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

🎯 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. Made with HARPA AI

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

This is a phenomenal channel. Thank you for this.

Anyone else impressed by the questions that the crowd asks?

Exactly what I needed ty ! 🕊️

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.

The most profound statement I’ve ever heard: One does not necessarily allow the state to define what is legal. The state has the power to enforce a certain concept of what is legal. But power doesn’t imply justice or even correctness. 🤯

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

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

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.

What a treat! Thank you Jonathan.

Foucault peered back into history with a scalpel like no one ever has.

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

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

This was a most excellent discussion, professor Chomsky is without any doubt in my opinion, one of the foremost intellectuals of our age, a voice for the best of what make us human, the essential of fairness, justice for all, regardless on one nationality, or class, it’s sad that such men are not given the power they deserve but instead those who only care about wealth and power who use and exploit others for materialism and self interest who misuse power to oppress others, for ideological and political manipulation of poorly educated people who more often driven by religious ideology etc etc…sadly

Beautiful

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

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

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

This is so good that I had a whim to go to Algeria to have fun.

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

This explains a lot.

Bravo 👏🏻

Dubbing Foucault is scandalous.

Dam y’all snap with this

I appreciate these flashbacks which are still pertinent to the evolving Mormon culture. Keep m’ coming,

So, what was first the creation (Chomsky approach) or the transformation (Foucault approach)? (in whole of creativity and scientific progress approaches)

54:00 forward caught my attention

Wasn't it Copernicus who first (well, first in the post-classical world) proposed a helio-centric model of our planetary system?

The Fourth Philosophy referred to a number of individual groups whose common goal was to overthrow the foreign powers that ruled the land of Israel. These groups favored armed rebellion against foreign authorities. Among the groups were the Sicarii (the "daggermen") and the Zealots. 18:00 To what extent is the individual able to discover something new and if so, how should we make sense of this? 36:00 Noam on creativity

I like the host’s mountain digging analogy lol, it’s a good way to affirm objective reality and truth in a unifying way that grants good faith which I can’t help but feel warm & fuzzy about, through in some platitudinal commendation of democracy and you’ve got me homies.

I value both perspectives. I think we can discern certain areas of „what human nature is not“ in other words through science we can discern we have the cognitive faculties and instinctual patterns of a human and not a spider. We mainly eliminate possibilities and narrow parameters through scientific research and coherent hypothesis. At the same time all things that are „nature“ are organized in culture. The structural aspects are a much more important aspect than people realize. And on top of that there is a very conservative tendency to overly universalize. This happens all the time in profane ways: men are from mars women from Venus type thinking etc. At the same time Foucault’s radical structuralism is just as misunderstood as Chomsky’s universalism. Universalism really only exists in an abstract way, not in reality. It is a set of probable innate phenomena that gets structured by society. So Foucault dismissing Universalities is true. In the end all things thought Universal are actually structural to a particular place and time in history. At the same time we miss a very important perspective if we dismiss attempts to discern what lay below structuring.

This is the Chomsky I fell in love with and will always admire, intellectually raging against the machine, and not the Chomsky who has lived beyond or outlived his intellect. He convinced my intellect, what little I have, that it could impose its will upon those better qualified and punch above its weight.

I would rather read foucault. I would rather political life/institutions be organized according to chomsky's vision of citizenship.

Chomsky got CRUSHED!

If’s the truth and creatives don’t learn from the truth of outside influences and repeat it again and again then why weren’t its relying on the Situation😞🙏🏻. We should learn from the facts and failures to understand the facts of failures, then thinking 🤔 how and why🙏🏻.

Anyone found any clips here where the moderator is holding the red wig :P?

What is experience to him to be so sure of 'this man'? He knows the Royal We as "one". General schematic structure might interface experience for knowledge as synonyms. Ergo Noam becomes outdated.

Which position do you feel most aligned with? Their differing perspectives on humanity are glaring and worthy of further thought and discussion. Foucault seems comfortable with embracing the shadow side of humanity, While Chomsky holds fast to an optimistic even privileged perspective of the overall It’s difficult to accept that there are in fact dark, inhumane, immoral humans that seek only their own, but an unwillingness to accept reality, does not a utopia make.

🙏🏻I didn’t think 🤔 anything could change by human creativity, how could change when the circumstances of being in stimulated human behavior to make its existence proper for human! But to much change would not to make the natural process manageable till the ecosystem becomes dangerous as well as the Climate Crisis and living on relying upon the Imagination 💭 which created by means spirituality of human ego🙏🏻.

When ever happened in none exist how do you do Faulcat !

Copernicus and Galileo are on top of it for humanity, as is Darwin and Alan Watts. Chomsky and Foucault need more time.

Hasta que medida de Canadá llega el estado de México?

