Classic Debate: Chomsky vs Foucault - on Human Nature (English Dubbed)

The full tv debate by Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault

A debate about human nature, between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, on 22 October 1971.

Upscaled using A.I. machine learning algorithm.

English dubbed by Jonathan Streeter

[tashfiqulislam]

Mom : How's the job search going ?
Me :

[iqgustavo]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:

00:05 🌍 Galileo's discovery challenged the belief that humans were at the center of the cosmos, similar to how Chomsky's linguistics challenged the centrality of humans in culture and society.
03:42 🗣️ Chomsky emphasizes that innate knowledge, like language, is a fundamental aspect of human nature that enables us to derive complex knowledge from limited data.
09:38 💭 Foucault questions the concept of human nature, viewing it as a research program rather than a definitive characteristic, and suggests that it points to areas of study rather than human potential.
16:32 🧠 Foucault discusses the concept of "episteme" as a set of rules that governs human thinking within a particular culture, challenging individual creativity.
18:08 🔄 Chomsky and Foucault discuss the role of creativity, with Chomsky focusing on individual creativity and Foucault emphasizing the role of communal rules and grids.
28:13 🧐 Chomsky and Foucault agree that science progresses through limitations and structures in human minds, leading to creative leaps in knowledge.
31:58 🤔 Chomsky and Foucault discuss the reasons for not addressing personal questions and the relation of knowledge to society.
34:44 🌍 Both Chomsky and Foucault agree on the importance of addressing political questions and societal transformation.
37:19 🏭 Chomsky advocates for anarcho-syndicalism as a form of social organization that maximizes individual freedom and creativity.
39:51 🏛️ Foucault emphasizes the need to critique institutions that may seem neutral but serve to maintain power structures.
45:27 ⚖️ Chomsky discusses the relationship between legality and justice, arguing that actions can be justifiable if they aim for a more just outcome.
57:37 💭 Foucault questions whether justice itself is a concept that functions within class-based societies and whether it would persist in a classless society.
01:02:12 🤝 Chomsky believes that there is an absolute basis for justice grounded in fundamental human qualities, suggesting that justice exists independently of class-based systems.
01:02:26 🧠 Chomsky emphasizes concepts like justice, decency, love, and kindness as real human qualities.
01:03:04 🔍 Foucault suggests that concepts like human nature, kindness, justice, and human essence are constructs of their civilization and class system.
01:04:13 🔄 Chomsky discusses the irony of intellectuals from middle and upper classes identifying as proletarians and their role in revolution.
01:05:08 📚 Chomsky discusses the importance of how the trained intelligentsia identify themselves, either as technocrats or part of the workforce, in modern industrial society.
01:06:05 ✊ Chomsky talks about his courageous stance against the Vietnam War and coexistence of MIT's involvement in war research and libertarian values.
01:07:46 🤝 Chomsky explains the balance of coexisting elements within institutions like MIT, which allows dissent and encourages civil disobedience as a means of opposing war.

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[rickwrites]

The biggest difference in 1971 Chomsky is square and Foucault is hip. Apparently the latter was given a large brick of hash by the moderator to attend. It lasted years, and he referred to it as The Chomsky Hash.

[kerry-chzi]

First, the narrator"explaining" this to us (not the "debate" moderator) completely derails the opening focus. Second, when the "debate" resumes, it is Foucault following his own statement, with Chomsky's initial reply having been voiced over by this narrator. Chomsky's basic argument (when he is heard) seems to proceed from his idea that innate grammar stems from human habits of pre-existing mental patterns and that science results from when these tendencies line up with that which can be measured with empirical data. The German moderator then interrupts Foucault's narrative of social rather than cognitive structures at the root of human "creativity" with his observation of some unrelated topic of "The death of man" made by Foucault elsewhere, which Foucault points out has nothing to do with staying on topic. At this point the "moderator" attempts to contextualize the discussion himself, chastizing Foucault for "refusing to speak about his own creativity" to which a disgusted Foucault replies, " Well, you can wonder about it, but I can't help that, " cutting to an expression on Chomsky's face that communicates non-verbally, his agreement with Foucault that at least on the topic of this moderator, they may be in full agreement.

