4 1 The eves, Of Netaghyasca Sytemier 2pe1, YA “vit a ES INVENTED OR DISCOVERED? A RESPONSE TO FOUCAULT* JORGE J. E. GRACIA ARE CATEGORI ly A PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS I believe the speaker is allowed more lati- tude than in a more ordinary speech. There is n:ore freedom to ex- plore and perhaps even preach. Sol am going to do a bit of both. My chapter and verse, some of you be surprised to know, is a passage from the preface to Foucault's Tae Order of Things, in which he ar- {gues that categories are a matter of invention.! This text has had enor- mous impact on the issue I wish to address today, and in Many ways: ‘has helped to define it and to establish as definitive, in the minds of many of our contemporaries, the view that categories are invented. I Foucault's Position. Foucault writes: This book frst arose out ofa passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the pascage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with col- lapse our age-old distinction between Same and Other. This passage quotes a “certain Chinese encyclopedia” in which it is written that “ani- ing to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) as, (Q) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) in- cluded in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (i) drawn with very fine camelhair brush, (1) et cetera, (mm) having just bro- ken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.” In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing that we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) si Presidential Address at the 524 annual meeting of the Metaphysical So- ciety of America. March 2001. Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, 135 Park Hall, State Uni versity at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 142: !Michel Foucault, Tie Onier 0 Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (hereafter, *OT") (New Yor: Vintage Books, 1973). (September 21}: 3.20. Copyright © 2001 by The Review of The Review of Merazty Metaphysics4 JORGE J.-E. GRACIA charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that? Then Foucault proceeds to ask himself about the “kind of impossibil- ity” Borges's preposterous classification forces us to face. He an- swers that it consists in that “[eJach of these strange categories [in Borges's encyclopedia] can be assigned a precise meaning and a de- monstrable content.” This is exactly what we expect of our most cherished and accepted categories; indeed, itis the mark of a category and the whole world that we have built on them. Yet, this Borgesian classification, according to Foucault, destroys the common ground on the basis of which our own categories are based. It is not the propin- quity of the categories that is destroyed, but the very site on which the propinquity is based precisely because “the distance separating” the categories is too narrow. What has been remov' ed is the table “that enables thought to operate upon the entities of our world, to put them in order, to divide into classes, to group them according to names that designate their similarities and their differences—the table upon which, since the beginning of time, language has intersected space.> When we say that “a cat and a dog resemble each other less than two greyhounds do, even if both are tamed and embalmed, even if both are frenzied, even if both have broken the water pitcher, what is the ground on which we are able to establish the validity of this classifica tion with complete certainty? On what table, according to what grid of identities, similitudes, analogies, have we become accustomed to sort out so many different and similar things?” Consider the case of “aphasiacs {sic}, who, “when shown various differently colored skeins of wool on a table top, are consistently un- able to arrange them” according to their color patterns! They ear- nestly attempt to classify them in various ways, but as soon as they begin one classification, they start another. For them, the field of identity that sustains the various classifications they consider is too unstable. So they can never settle on one. How is this different from what we do? It is different, according to Foucault, in that we have a 2 Foucault, OT, xv. Ibid. $Dbid,, 0. SIbid, xvii, Ibid, xix. TTbid., xvii AREC table t Just on classifi gories w to Fou tion we Foucav and it i the wo that the most cl Foucau Fou have be particul the liber categori in the pr attack hi passing then we female, ness, be sic sic Di "bi page 386.J. GRACIA f our own, the of impossibil- face. He an- categories [in ning and a de- 2 of our most kofa category this Borgesian mon ground on aot the propin- -e on which the separating” the the table “that ld, to put them gto names that he table upon sected space.® arless than two even if both are er, what is the f this classifica- ng to what grid accustomed to a shown various consistently un- sms? They ear- as soon as they em, the field of consider is too is different from a that we have a ARE CATEGORIES INVENTED OR DISCOVERED? table that makes our task possible, although the table in question Just one among many others. The table is the grid we use to make ¢ classifications, to operate on the world; it is what produces the ca gories we employ. What does this tell us about our particular categories, accordi to Foucauli? They are myths resulting from the system of classific tion we employ.? This system is a historical a priori.!9 It is historic. Foucault se2ms to be saying, because it is the product of our histo: and it is a priori because it antecedes the ways in which we classi the world (more on this later). From all of this, Foucault conclud that the various classifications we use are inventions governed by h torically contingent events. Indeed, this is true of even our perha} most cherished category, that is, “man.” In a passage that displa. Foucault's penchant for rhetoric, he daringly tells us: 'y enough, man—the study of whom is supposed to the naive ‘dest investigation since Socrates—is probably no more than Fit in the order of things, or, in any case, a configuration who: are determined by the new position he has so recently taken ld of knowledge. Whence all the chimeras of the nev huma: ail che facile solutions of an “anthropology” understood as au versal reflection on man, half-empirical, half-philosophical. It is con however, and 2 source of profound relief to think that man scent invention, a figure but yet two centuries old, anew wrink knowledge, and that he will disappear again as soon as th nowiecge has discovered a new form. 1! ’s words have resounded deeply-in modem thought ar have been put to many uses, including the call for the elimination « particular cetegories. Indeed, they have been employed as means fi the liberation from what some consider to be the tyranny of invente categories which have been used in the past and continue to be us in the present for the oppression of selected members of society. Tt attack has been systematic. If humanity itself is nothing more than passing historical invention—‘a new wrinkle,” as Foucault puts it- then we can certainly do away with such other categories as male an female, race. ethnicity, and individuality, let alone duty, honor, goo: ness, beauty. rationality, and truth. Plato, of course, was wrong i SIbid. ix, MIbid. s, Tbid. ssi bid. xxii, The poine is repeated in the conetu: page 386.