1st Edition
Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons Elaborating Foucault’s Pragmatism
This book argues that the received view of the distinction between freedom and power must be rejected because it rests on an untenable account of the discursive cognition that endows individuals with the capacity for autonomy, self-governed rationality.
In liberal and Kantian approaches alike, the autonomous subject is a self-standing starting-point, whose freedom is constrained by relations of power only contingently because they are external to the subject’s constitution. Thus, the received view defines the distinction between freedom and power as a dichotomy. Michel Foucault is arguably the most important critic of that dichotomy. However, it is widely agreed that Foucault falls short of justifying the alternative view he develops, where power and freedom are essentially entangled instead. The book fills out the gap by investigating the social preconditions of discursive cognition. Drawing on pragmatist-inferentialist resources from the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, Sellars, Brandom), it presents a new interpretation of Foucault’s philosophy that is unified by his overlooked idea of “the archaeology of knowledge”. As a result, the book explains why and how power and freedom must be entangled, but also what it means ethically to pursue and gain autonomy with respect to one’s own understanding.
Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, critical theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and the history of 20th-century philosophy.
Introduction
1. Structural Heteronomy
2. Replacing the Sovereign Subject with Savoir
3. Keeping It Implicit: A Defense of the Archaeology of Knowledge
4. Against Power?
5. Overcoming the Present Limits of the Necessary
Epilogue
Biography
Tuomo Tiisala is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Vienna, Austria. He has taught at the University of Helsinki, New York University Abu Dhabi, and New York University, where he was a Bersoff Faculty Fellow after earning his PhD from the University of Chicago.
"Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons transforms our understanding of Foucault and opens up a wholly new perspective on the features of modernity he made visible. Tiisala boldly and deftly develops an account of the master idea that unifies Foucault’s thought, both developmentally and thematically. The leitmotif the author discerns brings Foucault’s multifarious writings into contact and conversation with the Sellarsian neopragmatist strand of contemporary Anglophone philosophy of language, freshly illuminating both currents of thought."
Robert B. Brandom, University of Pittsburgh, USA
"Tiisala’s book is a brilliant, timely contribution to a renewed understanding of Michel Foucault’s philosophical and critical project. By emphasizing the enduring relevance of the archaeology of knowledge for Foucault’s problematization of the relationships between power and freedom, it compellingly reveals a pragmatist dimension in his thought. It thus masterfully shows the—still underappreciated—importance of Foucault’s work for current debates in social and political philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of language."
Daniele Lorenzini, University of Pennsylvania, USA
