I always found it strange that Foucault has come to be identified, in the mainstream view of his work but also in academic circles, with radical leftism. It's hard to read Discipline and punish or any of his work on biopolitics and not sense the underlying criticism of the welfare state and "big government". His libertarianism made him at odds with many French Marxist thinkers of his era and I suppose must have played a part in his relocation to America.
I think that Foucault found capitalism and the freedom it granted absolutely fascinating (just like Marx before him was fascinated with capitalism's ability to increase wealth), which eventually led him to look into thinkers like Hayek, Friedman and Say. Anedoctal but imo significant: his last partner and the executor of his will now works for a neoliberal think tank.
The left-wing magazine Jacobin had ran an interesting inyerview on the subject of Foucault's neoliberal inclinations some time back, worth a read if the subject interests you: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/foucault-interview/
He was anti-marxist and anti-statist. Definitely found a lot valuable in neoliberalism, something left-leaning intellectuals would probably like to ignore.
Briefly looking at his history, it does seem to be he was very opportunistic on his positioning, following the sentiment and political movements of france.
That's interesting, I wasn't aware that he had turned rather libertarian. But I must ask, did he agree with everything in standard libertarianism, or did he have some significant differences?
That's a baffling reply. I think the idea of there being a "standard libertarianism" is quite odd but it's your phrase that could use some clarification, not mine.
I'm by no means an expert on Foucault, but I highly recommend learning about some of his ideas or even better, read some of writings. You may not come away agreeing with him (especially right away) but his ideas on freedom deeply impacted me.
You'll see him criticized and reviled in many philosophical circles as being the epitome of post-modernism (which has (unfairly IMHO) become a bit of a dirty word in some cultures), but don't let that scare you. I believe (mostly from reading analysis from people much smarter than me, like Thaddeus Russell) that Foucault is widely misunderstood.
Couldn't agree more...but which philosophical circles!? When I attended college a couple years ago it seemed like Foucault was either all the rage (to those who liked "continental" philosophy) or simply not discussed (in the "analytic" philosophical circles); he was lambasted almost exclusively by those who had heard some sketchy third party synopsis of his thought and reacted negatively and never bothered to actually comprehend his ideas.
I think the NYT quote on the back of many of the english paperback editions of his works, "Foucault must be reckoned with," sums up his position in the history of philosophy perfectly--his ideas were quite radical and not easy to contend with at first (especially from the perspective of anglo-american pedagogy), but the level of scholarly thinking and ingenuity the man possessed are awe-inducing.
His thesis History of Madness is still an incredible read and really drives home the often great degree of malleability and historical contingency of cultural/social concepts and categories.
'Discipline and Punish' is a masterwork and a great read. Foucault's influence is huge. If you're capable of reading him and choose not to, you may be cutting your nose off to spite your face.
I say this as someone who read Russell's chapter on Nietzsche and avoided reading his work, then read it.
The overwhelming majority of people that criticize post-modernism have little-or-no actual knowledge of it. Foucault can indeed be difficult to understand, but make no mistake, he does have interesting things to say.
Many who criticize post-modernism (and Foucault) aren't really criticizing the philosophy, but the understanding of that philosophy among groups who have adopted it for political ends.
When people say "post-modernism sucks" they mean, for example, that moral relativism sucks, or that it is stupid to view science as a grand narrative of no more value than other narratives. When they say "Foucault sucks" they are attacking the understanding among the "woke" of how power relations work in society, an understanding that is drawn, however incompetently, from readings of Foucault.
Leading post-modern philosophers didn't embrace those positions in an uncomplicated way, but many influenced by them do, and they massively outnumber the people who have actually bothered to read Derrida or Baudrillard.
Furthermore, many post-modern philosophers were showboaters who enjoyed being provocative, so you don't have to look hard to find justification for the unnuanced understanding of their work.
A word currently used to describe "consciousness" and being aware of the truth behind things "the man" doesn't want you to know i.e. classism, racism...
No argument there. Even a critic like Roger Scruton who has read him writes "Whatever you think of Foucault (and Rorty), there is no doubt that they were intelligent writers and genuine scholars with a distinctive vision of reality. They opened the way to fakes but were not fakes themselves. Matters are quite otherwise with many of their contemporaries."
To name names, he means Lacan and Althusser among many others.
Many thousands of people have read Marx, all of his works. More important, his basic ideas are clear and understandable.
Marx believed that history was driven by the means of production, and that the original means, foraging, produced societies that were egalitarian and peaceful. Then the human race switched to agriculture, and societies became unequal, oppressive, and militaristic. This went on for thousands of years, until finally some societies switched to industrialization and capitalism, which upended the old social order, but lead to new forms of oppression and suffering. But capitalism has internal contradictions that will lead to its being overthrown by the workers and replaced with anarchistic socialism which will be egalitarian and peaceful. And so everyone should join in and support the overthrow of capitalism.
