Why Going Backwards is the way Forwards!

Why are the Stand up Shows a backwards read through time? In a sense because for me philosophy is at its best at its cutting edge. What the show does is to attempt to get the moment of elation that is a good idea. More than that seeing that moment makes even very well known ideas feel exciting again, and vibrant. It also opens up strange links between ideas. Foucault might be habitually seen as opposed to the modern liberal consensus, but that does mean he is fundamentally opposed to Kant, upon whom that consensus bases its foundation, and with whom Foucault shares so very very much. It is this loop of Foucault-kant that presenting them in their moment of thought capture, and which is so much clearer if heard Foucault before Kant. To go back in time, is to know where the ideas lead to, even as you are presented with them in their power and passion. It is therefore to be and feel the bitter sweetness of the history of philosophy - where ideas that promise so much, lead to odd places, and never were the thinker hoped. And yet it is the power of thought that these odd journeys do not matter. Indeed they is the point, ideas should open out to who knows what, for it is it that opening the world replies to them, and they are made what they then become. and it is reply to the immediate power of the idea, the structure of the show, the running backwards though time, tries to get at.