The Foucault's Anti-Platonism Role in His Reading of Magritte's Painting This Is Not A Pipe

Foucault pays attention to the concept of representation and its effect on the search for truth. The emphasis of the present article is on Foucault's "This is not a Pipe," which he later expanded slightly and published as an independent book. Foucault's research approach in the seventies and his writings in this decade are influenced by Deleuze. In an article entitled "The Theater of Philosophy", Foucault reviews Deleuze's thoughts in his two books, namely Difference and Repetition, and Logic of Sense. Although Deleuze devoted an independent book to Foucault's ideas, it can be argued that Foucault was influenced by Deleuze's ideas and his anti-Platonic views in the 1970s.
For him, the distinguishing feature of a philosophy is not its anti-Platonic character; what distinguishes one philosophy from other philosophies is, for Foucault, the same distinction that distinguishes an illusion from another. This idea that a philosopher can take the spears of other philosophers and throw them in paths that may have never been intended by those philosophers themselves is not unique to Deleuze. Foucault himself devoted much of his philosophical thought to the theoretical and systematic development of a philosophy rooted in Heidegger's thought and by way of him in Kant's philosophy.
Thinking needs a driving force, an impetus that motivates it to start and set foot on the path of thinking. But for Heidegger, the fact that we are not thinking yet means that we are captive in the conventional, representational framework of thought. Representational forms of thinking that combine mental thinking with representational forms cannot provide an appropriate answer to the question of "what thinking is". Representation does not provide us with the real quality of thinking. For Heidegger, therefore, thinking relates to something outside the realm of representation and is in stark contrast to representational forms inherited from the past. Foucault's attempt in most of his writings is, in a sense, to think informally. For him, thinking in this way is related to the "outside", that is to the unconventional and non-representational aspect of thinking. According to Lawler, for Foucault to think means to think differently.
In his confrontation with the moral-representational aspect of "truth," Nietzsche tried to show how truth, which he presented as if it was only understood in a Platonic sense, became a myth. In his famous essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" he argues how the distinction between the sensible world and the supersensible world led to the formation of the myth of the existence of truth in another world. Nietzsche relates this distinction to reason, our understanding of knowledge, and believes that reason has led to many exaggerations for man. Nietzsche's understanding of this kind of truth was directly related to Plato's specific understanding of truth. Heidegger was also aware of this distinction in his book Nietzsche. In this book, and in his discussion of the will to power as art, he tries to show what overthrowing of Platonism probably imply in Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself, who had previously condemned Kant for failing to overthrow Platonism, is now accused by Heidegger of doing the same. For Heidegger, too, the relation of truth to art is important: the truth of the sensible world. Art, as mentioned in Plato's dialogues, is concerned with appearances and the sensible world, and gives way to sensual affairs.
Heidegger values Nietzsche's understanding of reversing the conventional understanding of truth, as well as his desire to pay attention to art in search of a new truth, but he also tries to show where the danger of Nietzsche's approach ultimately lies. This line of thought is ultimately handed down to Foucault who following Heidegger's intellectual project seeks to overturn Platonism. For Heidegger, Nietzsche's intellectual endeavors in his final years were thought-provoking pint toward the first sparks of truly creative and progressive philosophical thinking. It seems that madness prevents Nietzsche from continuing to work. This short period of thought, which Heidegger believes is also the most brilliant and creative period, indicates the way forward. Yet, it remained for the philosophers to see how the real world became a myth and what happened to the truth? From that point on, now it is necessary for Foucault to examine the history of thought in the West and show what happened that the perceptible matters took precedence, and what happened after that precedence was questioned in the works of artists like Magritte and how finally truth became more and more descending or non-relevant.
If Nietzsche throws away both worlds, then he inevitably will have to deny the world of sensations, and his way of thinking will undoubtedly lead to nihilism. But it is unlikely that Nietzsche sought nihilism, and of course he devoted much of his mental energy to denying nihilism. So, we need to see why denying the sensible world. If the denial of the supersensible world occurred for anti-Platonic reasons, it would no longer be necessary to deny the sensible world. Foucault sees this as context for a change: the understanding of the perceptible world changes, and a new human being emerges, a human being freed from the trap of Platonism, who has developed such an understanding as seen in Magritte's paintings. But if Platonism is overthrown, as Nietzsche claims, what would happen will be the priority of sensible world over supersensible, which leads to the affirmation of the sensible world. Foucault doesn't seek such an opposition but understood in its contrast to the supersensible world. A new order must be established that rises from the "middle" and not from the top or bottom. One should not be valued and the other should not be despised. As long as this hierarchy is observed, we will be remained, or worse trapped, in the bondage of Platonism.
The main issue in this article is the relationship between Foucault's thought and his philosophical Anti-Platonism. Under this pretext, his analysis of Magritte's work is his article "This is not a pipe" would be examined and its relation to the concept of "outside" in his thought of this period would be analyzed. The question of the present study is the relationship between the concept of "outside" and Foucault's anti-Platonic views in his analysis of Magritte's paintings. Research Method in this article is descriptive-analytical through which we examine four works by Magritte to understand the bearings of Foucault's anti-Platonic attitude. The method of data collection is by studying the existing library resources on Foucault. The method of research, is related to the genealogy of his attitude as well as the methodological reasons for his opposition to Platonic thought in his early period of thought; meanwhile, the relationship between word and image would be argued as well. This relationship would be put in the context of Magritte's works and the analysis of his works would also be included. The results indicate that Foucault's anti-Platonic analysis of Magritte's works is an attempt to overthrow the Platonic structure of thought, and this was probably one of the reasons that he succeeded in creating new method of thinking in the philosophical and social fields.