Knowledge doesn't really form part of human nature. Conflict, combat, the outcome of the combat, and, consequently, risk and chance are what gives rise to knowledge. Knowledge is not instinctive; it is counter instinctive, just as it is not natural but counter natural.
Interpretation
Knowledge is acquired through experiences and challenges, rather than being an inherent trait.
In this quote, Michel Foucault emphasizes that knowledge is not something innate to human beings; rather, it arises from the struggles and conflicts we encounter throughout life. He suggests that knowledge is developed through navigating risks and uncertainties, challenging the notion that it is a natural or instinctive part of human existence.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the importance of learning from failures.
A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation [...] He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.
Matthey, a Geneva physician very close to Rousseau's influence, formulates the prospect for all men of reason: 'Do not glory in your state, if you are wise and civilized men; an instant suffices to disturb and annihilate that supposed wisdom of which you are so proud; an unexpected event, a sharp and sudden emotion of the soul will abruptly change the most reasonable and intelligent man into a raving idiot.
But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.
I donβt feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we donβt know what will be the end.
You may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.
The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).
Worry is an old man with bended head, carrying a load of feathers which he thinks are lead.
Being generous, just helping one's relatives and being blameless in one's actions; this is the best good luck.
Forgiveness is a gift to myself. I forgive, and I set myself free.
Self-esteem starts out as a personal blessing, but it becomes nothing less than an evolutionary force.
Maybe it's just in America, but it seems that if you're passionate about something, it freaks people out. You're considered bizarre or eccentric. To me, it just means you know who you are.
Poor planning or poor execution of plans is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality.
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