bequeathed to political theory by Rawls and to challenge the suYciency of the
debate between those who treated nature as an object of lawful explanation
amenable to human use and those who sought a higher design in it to which
we can become attuned.
Many theorists remained less taken with Foucault, however. Habermas
( 1987 ) charged that Derrida and Foucault promoted neoconservatism and
decisionism because they lacked a rational basis for norms. And Charles
Taylor ( 1984 ) contended that Foucault, by the very nature of his enterprise,
could not articulate a positive ideal of freedom, the subject, truth, or politics.
In an exchange with Taylor, I proposed another option: An engagement
with Foucault might teach us how the subject is ‘‘an essentially ambiguous
achievement,’’ providing positive modes of action and judgmentandalso
pushing many issues outside of critical interrogation through the abnormal-
ities, immoralities, and unfreedoms connected to the positivity of the subject
(Connolly 1985 ). To head this way is to adopt a double entry orientation
to democratic politics, expressing preliminary respect for established
rights, identities, and entitlements while periodically initiating, or respond-
ing with presumptive receptivity to, social movements through which
newgoods, identities, rights, and freedoms might be ushered into being.
Some of us now suspected that the demand for a deWnitive juridical
grounding of the subject, legitimacy, morality, rights, and identity obstructed
the task of coming to terms with changing conditions under which
new identities and rights periodically emerge from fugitive modes of suVering
simmering below the gaze of liberal theory. Under the combined inXuence
of Foucault and Nietzsche, I gravitated toward an ethic of cultivation
grounded in theWrst instance in gratitude for the abundance of life over
identity rather than a morality of law or contract grounded in a theistic,
juridical, or rationalist mode of legitimation. I asked Taylor whether his
‘‘opposition to Foucault embodies a residual commitment to... teleological
philosophy’’ and how ‘‘this ontology is to be sustained in the modern age?’’
( 1985 , 375 ).
Taylor responded by reiterating his critique of Foucault on truth, conced-
ing a bit on the question of the subject, and embracing aXexible, teleological
ontology:
But if we mean by this expression that there is a distinction between distorted and
authentic self-understanding, that the latter can in a sense be said toXow from a
direction in being, I do indeed espouse such a view. And that makes a big part of my
‘‘ontology.’’ (Taylor 1985 , 384 – 5 )
832 william e. connolly