What does /pol/ think of Foucault and his works?
>>80777443
Hokum-shilling civilization wrecker who literally died of butt AIDS.
>>80777443
It helps to understand some of his work to understand a bit about leftism. But I never read leftists for any other reason than my desire to understand the left, not to understand the world.
>read focault
>dont understand a word
> think i'm a complete retard
>wikipedia him
>"postmodernism"
good to know i'm not the crazy one
>>80777443
he's an actual philosopher, so I doubt he'll pass on /pol/
here's a video of Alex Jones instead;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8RtqxGM8TQ
>>80777760
Philosophy is nigger tier though
>>80777591
I agree. I read him to get another perspective.
>>80777542
>Civilisation wrecker
I think that's a bit extreme to be fair
>>80778063
Except Aristotle was right about everything..
I just realised that he looks like a nigger in that photo. What the fuck? He was French
>>80778063
Your country is nigger tier
>>80778063
why do you say that?
>>80778350
For the (Yous), obviously
>>80778201
He said some people were born to be slaves
But people who study philosophy "for a living" in my experience are people who were too dumb to do any serious math and science
>>80778421
He meant that in a spiritual sense, not necessarily a racial sense.
And can you disagree? What is capitalism except hordes of people who, even when given a great degree of freedom, work at menial shit all day for pittances?
Lots of people just choose to be used.
>>80777644
Yeah, his language is hard to follow for me.
Here's a Chomsky and Foucault debate in case you're interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8
>>80778421
>too dumb to do any serious math and science
I knew it
>>80777644
As far as the pomos go, he is easy to read. The (((germans))) are far harder to get anything out of. That being said Foucault is an untrustworthy thinker and the examples he uses are too obscure to waste time fact checking so you get many undergrads parroting his stuff like its a revelation
>>80777443
E Michael Jones in his videos says Foucault came up with the idea that in return for unlimited sexual liberation the population would no longer examine the Oligarchs financial schemes. I need to read more about this Foucault as he had a major influence on society, one that I think was bad in the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pigJliqEU5w
>>80778610
Well, you can take comfort in the fact that if it wasn't historically accurate he would have been called out on his shit ages ago.
>>80778558
No i think he meant actual slavery, spiritual slavery is something a 16 year old would say.
>>80778421
>But people who study philosophy "for a living" in my experience are people who were too dumb to do any serious math and science
lol
>>80778958
Congrats on misinterpreting a clearly written post. There's no hope for you.
>>80777443
I think many havent read him.
I think most here certainly havent read him
I also think his prose, the way he writes, is insufferable
>>80778610
his point wasn't to be historically accurate (although I doubt he was), he was more trying to demonstrate how we look at history in a flat and one dimensional way. And he didn't do all of that just cause he was trying to be smart, he wanted us to question how will history look upon us.
>>80777443
He's used in my commie teaching classes to justify constructivist learning. He's probably a bad dude.
>>80779150
Yeah, his language is difficult to follow, but I try, if not only to get another perspective on the world.
I don't like living in an echo-chamber.
>>80779306
But if he wasn't accurate, wouldn't he have been called out?
>>80779499
>But if he wasn't accurate, wouldn't he have been called out?
I agree, I doubt he was wrong in any meaningful way. he was a serious dude.
>>80779451
Ironically he wasn't a fan of Marxism at all, and yet he's used in modern Gender theory classes and Sociology classes.
Just another example of a Philosopher co-opted by Marxists and SJWs posthumously.
>>80777443
My opinion? Fuck you, too, buddy!
>>80778788
I think you are overestimating academia. An example would be the word parrhesia, Foucault does a huge write up on it based maybe on 10 instances found in ancient texts across pretty large time spans. He goes out of his way to try and show that parrhesia is unrelated to Christian confession despite how similar some of the practices seem. He's a homo Pomo so obviously he cannot give Christianity any credit. In order to dispute him you'd need a knowledge of classical languages so that you wouldn't have to read in translation and knowledge of ancient politics and early Christianity and its confession theories. How many people have those credentials and the courage to resist the legacy of an academic posterboy?
>>80777542
FPBP
>>80779885
I suppose you're right.
>>80779786
Fuck you, guy.
>>80778421
I'm studying maths and sciences, do well at it, yet I would have loved to study philosophy instead. So, you're wrong, bud
>>80778135>>80779655
He was wrong in the sense of how he interpreted historical events. He would take isolated incidents and then apply them across the board.
At least that was my impression. This was more true in the history of sexuality than in madness and civilization.
>>80778421
I actually find Philosophy more difficult than Maths or science. At least Maths and science have an objective answer that can be deduced.
I'd find it much easier to read a University level Chemistry textbook than a University Philosophy text.
>>80780317
Shit, that was meant for >>80780093
>>80780302
I've only read some of Madness and Civilisation so far so I can't comment on the History of Sexuality.
>>80780317
I guess it makes sense, but I would have no idea to know. I just wanted to tell the other guy how he was wrong.
Seemed like a degenerate but had some very good ideas.
His description of the panopticon is one of the most important paradigms in political theory today .
