Diagram 1: An overview of the main philosophical directions during
modernity
This kind of dichotomy in the philosophical interpretation of modernity
is best reflected in the confrontation of the views.11One of
their few meetings was on the occasion of Habermas’ visit to the
Collège de France (1983), about which D. Eribon (1994) writes. Of
Foucault and Habermas, where Habermas (Eribon, 2005: 191) described
Foucault’s work as ”postmodernism of the neoconservative” who invokes
positions in modernity to ”establish ruthless antisemitism.” In his
work, he recognizes the ”spontaneous forces of imagination, subjective
experience, sensibility,” to which they attribute a distant and archaic
basis. In a Manichean way, they oppose reason to a principle that can
only be invoked, whether it is ο the will to power, ο the sovereignty of
being. or ο Dionysian poetic power. ”At the same time, Foucault sought
to ignore the work of Habermas, and Rabinow, and Dreifus.22It
was an invitation to Foucault and Habermas to participate in a seminar
on modernism held at the University of Berkeley in the fall of 1984.
Still, during the summer of that year, Foucault passed away. Sought
to devise a way to overcome this doctrinal conflict. For example,
individualization and universalism), while postmodernism represents the
restoration of unacceptable irrationalism for Habermas.Foucault briefly
explained his position by referring to Kant’s answer Was ist
Aufklärung ?33The Berlinische Monatschrift (1784) posed this
question and, as particularly important, published the answers of
Mendelson and then Kant, who described the Aufklärung as a process by
which we abandon ”minors.” Under this term, he understands a
particular state of our will that forces us to accept someone else’s
authority to use the mind and gives three examples. First, we are in a
state of infancy when the book substitutes reason, our spiritual
leader covers conscience, and the doctor prescribes diet.
Smaller text, maybe. Nevertheless, it seems that he gradually entered
the history of thought into a question to which modern philosophy was
not able to answer, nor was it able to resolve it. And here, it has been
two centuries since he repeated it, in different forms. From Hegel to
Horkheimer or Habermas, through Nietzsche or Max Weber, there is almost
no philosophy that, directly or indirectly, has not faced this same
question: what, then, is an event called the Aufklärung, which is, to a
greater or lesser extent, determined what we are today, what we think
and what we do? (Rabinow, 1984: 32-50).
Foucault’s interpretation of the boundaries of modernity is not based on
the performance of history as a world process (Hegelian approach).
Still, he determines them through the theory of power, i.e., social
practices that have led to the discipline of the population. Thus, he
does not make a theoretical insight into modernity ”from the position of
trust in civic ideals,” but in the book Supervise and Punish , he
turns to a new range of thematic occupations (poststructuralism), which
in geoepistemological terms best reflects the triad
”hospital-madhouse-prison.” Through this metaphor, Foucault strongly
articulated a new political and intellectual interest in the history of
the state disciplinary system, which established a new methodological
framework for defining modernity. Foucault builds this framework through
two synchronous processes that lead to a ”disciplinary society” and
different expressions of power.44Establishment of institutions
for treatment (hospital and insane asylum) and control of persons
(prison).. One is shaped through a new spatial expression of power,
while the other is characterized by the decline of the power of European
monarchies. Because of this, Foucault’s work can be considered doubly
important, for philosophy (power theory) and geography (spatial turn),
with the former determining the origin and the latter the end of
modernity. Although this is not the subject of this paper, it should be
said that from a geographical point of view, its interpretation of the
term space is critical, which for Elden & Crampton (2013: 2) is ”a
vital part of the battle for control and supervision of individuals, but
not as a battle for domination. but as a point of contact between the
technologies of power and the technologies of the self55See G.
Mutabdzija, Foucault’s geoepistemology: space, heterotopy and
archeology, 2021..” The best example of his view of space (Foucault,
2012a) is given in the short essay Of Other Spaces 66Although
the essay Of Other Spaces was presented in Tunisia in 1967, it became
publicly available until 1986.According to Frank (2009: 67), which
became one of his most frequently quoted and anthological texts and ”can
rightly be called the founding text of the spatial turn.”
Table 1: Elements of grand theories of social development in modernism
and Foucault