From the Prison Notebooks & Truth and Power

Erica Lee

ASA 004

April 13, 2017

Gramsci writes that peoples’ preconceived notions about philosophy are wrong. It isn’t the difficult and strange thing, practiced by old men, that we think it to be. He states that, “Everyone is a philosopher… though in his own way.” It is because we all think, at some point in our lives, about who we are and that itself is philosophical. Gramsci also states that, “In acquiring one’s conception of the world one always belongs to a particular grouping which is that of all the social elements which share the same mode of thinking and acting.” In other words, he is trying to say that we all conform to certain ideas. No matter how unique we think our ideas are, someone else will have the same idea that we do. Philosophy and history are intertwined; one’s thoughts about a certain historical event is philosophical. I think that this relates to how millennial and Asian Americans view our history. Asian Americans have been long considered the model minority and very submissive, yet the younger Asian Americans are pondering upon that label and trying to change that. The events that have happened cause us to try to invoke change. While culture and philosophy can coincide, religion and “common sense” cannot coincide with philosophy as philosophy supersedes religion and “common sense.” When you philosophize, you constantly think of different answers for the same problem while religion and “common sense” both provide one single answer. The purpose of philosophy is to do the exact opposite. 

The other article I read focused on the relationship between knowledge and power, written by Michel Foucault, a French historian and philosopher. He talks about how truth is a spectrum created by those in power. For example, he states, “Each society has its regime of truth… the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true.” This is an important topic for us living under the Donald Trump era. An excellent example was what was said by the Trump Administration after the Inauguration. Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated that there was record high attendance, which was false, and when Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President, was confronted about it, she claimed Spicer gave “alternative facts.” The truth is very powerful, and the fact that different regimes try to give “alternative facts” further attest to the influence of the truth.