>>80777443
His work contains a lot of truth but I disagree with him on most moral and philosophical issues. He was a sado/masocistic homosexual bipolar deviant. His moral codecs never managed to aquire him happiness which is why he so often tried to kill himself and eventually died of aids.
>>80780302
I agree. he was nitpicking certain historical truths to make his point. but that is allowed. he didn't make anything up, that's why nobody's accusing him in the scientific world.
But again I come back as to how I see the goal of him his works, he is simply expressing the idea of history not being streamlined, behavior anomalies were frequent and sometimes lasted for very long, and he used accepted scientific methods to present his case.
And again, not in the sense that "hey we should all accept this cause it was okay before, but you didn't know that", but to question how we live today. Is Pokemon GO more important to the western society than *insert serious issue*? and are we degenerate because of it
>>80780917
He tried to kill himself? Damn, I didn't know that.
>>80780637
Yeah, I don't necessarily agree with him so far but I can respect his arguments. As a hardcore right-winger, respecting a Leftist's arguments isn't something that comes easily.
>>80777644
His work is written quite entangled but once you get it you find that a lot of it is mediocer. People who doubt their own abilities tend to complicate them more than necessary.
Try asking any leftist about hermeneutics and if they fail to explain it withon two minutes then they have low self-esteem.
>>80777443
Atleast he's not a manlet.
>>80781273
He did, but it was in his younger days. It happend frequently though. His suicide attempts is also the reason his father had him institutionalized in an insanitary assylum which inspired his work called "birth of the clinic".
>>80781483
No but he was a masocistic homosexual.
>>80781757
Huh, I didn't know that. That's pretty depressing, to be honest.
>>80777443
Literally who? Who is this guys?
I'm not smart enough to read him
>>80782227
He was a Leftist Anarchist (although many would argue he was actually apolitical) who wrote a lot about power and knowledge and how they're interlinked in a system, and about sexuality too.
I haven't read much of his work yet, but that's what I've been told and the impression I've got.
>>80777443
Discipline and Punish is one of my favorite books!
Also very readable compared to his more theoretical work.
>>80777443
I've heard good things about Foucault, actually.
Degenerate homosexual who died of AIDS. His ideas were as bad as his personal life.
Gave the Maoist "long march through the institutions" a stronger ideological veneer by proposing intellectuals as the vanguard class of the communist revolution, and introduced moral relativism to the narrative to make it impervious to criticism & hatefacts.
An all round evil guy whose bad ideas and degenerate lifestyle couldn't cause his death soon enough to save the world from his poisonous mind.
>>80782078
Why? Can you reflect yourself on any of his moral ideas?
I agree on his observations regarding the power division of a society but where he critized them I, on the contrary, find them really effectful and wish we were to exploit these opertunities more. Focaults aim was to liberate the individual and its thoughts which in my book is impossible.
He is basically Nietzsche and Althusser combined, so you're better off reading those two to gain true understanding.
However, he was foundational to my development intellectually, and I think if he were around today he'd be a staunch critic of the way the American academy has bastardized his theories. He was fundamentally a libertarian, almost right-wing compared to today's neo-Maoist nigger professors and their minions.
>>80782461
He was very political. Everything he wrote on critics on instutions was political idealism.
>>80779150
Ha no where near as bad as Derrida or Lacan.
>>80782682
Yeah, I'm enjoying his work Madness and Civilisation so far even though I'm not a Leftist or an Anarchist.
>>80782497
I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I will eventually. I plan on buying all his books.
>>80782769
He wasn't a Communist, though. I believe he was actually critical of Marxist theory.
>>80782800
> if he were around today he'd be a staunch critic of the way the American academy has bastardized his theories
I completely agree. I think he'd be personally disgusted if he saw the way his theories were being used today in Gender theory classes or Sociology classes.
>>80777644
Try taking a elective philosophy class where one of his books is a big part of the semester with his seminal book Discipline and Punish
>>80782800
Like, check out this lecture. The professor compares and his work the History of Sexuality to Gender Troubles by that cunty Feminist Judith Butler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bkFlJfxyF0
It's long, but if you want to see what they teach in these classes here you go.
>>80779150
The only reasons for a /pol/ goy to read him would be to learn the go-to arguements of a leftist college student and then to refute those arguements because Focault is a scumbag.
There's a lot educational litterature I would suggest my fellow /pol/ community before wasting their time with Focault.
There's even a lot of useless leftist refuteable litterature I would suggest them before suggesting Focault.
>>80779658
No, he just wanted to reframe communism, like all cultural/non-economic Marxism into his preffered way. He wanted to lead a troop of mental patients to be his vanguard class for his communist revolution (as opposed to the working class of normative economic Marxism), then settled on intellectuals like himself as the vangaurd class, hence the proliferation of mini-Foucaults in universities creating the university centric SJW phenomenon we see today.
SJWs as an intellectual vanguard of the communist revolution is Foucaults legacy to the world, birthed from his HIV ridden brain.
Although he was gay and into BDSM, he always hit his sexuality publicly and rarely advocated it. During his life he mostly apolitical, the only time he really got involved in direct action was in the late '60s on behalf of prison reform.
