SEMIOTEXT(E) FOREIGN AGENTS SERIES Jin Pleming © Sylvére Lotringer, Editors Insibe & Our or Byzantium Nina Zraacevie Communists Like Us Pils Goattar 3 Ton Nee Eestysy OF Communication Jeon Banshiand Sutunavions: fn Bauer? Crustania. Weiner Mile HOMEE NTIS Be Lae SiMUGLES Pol iri Foe Sintec curt Sis Masoxmnes Foware Fouesorr bo Baabaand ASSASSINATION RUAISODY Pook il Hanan on Mawes Shu Biacs, Siu. 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Translated by Lysa Hochroth Nores ‘Henri Gouhier is an historian of philosophy and « specialist in Malebranche and Bergson Although part of the academic establishment he remained open to new ideas (he directed Lucien Goldmann's dissertation). The discus- sion which follows Foucault's lecture involved various specialists in philosophy: Mouloud (aesthetics); Bruch (Kant); Zac (Spinoza) Birault (Heidegger); etc “What is an Author,” first published in the Bulletin de la Societe frangaise de philosophic, was translat- ed from the French by Josue V. Harari in Tewtual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, edited by Josue V. Harari (Ithaca New York: Cornell University Press, 1979), It was reprinted in Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984) 2 What is Revolution? question in the field of philosophical reflection tscems to me that this text reveals a new type of certainly not the first text in the OF course, it is : history of philosophy, nor is it even the only text of Kant’s which gives a theme to a question concerning history. In Kant, one finds texts which examine the srigins of history: the text on the beginnings of his- \oty itself, the text on the definition of the concept Other texts question history on the form of of rac its accomplishment: for example, in this 1784, the ca for a Universal History from a Cwmapolitan Point of View. Still others discuss the internal finality which organizes historical process- es, such as in the text on the use of teleological prin- ciples. All these questions, which are, moreover, lightly linked, effectively traverse Kant's analyses on the matter of history. It seems to me that the text same year84 The Politics of Truth on the Aufklirung is a rather different text. It does not raise any of these questions; in any case, not directly. Not the question of origin, not, despite appearances, the question of its completion, and it raises ina relatively discrete, almost lateral, way the question of the immanence of teleology to the Process of history itself, The question which, I believe, for the first time appears in this text by Kant is the question of today, the question about the present, about whet is our actuality: what is happening today? What is happening right now? And what is this right novo we all are in which defines the moment at which 1 am writing? It is not the first time that one finds references to the present in philosophical reflec, tion, at least as a determined, historical situation which can have value for philosophical reflection After all, when Descartes recounts his own itiner, ary in Diseours de la Méthode and all the philosophi- cal decisions he made, both for himself and for phi, losophy, he refers very explicitly to something which can be considered a historical position with. in the order of knowledge and sciences of his own Period. Nonetheless, in these kind of references, the focus is always on finding a motive for a philo. sophical decision in the context of this configura. tion designated as the present. In Descartes, you What is Revolution? 85 is this will not find a question like: “What precisely esent to which I belong?” Now it seems to me that the question Kant answers, that he is in fact prompted to answer, because someone had raised it, is another question. It is not simply: what in the present situation can determine this or that philo- sophical decision? ‘The question is about the pre- sent and is, at first, concerned with the determina- tion of a certain element of the present that needs 10 be recognized, distinguished, deciphered among all others. What is it in the present that now makes sense for philosophical reflection? In the answer that Kant attempts to give to this line of questioning, he attempts to show how this ent turns out to be the carrier clement of the ft though, bod ies of knowledge and philosophy. Yet here it is a matter of showing spec what ways the one who speaks as a thinker, a scientist and a philosopher is himself’ a part of this process and (more than that) how he has a certain role to play process where he will therefore find himself as both element and actor. In short, in this text, it seems to me that one wil cally and i nesses the appearance of the present as a philo- sophical event to which the philosopher who speaks about it belongs. If one agrees to envision philoso-