2023-08-31
37 分钟On today's episode we talk about the upsides of a surveillance state. The ongoing social dilemma of freedom vs security. The value of privacy. States of exception. And Deleuze's Postscript on Societies of Control. Get more: Website: https://www.philosophizethis.org/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/philosophizethis Philosophize This! Clips: https://www.youtube.com/@philosophizethisclips Be social: Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamstephenwest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philosophizethispodcast TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophizethispodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/philosophizethisshow Thank you for making the show possible. 🙂
Hello, everyone.
I'm Stephen west.
This is philosophize this.
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So, last episode, we talked about the possibility of a digital panopticon emerging.
We talked about Foucault, the relationship between knowledge and power.
And an important follow up on all that for the beginning of this episode today is that one of the things Foucault's most interested in when he's doing his work is that he wants to figure out how exactly people's behavior is being controlled within a society.
What are all the ways that people are compelled to behave in a particular way, and not just when it comes to the obvious ones that people typically think about?
See, because throughout the history of western philosophy, a lot of thinkers have looked at power and tried to understand how it functions.
And most of them look to something like the government as the thing that's in power, that's passing the laws and controlling people's behavior.
It all seems very obvious.
You gotta follow the laws.
You don't follow the laws.
Ultimately, there's a gun to your head forcing you to do it.
In philosophical terms, you could call that the sovereign power, compelling people to do things under threat of violence cause they control the military.
And Foucault definitely acknowledges that that's a form of power in society.
He's just saying that if you only looked at the government as the thing that has power over people, then you're gonna be missing out on a lot of important ways.
Your behavior is disciplined, controlled, drilled, and normalized into particular lanes by institutions in society.
The examples from last time, schools, factories, hospitals, barracks, these are all examples, to Foucault, of institutions where there's not a gun to anybody's head.