I think the greatest lesson I got from him is an historical one; societies change and what seems barbaric today was just an effective means of achieving the same goal in the past. That's one reason why I support the death penalty and summary execution of felons. Moral relativism can go both ways.
>>80782227
End yourself false flag
His work was like most false sciences. A load of waffle that is impossible to prove to any meaningful extent either way. Yes some of the things he argued were correct in some situations. However, they cannot be applied universally. Hence I find him massively overrated by people who don't understand the real sciences. Those who do duff degrees.
IE I could say men are evil. I would be right in the social science view as I could use a number of qualitative examples that have no real significance. The fact that I did not say all men are evil also helps back this viewpoint. However, it is an unfulfilling argument that just goes in circles as the judgement is completely subjective.
>>80783639
I will admit some of his work on surveillance is interesting. However, like with most philosophers he complicates the argument for no reason other than to appear superior. No making up new terms just for the sake of it does not make you more intelligent. It makes you a narcissist with an over inflated sense of self worth.
>>80783902
This.
>>80783639
>don't understand the real sciences
Hard sciences are actually easier to understand than Philosophy for me.
I would argue that you actually need *more* intelligence to understand Philosophy than hard sciences, because hard sciences have a provable and already determined answer.
An undergrad in science really doesn't need to think about anything at all, really.
>>80782800
Foucault was just another Marcuse, a Communist trying to figure out why normative economic Marxism had failed in the West, and trying to figure out a way to make it work and achieve a Communist revolution.
Foucault was the one who proposed to move away from the working class and to embrace all the minority weirdo groups as the revolutionary class with intellectuals as the vangaurd, literally the SJW phenomenon we see around BLM, gays, trannys etc. we see today.
Just another communist looking dor ways to make communism work and adjusting the theory & means to achieve the same end.
>>80784179
But Foucault was very anti-authority. Communists are for full government.
Doesn't that seem a bit contradictory?
>>80780317
No, you don't.
>>80780093
Anyone can do philosophy. You don't have public universities, but I enter their classes all the time. You can see everything in philosophy in 2 years. With math and science, in 2 years you are still at the beggining.
>>80783639
>the real sciences
philosophy is "real science" you fucking moron. And no, you can't just claim everything you want and just say it's true. it doesn't work like that, and more importantly, that's not the point.
>>80784360
But the answers in hard science courses are there in front of you in the textbook. It doesn't actually require much thought, you just have to understand what's being said. Now, you do need some level of intelligence to understand what the textbook is saying, but once you get it there isn't much thought involved.
With Philosophy, first of all I'd argue the language used can be just as convoluted, but Foucault, for example, doesn't provide solutions to anything he says, unlike a Chemistry textbook would.
>>80784101
What is this?
>>80784740
Science and math books don't give you all the answers. They just give you an introduction to the topic, and lots of problems to solve so you figure out the rest.
>>80784101
Yeah philosophy is much more intellectually taxing than the hard sciences. Most of the stem guys I know aren't that bright they're just super autistic so they're good with numbers.
>>80784360
you do know that modern physics and math are as unprovable and relative as is modern philosophy, right? you know that what you study at university on math and physics is as basic as the things students learn in their philosophy classes?
>>80785113
>math
>unprovable
>>80784316
No, not at all. Don't you observe Communists IRL?
They have a chronological morality, judged on historical materialism and the inevitability of communism. They are opposed to counter-revolutionary authority, which delays communism, and in favour of communist/leftist authority which advances and propels us towards the historical end of communism.
Red authority = good
Anti-red authority = bad
Marcuse called it repressive tolerance. Lenin would have called it red terror or counter-revolutionary terror, Mao likewise and so on.
>>80784768
You've just shown me an equation without any context. I don't have any guidance on how to solve that. You can't just say plop something down out of context and say 'what's this?'
I'm a Nursing major. I don't have the mathematical capabilities to answer that.
>>80785113
Answering your question, I've been to philosophy courses.
Math and physics are orders of magnitude more taxing.
The relationships are mostly linear and manageable, even in economics. You are never really on the boundaries of your mental capabilities.
>>80785174
I do observe them, but Foucault, from what I've read on him, was very anti-authority in general.
Unless he was some Anarcho-Communist (which doesn't even make sense), then I don't see how he could have been a Marxist.
>>80785221
So you never took Calculus, and you think you can determine whether math is harder than philosophy or not?
>>80777443
>Faggot
>>80785221
They make nurses study Foucault? Are they trying to teach you to organise and mobilise mental patients as a revolutionary class like he did?
Foucault tried to tell his patients that Captialism caused their mental illness, and the only way to cure their madness was to overthrow capitalism in a communist revolution.
Do you believe that? And have you thought about why you are bing taught that as a nursing student at uni?
>>80785153
yes, certain ideas/theories that modern math explores today are very abstract and purely speculative. that's why you have, lets say, two theories that are both logically rich and provable, but contradict themselves.
I get the feeling you're a highschool edgelord, or you're extremely stupid and ignorant.
