "a proletariat," "we as proletarians." It's the irony of history that at the moment young intellectuals coming from middle class and upper class call themselves proletarians and say we must join the proletarians, but I don't see any class-conscious proletarians. That's a great dilemma. It is not true in our given society that all people are doing useful, productive work or self-satisfying work; obviously it's very far from true. Those people—lots of people—who are excluded from, uh, the possibility of productive labor, and I think the rev—the revolution, if you want, should be in the name of all human beings, but it will be—have to be—conducted by certain categories of human beings, and those will be the—I think—the human beings who really are involved in the productive work of society. Now, what that is will differ depending on the society. In our society, it, I think, includes intellectual workers. So I think that the student revolutionaries, if you like, have a—they have a point, a partial point; that is, it's a very important thing in a more—in a modern, advanced industrial society—it's very important how the trained intelligentsia identify themselves, uh, if they're going to be technocrats, let's say, or servants of either the state or private power, or alternatively whether they're going to identify themselves as part of the workforce who happen to be doing intellectual labor. If the latter, then they play—they can and should—play a decent role in a progressive social revolution; if the former, then they're part of the class of the oppressors. I have an additional, uh, one small additional question or more remark to you; that is, that you wish—you were very courageous—attitude towards the war in Vietnam. How can you survive in an institution like MIT, which is known here as one of the great war contractors and intellectual makers of this war? There are two aspects to that: one is the question how I'm—how MIT tolerates me, and the other question is how I tolerate MIT. Well, as to how MIT tolerates me, here again I think one shouldn't be overly schematic. It's true that MIT is a major institution of war research, but it's also true that it embodies very important libertarian values which are, I think, quite deeply embedded in American society. Fortunately for the world, they're not deeply embedded enough to save the Vietnamese, but they're deeply enough embedded to prevent far worse—worse disasters. And here I think one has to be a bit qualified; that is, there is imperial terror and aggression, there is exploitation, there is racism, lots of things like that, but there's also a real concern—coexisting with it—for individual rights of assert, which, for example, are embodied in the Bill of Rights, which is by no means simply an expression of class oppression; it is also an expression of the necessity to defend the—the individual against state power. Now, these things coexist, you know, it's not that simple; it's not just all bad or all good, and, uh, it's because it's the particular balance in which they coexist that makes it—that makes an institute that produces weapons of war be willing to tolerate, uh, in fact, you know, in many ways even encouraged, to be quite honest, a person who's involved in civil disobedience against the war. Now, as to how I tolerate MIT, that raises another question. There are people who argue—and I've never understood the logic of this—that a radical ought to dissociate himself from all oppressive institutions; that is, the logic of that argument is that Karl Marx shouldn't have studied in the British Museum, which, if anything, was the symbol of, you know, the most vicious imperialism in the world, the place where all the treasures of empire were gathered, you know, the rape of the colonies was all poured in there, and so on and so forth. But I think Karl Marx was quite right in studying in the British Museum. He…
Was right in using the resources and, in fact, the liberal values of the civilization that he was trying to overcome against it. And I think the same applies in this case. But aren't you afraid that your presence at MIT gives them a clean conscience?
I don't see how, really. I mean, I think my presence at MIT serves marginally to—I hope a lot—I don't know how much—to increase student activism against a lot of the things that MIT stands for. For example, um, ladies and gentlemen, I think this has to be the end of the debate.
Mr. Chomsky, Mr. Foucault, I thank you very much for your fargoing discussion, both the technical theoretical way as the political way. I thank you very much, both at the part of the audience here and at home. [Applause] Me [Applause] [Music] So you