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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? |