>>80785444
Well, I'm sure if I had some worked example for that equation I could solve similar ones, but I've been out of the Maths scene for quite a while.
I'm sure you're rusty at stuff you studied in Secondary school.
>>80785627
No, I've picked up his books in my spare time.
What the hell would Foucault have to do with Nursing?
>>80785627
All higher educations in my country have mandatory philosophy of science classes. Foucault is a classic example of post-structuralism.
>>80785641
I just know you don't know anything about maths because you are using the wrong terms. Nobody that knows the first thing about math would use those terms to describe it, because they don't even remotely apply.
You are probably mixing it up with physics.
Physics on the frontier of knowledge are speculative, some bits contradict each other, etc. and so on, yeah. But how does that make it easier than philosophy?
>>80785344
>Math and physics are orders of magnitude more taxing.
that's just cause you don't know math. you don't know hermeneutics and semantics also, but you're just ignorant enough to dismiss them cause you think solving a math equation makes you a scientist.
>>80785931
I didn't tell you to solve it. I just asked what it was.
>>80785441
You don't understand communist morality. Re-read my post. They judge things on a chronological basis, if it advances history towards communism, it is good. If it regresses history away from communism, it is bad.
Nothing more complicated than that, everything else is morally relative to the advancement of history towards or away from the communist utopia. Anything can be good or bad depending on which way it is used to advance or regress "history".
>>80785978
I didn't want him to solve it, I just asked what it was. How can you talk about math when you don't even know the most basic geometrical figures?
>>80786019
A differential equation, correct?
>>80786027
Well, I mean, isn't that a bit of a generalisation? I hate Commies as much as the next guy, but I don't like lumping them all together like that.
He was a communist, and his work was done to benefit the communist cause, but I believe his ideas are quite useful to the modern dissident right.
The context where Foucault wrote his works was a context where the "establishment" was still conservative (the President of France was De Gaulle), and real communism had failed. That's why he wrote so much about criticizing "scientific worldview", and denying the validity of "grand metanarratives". These ideas weren't useful to the left in the 60s.
Now that changed. We live in a world where the greatest arguments of the left are "It's the Current Year" and "You Don't Want to be on the right side of history, do you?" In this context, Foucault criticism of metanarratives and cultural relativism are useful to the right.
It can go like this.
>"As I was explaining, there is no cultural absolute path to modernity and the Enlightenment..."
>"I agree with you professor! That's why I reject all tenets of liberal progressivism!"
>"No, that's not what I meant, I wanted to criticize the grand narrative of modernity, but in the name of revolutionary communism, that's why I see the scientific worldview..."
>"It's bullshit, I know, we should strive for localized narratives instead, like my belief that the white race is descended from Hyperborean Aryans from Atlantis".
They can't really escape from that trap, they made it themselves.
>>80786027
>You don't understand communist morality
and like you do. fuck off australia, you add nothing to the thread. you're just shitposting about communism while I doubt you even know what it is.
>>80785931
Much of Foucault's work was about mental illness and what caused it. He believed that capitalism caused mental (and much physical) illness and the only cure was a communist revolution. He provided an ideological justification for people in positions of authority (like doctors and nurses) to manipulate the mentally ill into being dupes for left-wing causes.
>>80784697
Angry philosophy student spotted
.>>80784101
That's because hard sciences are grounded empirically. The qualitative road that philosophers choose has no real answers. It just ends with circular arguments with neither side being able to provide substantive evidence to disprove the other.
They spend far too long trying to answer almost rhetorical questions. An example I quickly made up - Which was more important for the large increase in life expectancy in Western nations over the last 250 years, advances in food production and sanitation or development in the Field of Biology?
This question has no real suitable answer. Everything can be defined mathematically. It is just the equations for some phenomenom like emotion are extremely complicated. Thus there is a tendency to rely on experience and qualitative data. Data that far to easily is affected by the academics' positionality.
Part of my degree was studying work from academics like Foucalt and Agamben. It does not take long before you realise they provide little knowledge of any real value, bar over complicating the obvious. The arguments around the State of Exception are pointless.
It is because of the circular nature of the arguments that they form infinite loops of arguments and counterarguments that provide nothing of real value. Well except perhaps giving academics dong useless degrees overpaid jobs.
>>80786360
No, it's just a volume integral, and the volume is an ellipsoid
>>80785957
Mandatory "Cultural Studies" classes? Analyse things from a Marxist/Feminist/Queer/Post-X perspective?
>>80781038
I get why that's accepted, and given the scope of his project i can see why he would present case studies the way he did. I guess that I don't really have a problem with his research, I have a problem with its interpretation.
The way it's sold to us in the states, is that there is no such thing as degenerate behavior. There are only levels of repression. All behavior can be "normal" given the correct discourse.
I didn't really get that from his readings, the only thing I really took away philosophically was that we our products of our times and places of origin, and we are biased as well as controlled due to this. It's a great observation and really interesting work, but at the end of all of it I'm still left thinking "so what?"
To be fair, I double majored in physics and was much more focused in logic than in continental philosophy.
