Raw being and violent discourse Foucault, Merleau-Ponty and the (dis-)order of things

pp. 91-112

in: Rudi Visker, Truth and singularity, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

Phenomenology has been too pacifying, Deleuze tells us, and he suggests that we leave Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty for what they are and turn to Foucault in order to discover a more profound Heracliticism. Genealogy is too much a war-machine, others like Habermas respond, and they recommend different remedies. There is nothing extraordinary about this situation. We are, in fact, all too familiar with it. We have come across it in different philosophical settings, with different parties engaging one another and with different choices to be made. We all know from our own experience — and lest we forget, there will always be a flourishing para- philosophical literature to remind us — that this "originating" miracle we know as the philosophical tradition has been "breaking up" (cf. VI 124).