Truth and Error:

Epistemes, Truth, and Logocentrism

A Term Paper
Presented to the Faculty of
The Department of Philosophy
School of Arts and Sciences
University of San Carlos
Cebu City, Philippines

___________________________________________

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for

the course Philosophy 635: Michel Foucault
Master of Arts in Philosophy

Submitted by: Ryan Vincent F. Alisaca

MA-Philo

December 6, 2019
Abstract:
There seems to be a lot of common themes found in the thought of Jacques Derrida and
Michel Foucault. While it might be said that they were working on different grounds and spaces,
the two French thinkers are actually quite alike especially in the implications of the concept of
truth in their respective works. Perhaps it is because of these notions that both of them can be
classified as post-modern thinkers, that is, that their contentions imply that there can be no absolute
truth at all, or at least, that the objectivity of truth is actually relative to other values and notions
especially understood only in language. Here, then, is my assertion: that truth as traditionally
understood can actually be deconstructed (in the sense that Derrida uses the term ‘deconstruction’)
in the light of Foucault’s notion of ‘episteme’. Notions of truth are always and will be made hazy
in the aporia of language.
The Postmodernism of Michel Foucault

Perhaps it might be fitting for us to start by first delineating the thoughts ascribed to

postmodernism. To start, a semantic analysis of the word might be made. Post- and modern: these

two words evidently constitute the etymology of the word under our investigation. Post- is a prefix

used to indicate an after, a subsequency of some sort, a later than.1 The word ‘modern’ on the other

hand can be understood as describing a specific social and cultural set attitudes, norms, and ways

of thinking that define the recent centuries starting from the Enlightenment in the eighteenth

century which has striven to improve he human condition based on universalizable ideas.2 Thus,

at least etymologically speaking, we may say that postmodernism is a way of thinking after or even

beyond the thought of modernism, that is, it is critical, and seeks to question the various

presuppositions held by thinkers of modernity since the Enlightenment.3

A clearer way of characterizing postmodernism as an intellectual movement is to present

its intellectual and political trends. Postmodern thinkers are critical of seemingly universal ideas

1
Merriam Webster, s.v. “Post.”
2
Stuart Sim, introduction to Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, (London: Routledge, 2001), vii.
3
Ibid.
which generates authoritative impositions of concepts which seem to limit our understanding of

reality. Thus, postmodern thinking is most of the time anti-authoritarian, anti-universal norms,

with emphasis on the indetermination and relativity of one’s conception of reality and specific

notions embraced by specific cultures.4

It is based upon those lines above-mentioned that I understand Foucault’s postmodernist

trend in thought. In his book, “The Order of Things”, Foucault relates to his readers his amusement

following his reading of Borges’ fictional Chinese encyclopedia containing a taxonomy of animals.

Foucault reflects that while the classifications are amusing, they somehow reveal to us a specific

way of thinking about the world in general.5 For us, perhaps, the classifications, the ordering, are

strange. A closer look, however, would allow us to see that the classifications are done by virtue

of propinquity, relatedness in one manner or another, and resemblances. The reason, actually, for

the strangeness of the taxonomy is that it does not seem to give the highest and ultimate

classifications of things. Apparently, there are endless ways of classifying animals and things, so

much so that instead of bringing order, a disorder is actually revealed.6

But that order which we normally perceive, how does that arise? If lived experience were

to be asked, the concept of an inner order, a predetermined concatenation, a limiting nature in

things must exist, or at least be conjured in the mind, if we are to comprehend order. For Foucault,

however, the space for ordering to occur is actually language. Hence, the implication is that all our

ordering must occur in and through language. But language is structured according to the more

foundational notion of culture. Thus, in the last analysis, our ordering must occur in culture.

4
Ibid.
5
Michel Foucault, preface to The Order of Things, (London: Routledge, 2005), xvi
6
Ibid., xvii-xviii
Culture must be that determining factor which allows us to perceive order in different manners.7

Here, while it might be too early to make a conclusion on Foucault’s work, it might be apparent

that there are traces of a cultural relativism in the mood here. Of course, it will not be far-fetched

to interpret this as a resistance against universalizing principles and theories which permeate

postmodern thought.