>>80786562
Well, you can 'prove' Philosophical theories through argumentation. It's not as absolutely factual as saying "the average human has fingernails", but you can 'prove' these theories to an extent. It's not like Women's Studies or anything.
> It does not take long before you realise they provide little knowledge of any real value
Well, you can't just boil Philosophy down to something that provides little valuable knowledge.
If that's the case, then learning anything that you can't control (Mathematics, for example) would be pointless.
>>80787085
>but at the end of all of it I'm still left thinking "so what?"
It's mostly for people who can't figure it out themselves. These people then go on and make a personality cult out of their preferred intellectuals.
>>80787351
>It's mostly for people who can't figure it out themselves
So, you're arguing that anything even remotely subjective is not worth learning or reading about?
>>80786562
There is a difference between a speculative maths equation which may fall either way depending on future research and a philosophical 'theory' that will NEVER be proved either way.
I believe one of the other posters did mention once of my issues with philosophy. The tendency to use convoluted language and the made up terms of other academics. This referencing of other work that provides little value insofar as giving an unnecessarily complicated name to a certain situation. An example ANT. No shit objects need to be understood in their relationship within a network. The entire universe is interlinked as it all started at one point with the Big Bang as far as we know. This much is obvious and to linguistically and theoretically over complicate such as concept is regressive to the argument.
To really understand how ridiculous and simple this all is you just have to do part of one of these courses. For example I had to describe what could be learnt from an object handed out by the lecturers in front of the lecture hall. My object was a crisp packet. It was frankly embarrassing that university courses rely on show and tell as part of the education process.
>>80787696
Apologies for grammatical errors. Pretty drunk. Already I see I said 'once' instead of 'one'.
>>80787859
At least debate is alive and kicking as can be seen by disagreements in this thread.
>>80787606
I would argue that they don't deserve public funding.
You can read and learn about them in your free time. My Thermodynamics professor was a much better history teacher than my actual history teachers. We talked about Argentinian history after classes.
The thing is, the people that go with STEM can just pick a book and learn philosophy/sociology/humanities, and it's not challenging. In fact, most people do.
I would like to know how many people pursuing degrees in those fields have any interest in learning physics. If there is any, he's going to have a very hard time trying to figure out stuff on their own. And no, it's not just picking up your physics book and having all the answers in front of your eyes, science books are not like that.
>>80788157
To be fair in many ways hard science can be learnt simply by spending the time understanding the processes. Honestly the only challenging part is trying to understand processes. Often they seem extremely challenging until you suddenly 'just get it' and you wonder why you ever thought it challenging in the first place.
More often I would say though in science degrees you need an academics help in unpicking a process or theory.
>>80788649
>they seem extremely challenging until you suddenly 'just get it'
Because they are extremely challenging, thus why it took mankind millennia to develop it.
The idea if inertia that seems so intuitive was in fact so counter-intuitive that's was the main reason the geocentric model survived for so long.
>>80787696
>>80787859
>>80788156
Yes, academics often us convoluted language, but that doesn't mean their theories don't deserve recognition or deserve to be listened to. Subjectivity does not necessarily mean worthlessness.
Foucault recognised patterns of power throughout history and formed theories based around them. But does that mean they weren't worth listening to? Well, I wouldn't say so.
I think the notion that only completely objective things are worth learning and discussing is a narrow-minded one.
>>80788157
Oh, I completely agree. Courses on these are completely useless and a waste of taxpayer money.
But I thought you were arguing that reading Philosophy and forming social theories was stupid and pointless.
>>80788992
In Argentina we have a system where everyone can study whatever they want
The results are that we have the most psychologists per capita in the world, and only 10,000 engineers per year
Do you think that's fine?
>>80789261
No, that's a disgrace.
Only STEM, Medicine and Accounting should be taught in universities.
>>80777760
only sane thing Jones has ever said, but right on
>>80787351
I can see that. But he himself has become some sort of intellectual cult icon. I wonder what he would think of his popularity if he were alive today.
I guess all of that Nietzsche worship turned him into his spiritual successor lol.
>>80787606
I would argue that its not worth devoting much attention to in the public arena. We see too much "personal truth" involved. The western tradition of philosophy generally attempts to answer some question, and also attempts to produce irrefutable results via some logical theorem. This is not the case with post-modernist philosophy.
I'm not saying that its useless, as any personal development that you get out of it is worth something, I'm simply saying that its not as valuable as it has become. Structuralism cant throw its weight around philosophically, and it seems that it is a better tool for historians to use. Genealogical studies in general are, in my opinion.
I also don't like the emphasis on subjective data, again at least in American schools. The last few seminars I was enrolled in were based around phenomenology, which I thought was complete drivel out side of a theological arena.
It seems to me that due to the emergence of subjectivity, philosophers are trying to prove that they get tangible "results" with their philosophy, because administrators are cutting their funding.
>>80783567
I teach Foucault (among other things) at a university and have read most of what he's written. You really have no idea of what he's about. He's notoriously non-normative and non-prescriptive, primarily because he sees "justice" and manifestation of "power" in specific configurations. His interest is in developing an "‘analytics’ of power" (at least in his later works or his "ethical" phase) involving examination of what is formed by relations of power and how this analysis itself is possible. It involves massive amounts of self-reflexivity, historiography, and Kantian reflection on the conditions of possibility for certain modes of discourse.
