The Abridged Ajani

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Which Existentialist Philosopher Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Albert CamusYou are Albert Camus, so you are one sweet absurdist. He built largely upon the framework of existentialists before him, but introduced the concept that life is absurd, but that we should continue living anyway. You have strong liberal leanings, although you annoy the Communists. You are susceptible to driving fast, and possibly crashing into a tree. Albert Camus 71% Jean-Paul Sartre 68% Friedrich Nietzsche 61% Martin Heidegger 46% Soren Kierkegaard 29% Not An Existentialist 14%

Well personally I am more familiar, and resonate more with Sartre and Nietzsche amongst the big existentialist names. Kierkegaard is fine, actually, but his “leap to faith” seems to just repeat what good ol’ Ecclesiastes mentioned a good few thousand years ago.

Camus - hmm, I have heard of this name. Perhaps the only reason why I would resonate with him is for his idea of the ‘absurd’ (which Kierkegaard mentioned before him), but it is not one of the most fundamental things in my existential style. Sartre lags close behind a really tight 3% - must be a slightly-skewed answer I gave there I think. But who cares? Sartre is but another “empty” vessel without intrinsic meaning. :p

Try the quiz, all ye existentialists - it’s quite fun actually, some of the questions are really absurd (meaning weird), heh.

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It is said that after the passing of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault is his direct successor, both whom explored philosophy via the “genealogical method” of conceptual analysis backed by historical evolutions and categorisations.

Interestingly, Foucault had earlier called his works an “archaelogy”, and it was only much later that he started to deem them as “genealogies”. Why so? Many who read the works of Foucault are left wondering often about what exactly is the genealogical method. It is uncodified, unlike that of the scientific method and the likes of it - but it is an interesting way to “empirically study philosophy”, just as how the scientific method offers us a way to demystify the workings of Nature.

Not explicitly, Nietzsche himself actually is the pioneer of the genealogical method, not Foucault as popularly believed, who even had called himself a “Nietzschean” once. Foucault gave the Nietzchean method a name - hence the “genealogical method”. Yet it should not be of much concern to the average philosopher save for the critic of Foucault - definitions of the philosophical methods of inquiry are never as much scrutinized and fundamental as say, the historical method or the scientific method, raised by postmodernists in recent years.

Nietzsche had once called for a “study of other histories” other than that of morality, he having written on it once with On The Genealogy of Morality (1887). Foucault fulfilled this very request many years later, penning down the micro-histories of madness; sexuality; punishment and more. It is therefore advisable for us to look at the Nietzschean method of “genealogical analysis” first, and how Foucault employed it second. Also conversely true, is to understand how the genealogical method shows itself in Foucault’s works - here, the example used shall be Foucault’s Madness and Civilisation (1961).

The method was based, quite simply, on the historical behaviour and thought of Mankind - to look at a single concept, and to wonder, how would it look like to different individuals across different times in the existence of Man, to be an objective examiner studying a particular phenomena’s evolution, to “interview” people of different times via texts and records left by them about an issue. Perhaps the “genealogist of concept” was not so concerned with an evolution of meaning, but rather a change in social definition of a concept.

Herein lies a history of society - an “archaelogy” of concept. Yet Nietzsche and Foucault both saw links in between each conceptual change, a cause for redefinition from the previous, a “birth” from a parent - hence the “genealogy” of conceptual meaning. It is very much like the traditional genealogist tracing up the family tree, trying to uncover the man before this man of the same surname, of the same brand, of the same representation.

Finally, the “genealogist of concept” usually derives from his tale a hidden trend, a “side-effect” of the change of meaning. Intriguingly, rather than to have the trend be the “side-effect” of the concept, Nietzsche and Foucault, the two well-known users of this method, have virtually always made the concept sound like the “side-effect” of the trend instead - and this has very scary consequences for society if true.

We shall be looking at how Foucault is the “genealogist of concept” for the idea of “madness” in his 1961 work “Madness and Civilisation”. He begins his retelling of the story of “madness” from the Middle Ages. He argues that the definition of the “mad” by society has not been constant.

In the fifteenth century, there was no “madness” - while lepers were excluded socially and physically, the “mad” had not come to exist as a concept, as a social group (anti-social, rather) of people of their own. Those with what we would call “mad” today, were allowed to roam the streets freely, not seen as a public nuisance of any sort, and it was as far as noted - a non-issue.

Only with the decline of leprosy, were the mad’s turn come to take over the status of the lepers - to be excluded. Foucault cites the example of the “ship of fools”, supposed to bring the mad away from Europe and all the land of mortals, to isolate the mad on the seas for life.

In the seventeenth century, against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, came what Foucault termed as the “Great Confinement”, where the “unreasonable” members of the populace were locked away and institutionalized. They, Foucault taught, were the new mad. In the eighteenth century, madness had came to be seen to be an opposite of Reason.

The nineteenth century deemed “madness” as an illness of the mind. This was the final straw in the history of madness which allowed Foucault to draw his conclusion. Interestingly, Foucault views “madness” in all its notions, as something not necessarily bad, but good - as a check against social order and Reason, a license to be against society, to be anti-social. With the rise of “madness” as a mental illness, and consequently “treatments” designed to “cure” the mad, madness was losing such of its function.

Foucault argues that such “treatment” was but punishment to the mad - they cured nothing as the mad were “tortured”, only serving to prevent the mad from the “maladies” internalising the fear of punishment - there is nothing cured, only “legally prevented”.

Indeed, this “trend” I spoke of earlier on seemed to be the increase of perceived “social order” and Reason. Yet it is necessarily from the evolution of Madness that has these occurred, or is it an attempt, at doing so that the evolution occurred? Is it the means to the end? Or is it the ends to the mean? I leave you with that thought. A hint is that Foucault’s works are popularly agreed to discuss about a topic in relation to yet another concept called Power.

Foucault ended, hinting excellently, that madness viewed as a disease was not necessary - and could very well not be beneficial. Madness, to him, was a genius of Romanticism, in the so-called Age of Reason. Age of Reason, really, with the way Madness is dealt with and defined? Again that is another thought left best to you the reader to ponder.

The genealogical method is truly interesting - and is a tool that can generate new ways to look at a given topic. In Introducing Nietzsche (2005) by Laurence Gane, he says “to write such histories requires a transgression of the traditional boundaries of thought - a radical rethinking of what we mean by ‘knowledge’ in relation to ‘power’.” The genealogical method seems to be archaelogy on the research, but genealogy on the thought process.

Having said that, the genealogical method is clear to have flaws. Just like one can criticize the conventional genealogist (on family trees) for inaccurate or incomplete data, one can too criticize Foucault so. Just as the ancient world would like to erase some parts of history away against contemporary Man’s study, archaelogy “on paper” must be done to uncover these unglamorous bits of human history for inclusion in Foucault’s writings. My point is that the “genealogical method” is as open to debate and criticism as any other mode of inquiry, and yet is as valid as a philosophical mode of inquiry as compared to any other e.g. dialectical analysis.

However, if correctly practised, those who follow the genealogical method can find themselves unearthing the ugly side of Man in his attempt for his betterment, and applied towards concept, can give important clues to Man in his quest for knowledge and it is exceptionally useful for those studying sociological concepts, and put a philosophical twist to things.

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