Perhaps, Foucault’s postmodern tone becomes more apparent when we examine some of

his ideas in his book “History of Sexuality”. While this paper will not examine closely the elements

relating to sexuality, it is nevertheless important that we draw out the implications, the specific

mind sets that prevail in a particular portion in this particular work of Foucault.

In the seventeenth century, a specific words and its concatenating ideas were repressed and

censored, that is, difficult to speak of. The word is sex and all other notions related to it.8 It might

be useful for us to take note that this repression occurs primarily (although not limited) to speech

and language. Emphasis on the repression in speech is to be made here since people obviously did

not stop having sex then. Discourse about sex was filled with allusions and metaphors. Direct

mention of the word was restricted to specific fields perhaps in science and medicine.9 However

in the Catholic confessions, “sins of the flesh continually increased” despite the restrictions of

language.10

This repression of explicit talks about sex is actually unreal, not something directly derived

from brute facts in reality (it is simply and absolutely possible to talk about sex with strangers

7
Ibid., xxi-xxiii
8
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random
House Inc., 1978), 17.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid., 19.
whenever one feels like doing it). The repression is a social construct, for social and political

purposes. Moreover, as already evident above, the repression occurs in language. With the given

information, it might be safe for us to infer the following: first, that social constructs are directly

related to words and language. Second, that language therefore has social and political

ramifications. True enough, since this is a question which involves, and in fact, occurs in language,

Foucault advises that the solution be found also in language, that is, that the repression in our

discourse of sex can be overcome by talking about sex, without filters, hesitations, or fear. “One

had to speak publicly, and in a manner that was not determined by the division between licit and

illicit…”11

Here the mindset is apparent: we ought to break free from repressing universal ideas, orders

created in a relativism of some sort, and imposing concepts which are actually just constructs, and

which hinder human creativity and living.

The postmodernism of Jacques Derrida

Perhaps, the first hint of Postmodernism in Derrida is his deconstruction of language using

the concept of differences. Language, at least in structuralist thought, systematizes and operates

according to rules and syntax. These rules can be thought to be the authority in language. Thus,

this trend of systems and authorities have been applied to systems in general giving the principle

that all systematizations, all order and operations are governed by internal rules, a specific

authority.12 Derrida now introduces a new term: differance. The differance is a deliberate

11
Ibid., 24
12
Sim, “Postmodernism and Philosophy” in The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, ed. Stuart Sim
(London: Routledge, 2001), 4.
misspelling of a word. The misspelling is deliberate act of transgression against an authority, a

break from imposing traditions. Looking back at the word ‘difference’, the original word from

which the term ‘difference’ was derived, we are already actually giving a specific mentality, a

certain hint for a manner of thinking. Difference means non-uniformity, non-identity, indeed to be

different.13 However, even as we cogitate differences as pertaining to non-identity, we are still left

with a conformity. Something is still being imposed upon us. Indeed, we ought to use the word

‘difference’ according to its proper usage as dictated by the rules of grammar and language in

general. Moreover, we ought also to spell the said term in a correct manner. We have, thus, the

paradox of the word ‘difference’.14

Derrida apparently uses the term Logocentrism to refer to an encompassing authority which

seeks to systematize and uniformize. The difficulty, however, with Logocentrism is that we can

simply reduce it to a certain kind of historical relativism imposed upon us.15 Logos is actually

greek for reason. We see however that in theology, logos is also translated as word. This reveals

to us a certain bias. A bias towards the spoken word. When we speak of words, what immediately

comes into mind is the spoken word. Indeed, the spoken word, as opposed to the written word, is

closer to reason. Thus, they are truer and more rational. Speech has more proximity to reason than

writing. Speech, after all, immediately proceeds from human reason without the intervention of

other materials. Writing, on the other hand, can be thought of as impure since it is already

contaminated with other categories.16 Aristotle held such a thought. For him, words produced from