Of course this is something you wouldn't know because your words give away that you know almost nothing of the content of Foucault's written works, or at least completely fail to understand them.
>>80783639
>>80783902
>>80784360
also show no evidence of understanding.
I come to /pol/ hoping sometimes for glimmers of interesting dissent and intelligence, but leave convinced most people here are morons who don't read books but like to pretend they do.
>>80777443
Never cared of Justice.
It explains a lot.
>>80789261
That's terrible. I can safely say that you're not alone though.
Almost 20 percent of my universities graduates were in Psychology. I went to fucking Purdue. Its insane that one of the top tier engineering schools in the world would have that many fucks not enrolled in a STEM program.
I only double majored because I really enjoyed philosophy and was in school on a scholarship. I cant imagine having the state pay for my degree simply because I exist, and then majoring in "African Bullfrog Cultivation Theory."
How do your fellow countrymen sleep at night?
>>80789463
I still think there is scope for social sciences. Some economic theories are useful. Different sections of social science courses are not equal. IE The spatialities of diseases and the processes by which they spread has much greater importance than say cultural geography.
For some degrees like history it is the skills yo learn rather than the information that is more important. As opposed to sciences where key theories can be very important in the field of work.
>>80790019
Maybe you can help me.
The only thing that interested me with Foucault was his short statement about "Bio Power." I have only read two of his works, so maybe he discusses it in other places, but he never really elaborated on it.
I get that he was attempting to invert the old Leviathan theory, and tried to demonstrate that the state has power over life rather than death, but can you elaborate for me?
Maybe you can help me change my opinion of him. I always thought of him as trying to be a modern day Nietzsche. What did Foucault give us that Nietzsche didn't? Of course, other than studying things like sexuality rather than morality. I always felt that Foucault tried to find a small niche, while Nietzsche attempted to give an overarching theory.
>>80786360
No. It's an essential part of communism. All morality is relative to historical advancement or regression, towards or away from the communist end. In every communist movement things are judged in those terms. Read David Horowitz's deconstructism of communism as he left the movement:
>Why I am no longer a Leftist
http://www.horowitzbiobooks.com/why-i-am-no-longer-a-leftist/
>>80786427
Communist detected. You sound triggered. Foucault was just another one in a long line of Western Communists asking the question: Why didn't communism work in the West? And how can we make a communist revolution work in the West?
The current SJW phenomenon of an intellectual vanguard leading movements of minority weirdos, in combination with a moral relativism that prevents these weirdo groups from being criticised, is his idea and legacy.
He couldn't die from AIDS quickly enough.
>>80786376
You're overthinking it, just chuck him the trash along with all other existentialist philosphers that deny essence.
>>80790019
I met plenty of narcissists at university like you. Make up grand theories with very little substance. It is clear you come from a biased position. Perhaps the concept of positionality is just too complex for you to understand. I know it must be difficult realising that your life's work was a waste of time. I have read plenty of work by Foucalt, work on power and sovereignty but have found little of worth. To receive such a response I know I have touched a nerve.
Rather ironically your response fits almost point for point with my criticism.
philosophy is literally useless. in the past it was a way of finding out the truth (ie scientific truth)
for example plato saying that when you throw something, it falls down because the object gets tired or some shit. philosophically it's very logical, it was deduced syllogistically. it was used as a standard of scientific thinking about thrown objects falling for a very long time.
until the scientific method showed that objects getting tired wasn't the case, and it was all about gravity and kinetic energy and so on. there are a billion examples like this.
philosophy is the nigger's science. and i'm not saying it ironically - it's literally the same method as a voodoo nigger priest explaining some phenomenon with spirits. it's completely useless, and philosophy faculties are full of circlejerks that don't contribute anything to society except for some academic's cushy job.
it was only usefull when science was at its infancy, when thinking that objects became tired made sense because there was no other way of knowing the truth otherwise.
>>80784316
>communists are for full government
This is wrong. The utopian telos of communism is the abolition of the state
>>80790851
Ah Hobbes Leviathan (1651)... Another analogy that serves little purpose than to over complicate the issue. His works only use is to perhaps critique Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism dreams. His argument that without government man would revert to a state of nature is unconvincing to say the least.
>>80790851
There are a bunch of late texts where he develops the idea of "biopower." There are some interviews in the Colin Gordon collection and the three volumes of the unfinished History of Sexuality series.
He develops the concept in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, where he talks first about "the power over life" as centring "on the body as a machine" and also on "on the species body, the body imbued with the mechanics of
life and serving as the basis of the biological processes" (p. 139, Penguin ed.). he also discusses "bio-power" as that which "brought life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life." Roughly speaking, he does owe a debt to Hobbes and nature as "red in tooth and claw," but his innovation is to suggest that the ways that "bodies and pleasures" are organized is a function of a non-centralized, highly dispersed mode of power that operates discursively to generate meanings and systems.
