RT Article
T1 THE CONFESSING ANIMAL IN FOUCAULT AND WITTGENSTEIN
JF Journal of religious ethics
VO 34
IS 4
SP 533
OP 559
A1 Plant, Bob
LA English
YR 2006
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1822385865
AB In The History of Sexuality, Foucault maintains that “Western man has become a confessing animal” (1990, 59), thus implying that “man” was not always such a creature. On a related point, Wittgenstein suggests that “man is a ceremonial animal” (1996, 67); here the suggestion is that human beings are, by their very nature, ritualistically inclined. In this paper I examine this crucial difference in emphasis, first by reconstructing Foucault's “genealogy” of confession, and subsequently by exploring relevant facets of Wittgenstein's later thinking. While there are significant correlations between Foucault and Wittgenstein, an important disparity emerges in relation to the question of the “natural.” By critically analyzing this, I show how Wittgenstein's minimal naturalism provides an important corrective to Foucault's more extravagant claims. By implication, we see why any radical relativist, historicist, and/or constructivist position becomes untenable on Wittgensteinian grounds, even though Wittgenstein himself is often read as promoting such views.
K1 Naturalism
K1 Historicism
K1 Confession
K1 Genealogy
K1 Wittgenstein
K1 Foucault
DO 10.1111/j.1467-9795.2006.00284.x