13
Jacques Derrida, “Differance,” Bullettin de la Societe francaise de Philosophie 62 (1968): 254,
http://eclass.uth.gr/eclass/modules/document/file.php/MHXD236/Derrida-Differance.pdf
14
Ibid., 255
15
Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University
Press, 1997), 2.
16
Ibid., 11.
speech is a representation of thought while word in writing are representations of speech.17 Thus

we see that even the word ‘word’ implies a certain authority, a certain imposition. Logocentrism,

at least this specific bias of Logocentrism, that is, a certain bias towards the spoken word has

blinded us from further thoughts and reflections of the written word.18

Now, the idea that a specific word can govern human thought is not at all new and was not

pioneered by Derrida. It is simply that Derrida was one of those few who were able to point out

this attitude, this behavior of concepts. In history, there can be found specific instances of this

Logocentrism. In the history if Philosophy, for example, philosophers have been obsessed with the

concept of truth (which is actually just the word truth spoken on thought). This truth, however, has

been used to destroy and oppress many other concepts, particularly the concept of writing since

truth is more sensible to thought and rationality.

This idea of Logocentrism, this thought of a though governing, has political ramifications.

The ramification is pushed to the extreme, becomes more intense, when the logos is thought of as

the truth. Which, as traditionally thought of, must be universal, applicable to all of time and space,

absolute and all-encompassing. By this logic, it is clear that social and political systems can be

derived from specific versions of this logos, this truth.

Episteme, Truth, Logocentrism

Traditional conceptions of knowledge and truth would give us the following definition:

truth in general is simply adequation between reality and the mind. In contrast, error is

17
Aristotle, De interpretatione, 1, 16a, 3.
18
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 43.
inadequation between the mind and reality.19 It has been presupposed that men usually differentiate

truth and error, that is, one cannot have truth and error in their knowledge at the same time and

under the same respect.20 This, I believe is most obvious or else nothing would be intelligible for

us. Perhaps we might no longer have the same conceptions as to whether which things are truth or

error. Nevertheless, the distinction is there as the back of our heads. The real problem about truth,

therefore, is not whether it exists or not, not whether there is truth and error or none of that at all.

The problem is an epistemological one: can the mind go beyond itself, prove itself capable of

adequation, and thus give us the idea of a universal truth?21 This idea of the mind transcending

itself is already problematic. Setting the Kantian objections aside first, perhaps it might be more

in line with our present discussion to bring up that this conception of truth can actually be a

possibility for Logocentrism. The problem of this kind of Logocentrism can be understood more

in the light of Foucault’s concept of episteme.

Epistemes, for Foucault, are Epistemological fields, that is, they are the specific contexts

for knowledge. Nay, they are that space, that which precisely allows for knowledge, the condition

without which knowledge of something would not make sense. In this sense, Epistemes can be

understood as culture, although not any kind of anthropological or societal culture. By culture, we

might mean here a culture behind ideas or concepts, those that form and create them in the first

place.

Now, it has already been pointed out that language is structured and understood according

to the idea of culture. Thus, we can infer that epistemes are the contexts in which language can

19
Celestine Bittle, Reality and the Mind: Epistemology (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1936),
26.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
function. Let us, therefore, keep this in mind: that language and our understanding of it relies on

an understanding of the episteme behind it. In other words, the modification of language is specific

to the episteme we are investigating.

It is crucial that we understand this notion about language so that we can be ready to zero-

in on Foucault’s idea of representation. Representation occurs because of language. Perhaps it

would be more accurate to say that representation is language. Again, we might be inclined to

think that words represent thought in a manner that makes words and thought itself distinct from

each other. However, Foucault argues that words themselves are actually already the

representation. In other words, when we think, we do not think of abstract entities but of words

and sentences.22 When we think of a specific image, we are imagining things. But when we abstract

from that image in order to come up with a concept that has far more greater extension in terms of

ideal entities encompassed, we remove the image and come up with a concept based on the many

instantiations of the thing which we have experienced in reality. When I imagine man, I imagine

myself and all my qualities. But when I try to go beyond myself and come up with the idea of man,

I remove my image and come up with the concept which apparently is universal. The concept,

however, is represented in our minds as words. We literally ‘hear’ our thoughts inside our minds.