He's super smart on historiography; I think he gets the better of Chomsky in their discussion of power; I think he gets the better of Derrida in their discussion of Descartes and the cogito. It's unfortunate that he died too soon just as he was starting to elaborate fully what bio-power might look like and what kind of system of ethics might proceed from this idea. Foucault is massively indebted to Nietzsche (one of his best essays is "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," but is probably more of an epistemologist who is interested in Kantian fundamentals involving the conditions of knowledge, though with a more historical inflection. He's clearly one of the major thinkers of the past hundred years, though a also a favorite figure for the fringe alt-right to dismiss by not reading him and mentioning instead his cause of death. Just go out and read Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, everyone.
>>80791490
>Basic bitch pseudo-intellectual argument from a Roach.
Philosophy is not a one trick pony. You cant quantify the human spirit. You cant quantify our curiosity. You cant just be a utilitarian about morality, you have to have an end to follow.
Philosophy and Religion give us these answers.
Also, Newton was a philosopher. He studied Natural Philosophy. That broke off and became science. Analytical Philosophy is still mathematically rigorous, much like he was.
Maybe your society is shit because you don't have any decent philosophers?
>>80784316
Anarchy is just the spirit of Christianity continued to its logical conclusion, read The Antichrist.
Equal souls > equal rights > equal wealth > equal authority.
>>80791876
i understand religion's use in society. it's the guardian of tradition, as hayek said, and evolutionary speaking, only religions that allowed for prosperity survived to this day (there were literally a billion religions before)
but philosophy is not religion. it doesn't fullfill the spirit the same way a church bell for a christian or a muslim call to prayer for a muslim does. it's just there.
>Also, Newton was a philosopher.
that's what i said - philosophy was a gateway to science. in the past if you didn't study philosophy, you coudln't do math for example. Hence the PHD (doctor of philosophy) that remained from days long gone.
but it's no longer the case. tell a modern physicist that he needs to know Derrida's deconstruction to study the Higg's boson and he'll promptly laugh at you, together with the rest of the STEMs in the room
>>80791153
You sound thick. If anything, Foucault would help you think more articulately about the specific subject position of forms of knowledge. Try working in being able to say why you disagree with someone rather than saying you "have found little of worth." You sound like a pompous stupid fuck, I'm afraid. You speak far more than you know.
>>80791490
Are you fucking retarded?
>>80778421
HAHAHAHAHAHHA
>>80792385
so you have no counter-argument.
>>80777542
Fuck yeah death to postmodernism FPBP
>>80791866
Very nice. Better answer than my college professor could give me.
I read the History of Sexuality in a seminar course, and was unimpressed. I later read Madness and Civilization and that was a little better. I really was turned off with the "medical gaze" though. I mean, a doctors job is to attempt to objectively look at a patient as a machine to attempt to discern what is wrong with them. I agree, there are times when this puts the liberty of the patient in jeopardy. There are also times where the cause of the disease is psychological rather than physical, as pointed out in History of Sexuality in regard to hysteria.
I get that this is an attempt to go past the surface and dismiss materialism, and as a Catholic I understand this sentiment all too well. Again, maybe I'm biased, but there seems to be a disconnect with modern continental philosophy when it comes to incorporating scientific data into their framework. My professor simply dismissed genes when we studied Sarte. Is this just an isolated incident, or is this all "Post-Modernists" as they're refereed to?
I agree with you as well, he definitely stood up to Derrida and Chomsky.
I would agree that he developed a great framework, and I don't deny his importance to philosophy.
I do however fundamentally disagree with him, and I think that this hinders me in some ways, but its always good to broaden your horizons.
You would probably classify me as an "Alt-Right," but I hope that you don't take this stuff on 4chan too seriously. There are some of us who aren't Nazi fetishists.
>>80792318
i can't handle this level of retardation
>>80792363
I have already clearly argued why I find philosophy a weak subject. The fact you can only resort to personal attacks is perhaps indicative of the failings of a subject you seem so desperate to defend. Philosophy students from my experience and judging by income after graduation have one of two options. Teaching others the lie or flipping burgers. There is a reason Philosophy courses have such low entry requirements. But like most modern philosophy academics you have a massively inflated ego and air of self importance. When it fact it boils down to the fact you were not clever enough to do a real science or maths degree.
>>80793661
You don't see the irony in this. It beggars belief.
>>80793961
This times a million.
As a philosophy graduate I can confirm. All of the graduates from my department ended up "working" for the local feminist co-op or are in retail. You're lucky if you get to teach these days, and if you do you end up being an adjunct professor.
I think philosophy is a great subject, its just that its not marketable, as much as people might say that it is. I was lucky and had other skills, so I'm doing great.
I almost ruined my life because I majored in an amazing hobby. Dont let your kids do the same.
>>80777760
This. You can disagree with the dynamic, the postulates AND the conclusion made by postmodernism but I doubt the average layfag /pol/ack has the ability to both read and understand someone like Foucault.
