Outside Of Thought

Abstract

This essay explores the relation between the concepts of the inside and outside, especially as they relate to philosophy and life. From whatever perspective we look at our condition today, from the domains of power to those of knowledge, to social dynamics, to the substance of material life, what Foucault calls the “thought from outside” can be found at every turn. Various disciplines, artificially separated by dispositifs of power, by control and valuing, progress by virtue of their reciprocal contamination. It is not for nothing, then, that we see paradigm shifts in these disciplines that spring from the encounter or conflict with another language that forces them from the outside to modify their lexical borders and status.The light of knowledge, as Machiavelli observes, always comes from the outside to illuminate the inside, and never the reverse, but the “outside” is also the inside’s own extimacy to itself.