We think of the word ‘man’, and this brings in all the other concepts that fall under it into mid

which allows the said concept (man) to be universal.

Now, we are reminded of the Kantian distinction between Phenomena and Noumena (the

thing as it appears and the thing as it is in itself, respectively). And we have been taught by Kant

that it is impossible to know the thing in itself. We are, therefore, left with the appearances of

22
Foucault, The Order of Things, 86-87.
things as represented to us by our cognitive faculties. Perhaps we can now elevate the Kantian

problematic: it may be that the impossibility of the knowledge of things in themselves comes from

that fact that what comes to us as representation is actually language: words and sentences in the

mind. Since language is understood, differently at times, in their specific epistemes, then what we

actually know is not the thing in itself, but the thing as it is known in its specific episteme.

Truth is also Error

The traditional understanding of truth is indeed an instance of Logocentrism. And yet,

when it claims to be universal, it actually is not. Perhaps at logically speaking, it will be absurd to

posit that truth can also be error at the same time. That, however, is the point of deconstruction: to

remove the privileging of concepts, allowing them to collapse unto each other.

The trend for opposing concepts is that the one which is viewed as superior and more

rational is to be examined, to be preferred. This, however, will hinder us from further reflection on

the inferior concept, the oppressed concept. In our present discussion, truth and error are the binary

oppositions. Truth is held as privileged while error is to be avoided.

The traditional understanding of truth can actually be subjected to deconstruction. Truth

thus understood is adequation between the mind and reality. It is conformity between the mind and

reality. Error, on the other hand is inadequation, non-conformity between the mind and reality.

This adequation, however, is never adequate. The mind cannot at all be adequated with reality. It

can only be conformed to representations brought about by epistemes. Such representations can

be held true only if in that specific episteme, the notion if also held true. In short, this relativism

erases an absolute standard for truth and error. Indeed, what is truth may also be error, or vice
versa, at least according to different epistemes. Truth, therefore, is also just error. And error can

also be considered as truth.

At this point, perhaps we have given the case for error. We might now be able to start

reflecting upon the concept of error. We have all decried of error. In school, and in fact in most of

our life, we have viewed error as something negative, something which must be avoided. Indeed,

we have trained to look for the correct answers, to be objective and scientific. Wrong answers are

crossed out. Those who get too much errors in their tests are given consequences. Perhaps, it is

also because of this mentality of being right that we always come into conflict with each other.

Perhaps, we think too much of the truth, or at least that which we perceive as truth, that we can no

longer give room for error. This dogmatism is precisely what hinders us from the good life. The

good life, after all, is filled with errors. It is in error that we learn. It is in error that we are able to

become more aware of ourselves. It is in error that we can become better persons. Indeed, when

we err, we realize our limitedness, our weaknesses. And we seek to compliment it with the help of

others. Thus, through error, we might be able to create a better world, a more humane society.

The reflection on error might not be so substantive and extensive. That, however, shall be

left to another paper.

 Bibliography

Aristotle, “De interpretatione.” Translated by E.M. Edghill. In The Basic Works of Aristotle,
edited by Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library, 2001. 40-61.

Bittle, Celestine. Reality and the Mind: Epistemology. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing
Company, 1936.

Derrida, Jacques. “Difference.” Bullettin de la Societe francaise de Philosophie 62 (1968):

253-278. http://eclass.uth.gr/eclass/modules/document/file.php/MHXD236/Derrida-
Differance.pdf

________. Of Grammatology, Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The

John Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. Translated by Robert

Hurley. New York: Random House Inc., 1978.

________. The Order of Things. London: Routledge, 2005.

Sim, Stuart. “Postmodernism and Philosophy” in The Routledge Companion to

Postmodernism, edited by Stuart Sim. London: Routledge, 2001. 3-14.