Basically Foucault goes on to inform this idiot narrator that his own thesis involves themes that are far more interesting to him than this moderator's personalization of social trends, such as the larger currents of western epistemological thought.

Cut to the equal idiot narrator, who proceeds with his agenda, which is to state that Foucault refuses to "distance himself from politics" in a discussion about culture, pointing out that Foucault and Chomsky agree on the necessity to "abolish and destroy the forms of capitalism, in order to favor direct worker's participation." This speech is what we get instead of actually hearing what Foucault and Chomsky actually said to each other in what was in all likelihood, a far more intricate discussion, sans the idiot moderator.

We then return to Chomsky answering everything that we DIDN'T hear Foucault say, discussing the very "repression oppression, coercion, and destruction by the institutions" by which these two interlopers have derailed any meaningful witnessing by the viewers of the video.

Finally on the issue of "oppressive institutions, " Foucault and Chomsky agree and are both allowed to speak, leaving us with their conclusions, but without a clear basis of how these conclusions were arrived at. Chomsky, then points to the usefulness of a model of a basic human nature" in solving these problems, to which Foucault replies only that such a sexualized bourgeois model is dangerous, to which Chomsky replies with his opposition to Viet Nam within American politics relative to the action that must be taken, for which the proposed model of human nature must be constructed to establish the criteria for the ethics necessary to freeing society according to the civilization liberated from said bourgeois oppression.

The moderator then makes his only intelligent contribution to the discussion thus far, by mentioning "population census papers" that must be filled out by citizens of holland under threat of legal penalty. Foucault takes this point immediately to a source of "class struggle", while Chomsky aims his moral objection to state authority at "imperialism, " neither of which directly address the issue of the "social disobedience" of the pragmatic act of government of counting citizens.

At last however we arrive at the main difference between the thinkers; Foucault arguing against a higher standard of justice because it too is a product of the social forces it must control, whereby Chomsky counters with the idea that without establishing the standard to begin with, there is no basis for action upon a conviction of justice, finally pointing out that "legality and justice are not identical, " nor are they mutually exclusive ideas. Whereby Foucault points out that basic the human nature of the class war against unjust authority is fought not because their war is just but because the oppressed "want to win."

Chomsky then states that if the proletariat is just going to cause chaos and instability, that he doesn't want the proletariat to win at all costs. Foucault states that if such a proletariat is indeed just another class of oppressors, that it is simply another shade of a bourgeois faction. Chomsky rejects this theory of social revolution stating that is the justification of revolution itself that may lead to the dead end of the concept. Foucault counters by saying that though the violent seizure of power might itself be unjust, it is justified because the action leads to "the suppression of class power in general."

Chomsky rests on the idea that the ends and only the ends must justify the means. Those ends must have the result of "some sort of an absolute basis ultimately residing in fundamental human qualities." Foucault's final statement is that notions such as justice, love, kindness and so forth are simply the result of social constructions themselves.

The students in the studio audience seem to be attuned to the fact that Chomsky himself is member of the military industrial complex of MIT, to which Chomsky points out that he hopes he is a symbol of activism towards some of its policies.

In the end, it seems that nothing can be resolved here. Perhaps the whole value of these exercises among the intellectual class is that they are observed and considered, so that the greater number of humans don't seek drastic and invasive solutions that lead to stupid actions.

[anitkythera]

Anyone else notice that the captioned translations calls him “fucko”? Well played translators!

[jiles]

I need another person to pause the video to explain the explanation of the guy who pauses the video to explain Focults exolainations.

[DorothyPotterSnyder]

I am not at all convinced that human kindness and other natiral human values are class-structured as Foucault insists.

[pb]

Chomsky being asked about MIT got him sweating harder than Foucault standing in an elementary school

[ryankieft]

Anyone else impressed by the questions that the crowd asks?

[kingj]

1:02:49 Wow, I need to read more Foucault

[Johnconno]

I keep imagining Alex and his Droogs strolling in and destroying the place.

