Foucault and Wittgenstein: Practical Critique and Democratic Politics

This paper aims to explore a set of convergence points between Foucault’s and Wittgenstein’s perspectives on philosophy and language, integrating them into a mutually complementary approach that I term ‘practical critique.’ The concept of ‘practical critique’ is founded on three pillars: the understanding of philosophy and language as critical practices, the public nature of language, and confessional subjectivity. I examine these three areas of convergence across three subsequent sections. In the concluding section, I discuss how this perspective can be fertile for understanding democratic politics today. I argue that all three pillars predominantly support democratic politics over any other political form. To explain that, I engage with the debate on the language of democratic theory and the potential expansion of the understanding of the public sphere. The notion of the public that emerges from this perspective offers an alternative or supplementation to the classical Habermasian view of the public sphere and democratic theory. It is envisioned as an open space of discursive multiplicity and diversity, where practices of exclusion or oppression can be made visible, challenged, and resisted.