Foucault was mentioned in the article today about literature and criticism. Quoting Foucault's endorsement of Mises and Hayek. Foucault has always been rather an interesting character to me.
I picked up his work at the beginning of college. And later drifted away from his work. Unable to reconcile him completely with my development towards anarchism... which was more careful and conservative and first but has become more radical and reflective over time. This article had me thinking. And was surprising in that over the past few months I have been reading more of the work of various philosophers I used to be into. Though, less of the postmodernism that I find impossible to read or are just nonsense.
Overall Foucault stands out over the others. I've noticed this seems to be the agreement of others in the rationalist camp who have challenged Continental philosophy. Both John Searle and Noam Chomsky have given their approval to some of his work and tried to put him apart from the likes of Derrida and the deconstructionists. Not that their opinion matters more than others, but I get the feeling that he may in some ways belong to the wrong group or has been misappropriated. Not least of which because he developed much of his work as "tools" rather than truths or directions to follow.
His work Discipline and Punish is a very excellent work on the totalitarianism of the penal system and laws. And in general the (Bentham's) panopticon's influence on society and surveillance state in general. Overall, Foucault is difficult for different reasons than other European philosophers in the 20th century. He isn't so much hard to understand, in fact he isn't. So much as he is not dogmatic in the least; and like Nietzsche and many others, doesn't even consider himself a philosopher. In fact, it's difficult to believe he even has a place in academic thinking. He challenged the very notion of Marxism and syndicalism in a debate with Chomsky; agreeing with the libertarian (both ours and the libertarian-socialist) that it is a power grab.
Foucault also takes his extremes nearly as far as Nietzsche. Demanding that the prisons and the state must by fought against. His theory of art seems to be individualist: regarding the subject as a work of art.
I wonder what others think of re-evaluating his work. Anyone have any other thoughts?
I've only read a chunk of Madness and Civilization, which I happened to dug up today (which is why I've revived this unfortunately neglected thread). I'm, also fairly familiar with a lot of what he had to say in Discipline and Punish which has made me even more interested in him. I would love to see libertarianism pay more attention to Foucault, for he definitely appears to be one of the best philosophers of recent times and is easily the only postmodernist who seems to be of any value.
My personal Anarcho-Capitalist flag. The symbol in the center stands for "harmony" and "protection"-- I'm hoping to illustrate the bond between order/justice and anarchy.
I know Hayek cited him favourable in The Fatal Conceit. Granted, there are intepretation issues with that text (there seems to be a great deal of evidence that the editor, William Bartley, took a very active role and the book may be more his than Hayek's), but it still might be worth checking it out.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
hayekianxyz:Granted, there are intepretation issues with that text (there seems to be a great deal of evidence that the editor, William Bartley, took a very active role and the book may be more his than Hayek's), but it still might be worth checking it out.
Link?
Grayson Lilburne: hayekianxyz:Granted, there are intepretation issues with that text (there seems to be a great deal of evidence that the editor, William Bartley, took a very active role and the book may be more his than Hayek's), but it still might be worth checking it out. Link?
Try this, written by his biographer Alan Ebenstein. Bruce Caldwell also has a section on the issue in his fantastic biography.
hayekianxyz: Grayson Lilburne: hayekianxyz:Granted, there are intepretation issues with that text (there seems to be a great deal of evidence that the editor, William Bartley, took a very active role and the book may be more his than Hayek's), but it still might be worth checking it out. Link? Try this, written by his biographer Alan Ebenstein. Bruce Caldwell also has a section on the issue in his fantastic biography.
Thanks!
Just finished the first book on The History Of Sexuality and it was interesting. His notion of Bio-Power and how the State has become an institution whose power has increased enormously through concern with preserving life rather then just threatening death upon the populace of their own or others. He said to some extent that anything can be justified if thought to be protecting life. Jews, homosexuals and any other undesirable persons became a "sickness" that needed to be "cured". This was a primary tool in the evolution of state power and one of many reasons for fascist governments in the 20th century.
Democracy is nothing more than replacing bullets with ballots
If Pro is the opposite of Con. What is the opposite of Progress?
hayekianxyz: Try this, written by his biographer Alan Ebenstein. Bruce Caldwell also has a section on the issue in his fantastic biography.
Damn, what a depressing article.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
Right after I initially posted this, I read a book of interviews he did about politics.
In the book, they mention something he said (which I didn't read the original) about Hayek and Mises being an example of how not to be governed. Of course, in the index it says "Richard von Mises" instead of Ludwig von Mises. I don't know what he said about Mises, but I can't imagine he meant Richard von Mises.
We should probably move any further conversation of this article to a new thread, but just to make clear to readers here, according to the article, Hayek was a victim, not a perpetrator, in this sad tale. The latter dishonor seems to go to W.W. Bartley, Hayek's editor, alone.
I. Ryan: Damn, what a depressing article.
Well, at least it ended with a ray of hope:
"Clearly, a scholarly version of "The Fatal Conceit," including all three parts and consisting of Hayek's final drafts for as many chapters as possible, should be prepared and published. Fortunately, most — perhaps all — of these chapter drafts are now at the Hoover Institution. Hayek's goal in writing "The Fatal Conceit," as in so much of his other work, was to free men from misconceptions about the free society made possible through private property. A new edition of his last great work would be a valuable step in realizing this goal."
Long has an interesting discussion of Foucault here.
AnalyticalAnarchism.net - The Positive Political Economy of Anarchism
My observations:
Foucault is much easier to read than most of the other French intellectuals that have been associated with post-modernism. He doesn't seem to have the same cryptic or obscurantist thing going on, at least to the same extent. When I read "Madness and Civilization", I was surprised that I seemed to be reading a fairly comprehensible work of history and sociology. In contrast, pick up one of Derrida's books and one is likely to barely understand anything clearly, as the whole thing is likely to be filled with deliberate word plays and its own lexicon that one probably wouldn't be familiar with unless one already was starting to get heavily into Derrida. So, in terms of style, I inherently favor Foucault.
Foucault's ideas strike me as a modification of Neitzsche in which he does a geneology of knowledge and emphasizes power relations. He emphasizes that knowledge (and language) is power. I think that this can be useful, although I'd be skeptical about how robust its application really can be without devolving into something absurd (this is how I feel about a good deal of the ideas that are roughly associated with post-modernism; at best, I consider it a particular lense or context, but not something that can reasonably be applied in a more general and totalistic sense). It does seem like Foucault never fully jumped on the train of the post-structuralists, so that in some respect he stands out as different.