Dewey and Foucault: What's the problem?

Abstract

This article explicates a valuable but under-noticed point of contact between John Dewey and Michel Foucault. Both agreed that thinking arose in the context of problems such that the work of thought for both proceeds by way of working through and working over problems. Both affirmed that thinking arose in problematic situations; that it was about clari-fying those situations, and that ultimately it was directed towards achieving a degree of reso-lution of what was problematic in the situation. Both agreed that thinking - or inquiry - was not fundamentally about the representations of a situation; either those produced by a con-temporary thinker or as an exercise directed at historical materials. Both agreed that a history of ideas as autonomous entities, distorted not only the process of thinking as a practice, but also the reasons for which it had been engaged in, often with a certain seriousness and urgen-cy, the first place: that is to say, such approaches covered over the stakes. Both agreed that the stakes involved something experiential and entailed a form of logic (or in Foucault's later vo-cabulary a mode of 'veridiction'), in which the thinker could not help but be involved. © Paul Rabinow 2011.