[ginabean]

40:00 "Groupe social" translates into "social group" not "social class"

[bubblegumgun]

Foucoult just slapped chomky silly threw the whole debate

1:01:40
he's talking about God grounding objective morality/justice
God embodying love, sympathy, kindness from which we derive it.
(and let me answer personally even as a theist, i cant tell you right now, no God still does not ground those, in ANY religion, so Christians need to shut up thinking they have a win here)

Chomsky is appealing to God and admits he can not defend it he admits in his "don't push me on it" comment
Foucault takes the victory lap and says, "No", all that is just made up subjective crap and you can never derive justification from any of it"

[drakosophos]

This is a phenomenal channel. Thank you for this.

[mutestingray]

I’m no Chomsky honk, but I did find this enlightening.

[cheri]

I am now rewatching this debate again. I admire both Focault and Noam Chomsky.
Focault, for me, theories and concepts are asking deeper questions as that of Frantz Omar Fanon's " Black Skin White Masks" and "The Wretched Earth."
Sarte and Simone de Beavoir are great minds.
One has to grow beyond the culture one is brought up in to acquire more knowledge no matter which field one is studying. Centuries of histories of philosophy, sciences, religious divisions of wars, and competition.
Psychiatristry and Psychology with its complexity.
If it is between Sigmund Freud or Carl Gustav Jung, the choice is Jung for me. The "Redbook" Libra Novus edited and with an Introduction by Sonu Shamdasani.
Heraclitus stated that nature loves to hide. The mystery schools of myths of the Greeks and Romans.
Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristole, and Aristole taught Alexander the Great.
Aristole was the father of political science.
Hannah Arendt is considered the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century, "The Banaily of Evil, " "Tolertarism."
A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, art, and peace.
Philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead
Futhernore, how can one advance to a better society with the Empire been so corrupted by powers of greed?
American Imperialism and colonization and Great Britain Empire and colonization of recent. Economics enters in with false derrritives of numbers by minds wanting more money and greed.
"How Much Land Does One Man Need" is a short story by Tolstoy.
Heigel, Karl Marx, and Ingels.
What did Karl Marx really teach? Who actually got Marx correct? For its time, Lenin did.
Now we are in 2024.
Capitalism with its claws of the powers of our elites of colleges that has been bought out by government who trains people how to think, except by those who thinks outside the box of control. Technocrats and kleptocracy.
Which form will gather next with American Empire and colonization and Imperialism in addition to Great Britain' s Empire and colonization?
Will nuclear war with its contractors build more weapons to murder innocent more families and children?
Apartide and genocide in Palestine. Zionism is an ideology. It does not mean one is fascist or racist.
What will happen to Nato, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the European Union, designed with its mechanisms of control?
Dr. Iian McGilchrist's books, "The Master and His Emissary, " The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, "The Matter With Things, " 2 volumes, Our Brains and Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, and all those in various fields of knowledge and his lectures speaking with one another to bring a better understanding for our world.
As for myself on my journey of life, Krishnamurti and Alan Watts have had an enormous contribution, in addition to the updates of Carl Jung's writings.
Peace and love.
🙏❤️🌍🌎🌏🌿🕊🎶🎵🎶💫✨️💫✨️

[Aesthetic.Heritage]

Thank you for doing this. I could actually listen to the entire debate while working.

[darillus]

absolutely wonder conversation (debate) love how they offered them OJ instead of wine or water, the 70s😂

[leonsantamaria]

Human Foucault is more about, culture, biological process and ...bla bla bla.... Chomsky is about linguistics, well, culture and linguistics is together, l don't see the working and the explanation, easy way for people comprehend that, l don't great in philosophy, see. Foucault and Chomsky... repit the same principal concept, we looking for are semple answer, I understood is debate, but for, l .. debate is the construction of one answer, this 2 great tinkers... make confused 🤔....who is right ...the vision of the relatively reality of Foucault is him and the vision relatively reality of Chomsky is him to, ...l a bla bla .... but nothing new, like l mention...is the same principal repetition of some one is ready think, is the positive and negative of the same, but nothing in between, we... Read book thousand .... and we don't have the answer, correct. Society is the most complicate organisms in the universe. 🦁👍🇲🇽

[CromwellAndy-dr]

Young Robert Lewis Brian Thomas Richard