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The Odd One Out: Borges and French Theory

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1. Find the Odd One Out Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Jorge Luis Borges . Which of these four names seems out of place? The first three belong to the history of French philosophy and theory; the fourth was an Argentine writer whose fiction explores labyrinths, imaginary encyclopedias, and infinite libraries. Asked to identify the odd one out, most readers would probably choose Borges. Yet the opening of Foucault’s The Order of Things complicates that answer. “This book first arose out of a passage in Borges,” he writes, recalling the laughter that shattered, as he read it, “all the familiar landmarks of my thought”—the assumptions shaped by his age and intellectual world (Foucault, 1994, p. xv). The remark presents a work of fiction as the starting point of a philosophical investigation. Borges had unsettled the coordinates through which Foucault was accustomed to think, helping him recognize a problem that would become central to his book. Foucault wa...
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What Makes Something What It Is? Plato, Nietzsche, and the Limits of Concepts

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1. What Are We Asking When We Ask What Something Is? “I did not bid you tell me one or two of the many pious actions but that form itself that makes all pious actions pious.” — Plato, Euthyphro, 6d, trans. G. M. A. Grube. Socrates makes this demand of Euthyphro, who has come to the Athenian court to prosecute his own father over the death of a servant. Confident that he understands piety, Euthyphro offers his own conduct as an example: prosecuting someone who has committed an injustice, even when that person is a relative, is a pious act. Socrates wants to know what piety is, however, and an example of pious conduct does not answer that question. The difficulty is familiar. We can recognize an action as courageous, just, or pious without being able to explain what makes it so. Our judgments may be reliable in particular circumstances, yet we may struggle to articulate the grounds on which we make them. Socrates’ demand asks Euthyphro to account for the quality itself, so that his...
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What the Concept Leaves Out: Nietzsche and Adorno on the Limits of Knowledge

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1. What the Concept Leaves Out “Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense Consider two leaves lying on a table. One is broad and green, its edges sharply serrated; the other is smaller, yellowing, and partly torn. Their differences are immediately visible, yet we recognise both as leaves. The word allows us to treat them as instances of a familiar kind without first describing each one in detail. It helps us orient ourselves in the world, compare objects, and communicate with others. Without the ability to identify recurring kinds, ordinary thought would be difficult to imagine. The differences between the leaves do not prevent us from applying the same word to both. The concept tells us what kind of thing each is, but says little about what distinguishes either one. It leaves out the pattern of its veins, the marks on its surface, and the circumstances in which it has grown. We can identify somethi...
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