That is all clear and understandable, and that is not an accident, because Marx's goal was to change the world through mass political action, and the only way that can happen is if you have a set of ideas that is understandable to ordinary people.
And that leads me back to Foucault. If is ideas are so complex and subtle that only a tiny elite of dedicated scholars can understand them, then they are of little use in helping people overcome the many things wrong in the world today.
I know only some of Foucault’s work, and don’t know much of him as an essayist. Nevertheless, if you are looking for something brief but significant, I would recommend “What is an author?”
I think it gives a sense of the sort of theoretical work that Foucault is interested in (which is perhaps somewhat distinct from his more historically and politically oriented work). It also contends with questions of information and ownership in a way that may be interesting from a “hacker” perspective.
The 1971 debate between Chomsky and Foucault was interesting because it made Chomsky seem sane. Worth watching. It helps to understand French but youtube might have some translation feature. Foucault is far worse than he's misunderstood to be. In the end he's just an opinionated French guy channelling Robespierre.
Nobody has articulated my feelings about Foucault et al better than Chomsky:
> There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out.
It's a great quote, but having (tried) to read (some of) all of those authors (in English translation), I think Foucault is in a different class. I'd agree that the others are intentionally obscurantist, but Foucault is not. I'd put him at about the level of Chomsky himself --- complicated, possibly wrong, but insightful and striving for clarity.
"Discipline and Punishment" and "History of Sexuality" are short and clear. Foucault's basic idea of "power" is that one should pay less attention to the explanations and excuses that are given, and more attention to what actually happens. If despite their protestations, one side consistently ends up winning, and their opponents consistently end up losing, it's likely that they hold "power".
Which is to say, while you are welcome to skip Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, and Kristeva, I think you should read Foucault.
Chomsky has made many such remarks and they're always interesting, but I think what Searle had to say about it—he was a personal friend of Foucault—is even more interesting ("I asked him: why the hell do you write so badly?") The conclusion is that the obscurity was culturally driven, but that's a lame way to summarize this fun clip. Just listen to the whole thing:
That's an excellent observation. Those philosophers are deliberately ambiguous for the sake of profundity. It's not unlike interpreting poetry or literature -- they even built that into their tradition, like a preemptive defence against their lack of clarity. The most honest way to approach Foucault and others like him is to read them as thinkers and artists and to accept what insights you can glean from it and disregard the rest and shake off its overbearing seriousness.
Deliberately ambiguous sentences mean 1000 meanings to 1000 followers. Then these 1000 postmodern intellectuals write treatises on the meaning of this, by adding their own ambiguity. In the end, everything goes.
One detail is that shortly before his death, Foucault sent a letter asking if he could come to live with Wade and Stoneman. "I think he wanted to die like Huxley. I said yes, of course."
I find it interesting that many here reading these comments base their professional lives within the STEM fields but yet are so ardent to support the post-modernist philosophers who believe reason to be an absurd meta-physical starting point. It's a little ironic to say the least.
Foucault's great focus on sexuality as central to happiness indicates that he never escaped the influence of his Catholic upbringing.
Think of all the things that you care about, that make your life good or bad. Sexuality is obviously one, but only one, and even it is intertwined with many others, like health, child-rearing, companionship, and so on.
But with Catholicism, or at least a rigid version, life is all about fighting sin, and central to sin is sexual desire, and hence fighting sexual desire is central to living properly. Now stick with that sex-centered view of life and just make sexual desire good instead of bad, and you have Foucault, or at least a large part of his views.
You know, someone who follows exactly what his father tells him to be in life is not free. But someone who spends his life doing the exact opposite, and never discovers for himself what a good life would be, which might in some ways agree with his father's vision, is still not really free.
No doubt some Foucault fans will claim, and perhaps properly, that I am greatly distorting his views. But as a public intellectual, Foucault had a responsibility to make his views clear enough that people could understand them and decide if they are right or wrong, and if the latter put them into practice in their lives and society as a whole. It is, for instance, pretty clear what Marx thought should happen in the world, and likewise the American founding fathers.
If it is the case that Foucault wrote in a way that predictably would lead to his being misunderstood, then I say he was being irresponsible. If on the other hand his views are not of any use to most people, then why do they matter?
I think that Foucault found capitalism and the freedom it granted absolutely fascinating (just like Marx before him was fascinated with capitalism's ability to increase wealth), which eventually led him to look into thinkers like Hayek, Friedman and Say. Anedoctal but imo significant: his last partner and the executor of his will now works for a neoliberal think tank.
The left-wing magazine Jacobin had ran an interesting inyerview on the subject of Foucault's neoliberal inclinations some time back, worth a read if the subject interests you: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/foucault-interview/