21:02
Just listened to Chomsky and Foucault's debate. It started from human nature and whether there are shared intrinsic factors at play in the human race's cognitive and scientific history (as Chomsky believes), or rather it's all dictated from the outside reality, partly after passing thru the filters of society and class interaction etc (as I gather that Foucault believes).
Then the discussion transformed into a political-scientific debate over whether we are allowed to envision or outline some basic ideas of a better society based on the values that we find human beings intrinsically cherish and strive to realize (as Chomsky does [envision]), or we should avoid such assumptions and ditch those old notions of morality and justice as extrinsic and indoctrinated thru the course of history and hierarchic society (as Foucault does [avoid]).
Chomsky characterizes his political endeavor to decentralize power and empower the proletariat as a moral and virtuous one that reaches for a better (not ideal) and more just society. Those moral and human values, in his belief, have their roots in human nature (He's an atheist of sorts, BTW. He doesn't refer to a supreme and unworldly standards when he talks about moral values).
Foucault on the other hand, denies that any such notions could be essential to human nature, and argues that our very conception of justice is formed thru our experience of interactions withing the classes of society. Therefore the struggle of the proletariat to overcome the centralized power should not be characterized in any such notions, but should be seen as a sheer power struggle: people oppose the power elite for no reason other than that they want more power to themselves.
Personally, I find Foucault's theory a load of contradictory and paradoxical hooey. In short, the purported fact that people fight for power and not to realize an intrinsic notion of justness (however vague), is referring to an essential trait in human nature which is to seek power over his/her oppressors. That contradicts F's denial of any absolute human standards.
Furthermore, the inherence of humans' physical attributes (such as coloring, height, etc) is taken to be obvious in today's biology: to a great extend they are results of our genetic make-up. Why is it that when it comes to language and cognition and the mind, suddenly everything has to be dictated on us from outside factors?
I could go on, but this is neither the time nor the place to go further. I'd have to watch it again to gather my thoughts better.
(I guess I made a lot of grammatical and punctuational and other mistakes, but I'm virtually unable to go back and correct them. It's too late at night.)
I might also add that, personally, one of the main reasons that debated was so thrilling to follow, was that I could understand both of them in the language they spoke (though partially, in the case of Foucault).