Caracas venezuela: función de lo fantástico simbólico únicamente

I am not fool to believe that the outside situation needs more true in practice no only philosophy 😩. How often are the positive dummies on block boards complaining about their lack of lies of knowledge!

christopher Hitchens at 37:30?

It’s human nature not relying upon the Formula of anything with social contracts, how much has he said too much about the structure of process! It’s no mathematical please 🙏🏻 .

What if the proletariat is morally won’t be sound the same ways as of the current leadership is not

12:12 is this guy interpreting to her ?😅

101:20 justification "...au cote de la classe oppressive" (a justification for it made by the the oppressing (not oppressed) class?)

Sound and Fury... what a waste of bandwidth.

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"

29:01 😂

Human nature,......🤔...in.. 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, ........l 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 see..... a lot.....bla 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. 🦁👍🇲🇽

I wonder if there is a connection between genius and being bald 👩‍🦲

What I find most annoying about this video is the person reading the subtitles. I'd rather listen to Foucault speak in French and read the subtitles myself.

Interesting.

The camera man is trolling, I would say he/she is a camera philosopher themselves lol

DF México capital Caracas

@8:55 - 9:03 Chomsky sticks the landing and the debate is over.

Please advise me when the educational sanctions for the human made Fouls 🙏🏻, how foolish of not being able to adapt if you thinking about the consequences made us ! If’s only been in no sense based! Condition is man made! Why’d you think ahead!

Full absorption of something as "heavy" as this is not aided by the constant intrusion of the original audio bleeding through. Honestly, I never truly understood why this is done with dubbed presentations in general. Can someone tell me: Is this distracting "bug in my ear" intended to serve as some kind of "proof" that a mysterious entity with its own dark agenda is not inserting words into the mouths of the honorable individuals we see on the screen? An implied guarantee that somewhere among the at-home audience is a would-be whistle-blower who understands the original language being spoken and is excitedly hovering within arm's reach of his/her telephone, prepared at any moment to pounce should a key word or phrase not "match up" correctly? Because I promise you, I for one am not that paranoid.

Foucault is dead and all these talks seem a trifle after that.

It was funny to see Foucault with gleaming eyes while quothing Mao as if Mao was the god of some religion...this illustrates what Chomsky called ¨french insular culture¨

this would have been much better if they put foucault to debate with someone intelligent

Is it possible that both Foucault and Chomsky are both narcissist grifters in their own way, and we are just suckers?

Foucault is more interesting than Chomsky. He shouldn't have died so early 😅

The most obnoxious, self-entitled, pretentious and pointless debate of all time ... associating the incomprehensibility and lack of substance of Focault with a (surprising!) moral cowardliness of Chomsky.

No vous nous se Pa que es el Marxismo 😊

I dont say this as a conservative right wing supporter but I politically and philosophically disagree with this debate when they talk so nice about the disastrous fail of no-deserved title of Karl Marx as philosopher. Marx's so called "philosophy" is todays social problems because today people dont wanna work instead they wanna receive lazying dole/welfare benefits and evething belonging to the state and eradicating the existence of private property? Karl Marx and his crap thoughts that he calls philosophy is todays serious problems and it comes out of a dirty toilet instead of an correct use of a human brain as the two gentlemen were debating about human nature...

🙏🏻🤔he didn’t understand himself well please, my gratitude ! Then again freedom is structured like struggle for power free , unlimited power nor humankind feels . It’s his job act playing, until today it’s Western no cause of freedom to live with pirate 🤮🤑🐄🙏🏻.

Two brilliant men. Both wrong. A debate between Foucault and Chomsky which mirrored the conversation Socrates had about truth not being tied only to power. Chomsky agreed with Socrates, but admitted he had a hard time justifying this without an appeal to absolute justice, which he could not claim due to his lack of beliefs in absolutes. Foucault simply said new powers take over and define “justice” their own way, which does not, to his mind, have any definition or reality apart from that implementation of power. Both are wrong because there are absolutes and justice is not merely power as Chomsky says, but it also has a ground upon which it is founded. Chomsky doesn’t have an appeal to this ground because he is an atheist. Theism supplies the ground of ethics Chomsky’s instincts and conscience point toward. Religion completes the understanding concerning justice. Justice’s absolute quality, like all else, arises from the Justice of God. Love is where Justice and Mercy meet, in all relationships and in all societies. It is the desire for the good of the other for the other’s sake, individually and collectively. You must balance mercy and justice to have healthy love. Every good parent, judge, leader attempts to strike this balance. Forsake either and the humanity in your children or subjects or fellow citizens will be harmed. Human nature has limits and confined parameters for health. When those are violated, we know it, and resist. Even the failure to resist, when it happens, is a sign of unhealthiness and therefore points to an abuse of power where justice and or mercy have been compromised and the imbalance has caused harm. Both of these brilliant men would’ve been corrected by belief in God.

Tankie vs Pedo...