All I have managed here, and it is more than I intended, is to give a confused statement of an intention which presumes itself to be good: the mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes. But let what I have tried to suggest amount to this alone: that not only within present reach of human intelligence, but even within reach of mine as it stands today, it would be possible that young human beings should rise onto their feet a great deal less dreadfully crippled than they are, a great deal more nearly capable of living well, a great deal more nearly well, each of them, of their own dignity in existence, a great deal better qualified, each within his limits, to live and to take part toward the creation of a world in which good living will be possible without guilt toward every neighbor: and that teaching at present, such as it is, is almost entirely either irrelevant to these possibilities or destructive of them, and is, indeed, all but entirely unsuccessful even within its own “scales” of “value.”

—James Agee

Mais qu’est-ce donc que la philosophie aujourd’hui—je veux dire l’activité philosophique—si elle n’est pas le travail critique de la pensée sur elle-même?

But, then, what is philosophy today—philosophical activity, I mean—if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself?

—Michel Foucault