Chomsky vs. Foucault Debate

This video is a debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault over the purposes of human nature and the involvement of higher institutions. Before going into detail about each man's side, I thought it was especially interesting how calm and collect this whole debate is. Many of the debates we see are often people of opposing sides hammering the points of their opposition. For instance, many political debates we have a question asked and candidates spend their time telling why their opposition is wrong, and often the opposition will interrupt them and counter their point. This debate was much more formal and allowed each man to convey their point. Each man had time to give their take on the issue, while the other simply sat and acknowledged their point.

Chomsky’s primary objective was trying to convince the audience that is part of human nature to need and want to be creative. We have many institutions, such as government, education, and corporate, that “get in the way” of this need. They often say that they are they are there for the better, but in many cases they are what are “holding us back.” He believes that we as people are having the chance of living a meaningful life taken from us by the control of these institutions. He does acknowledge that we cannot live without these institutions, but the control they are exercising is far too much  can present as much, if not more danger than living without them.

Michel Foucault believes that these institutions are not only essential, put extremely important. He believes that people need order and structure in their lives, and that they could go mad if it is not present. Foucault explains that with the education system, we are educated to make the choices that we want, and the political system can allow us to act on them. Without education, we wouldn’t be able to make money and live, let alone govern ourselves. He keeps reiterating that we need to have structure in order to survive.

All in all I thought this was an interesting “debate.” I put that in quotation marks because I felt it was almost more like an information session. While it’s true that both sides acknowledged and to some degree, refuted their opponent, there wasn’t a lot of exchange between the two on why the others felt their ideas were wrong or flawed. To me, this felt more like each man was giving their take on the issue, while acknowledging the other man.