His work is limpid and pretty easy to read *in French*; it might be the translation or the rythmn and syntax that he uses (he is pretty eloquent in French) that just doesn't work as well in English/foreign languages. But anyway, his classes at the Collège de France are literally seminal work on three subdomains of philosophy/psychology and political philosophy. The guy was an authentic genius, a faggot perhaps, but a genius as well. I recommend the "Order of Discourse" and "Birth of Bio-politic" if anyone of you is interested. Don't let the americans discourage you, they don't know shit about anything. The closest thing they ever got to a philosopher was a french anthropologist who is now dead.
I am a far-right activist, got my thesis directed by a prominent GRECE academic and an FN exec before you start calling me a commie etc.
>>80792580
Hurr hurr you're so stupid. I'm so euphoric. You can't achieve levels of intelligence like me an my neckbeard friends.
hurr hurr You can't understand Foucalt. You can't articulate your argument. brb You're just stupid and I'm not going to articulate a coherent argument and result to baseless insults. Hurr I'm so intelligent and don't understand irony.
>>80794335
I did two degrees and one was a social science degree. I know the exact feeling. I fell for the lie of doing the subject you love. I didn't the second time round.
>>80787085
>The way it's sold to us in the states, is that there is no such thing as degenerate behavior. There are only levels of repression. All behavior can be "normal" given the correct discourse.
The problem with americans is that they take every rethorical game literally. No offence man, but when I read stuff like that... I have a hard time believing people can treat Foucault's work seriously (as in applying it IRL). I think the man was brillant, very pertinent on a lot of stuff, but I can't imagine even the most die-hard Foucaldian philosophy student ever taking his work as anything but theorical, philosophy hypothesis.
>To be fair, I double majored in physics and was much more focused in logic than in continental philosophy.
There is only one kind of philosophy. Analytic philosophy = garbage for racemixed plebians
>>80794335
Wtf. All my american friends (like 5 people) did major in Philosophy and now work in KKKapitalist finance jobs
>>80793047
Cool.
>>80793961
Not worth refuting, but it's worth noting that philosophy graduates get the highest GRE scores and that they're often recruited (from top programs) by leading banks, hedge funds, IT companies, and places that can top money for the smartest people.
>>80777443
The History of Sexuality and The Birth of the Prison were really great reads.
>>80794902
The cope is real.
>>80791563
True. But we all know how long that transition period is going to last... forever.
Same shit with the muslim promising eternal peace when 100% of the world has converted.
>>80778334
Burger plz
>>80794589
You actually have no counter-argument mate, no need to disguise under fifteen layers of xDDD fuGGGG m8888 :D :D
>>80794891
Everyone who complains about their impossible job prospects with their humanities degree went to an extremely low tier school. It's easy to get a good job from an ivy league with an honors degree
>>80794798
I understand perfectly. That's exactly what I thought when I read it. I understood it to be a great philosophical work, very influential, and at the very least, you pretty much have to address it in some way at some point. I'll have to defer to your knowledge of French, and agree that something must be lost in translation.
At the same time, I'm disgusted with, as you said, other disciplines taking it literally. I heard Foucault mentioned more in my general education sociology and psych classes more than in philosophy classes.
>Analytic philosophy = garbage for racemixed plebians
I can see why you would say that, but I somewhat disagree.
At any rate, I focused in Logic as a whole. I was working on Quantum Logic gates for my capstone. Forgive me if I find that more worth while than studying phenomenology.
>>80794891
I went to a school that isn't strong in the humanities. Its a top tier engineering school though, so if you're involved with STEM, you're set. I would compare it to being like Stanford in the Engineering world.
>>80795676
>Stanford in the Engineering world
You mean just Stanford? It's rank 1 or 2 for engineering
>>80795676
Waterloo ? You mentionned Quantum stuff... got a couple friends doing work at the IQC. Or MIT ?
>>80794902
Highest GRE scores, sure.
You cant possibly entertain the notion that a community college graduate in philosophy has any marketable skills in the finance field.
You get those jobs making connections at top tier educational institutions, not merit. I would wager that if you went to Harvard for Anthropology, you would be set up with a decent job.
What I wonder about Foucault and so-called materialists - I think he was one, right? How can they be materialists when everything they talk about are these conceptual systems that such as Marxist history are almost like magic processes that the world has to obey. It seems like they discuss things that are not material or fundamental to reality at all but they give it the name of "social science" forgive my ignorance but what is the practical difference in saying a spirit or soul exists and the Marxist saying history exists?
>>80795881
Wow, I guess it is. I really overvalued my education.
>>80795930
No, Purdue. I was doing work on Quantum Logic gates with a few grad students from Carnegie Mellon. Basically attempting to create some sort of logical operators for modeling how particles "act" under certain conditions.
Really cool! Your buddies at the IQC are very luck to be involved with such great research.
I'm stuck in structural steel. Kinda makes me wish I went double major in Comp Sci and went on for a PHD. I could have never afforded it though.
>>80795989
Materialism -- the material world shapes our being, not the other way around.
For Marx this just means that the way we produce, get food and clothes, etc, is what really defines human nature. Systems like Capitalism, even though they feel like they're "natural," are just man made systems that have only really been around for a few hundred years and we have no reason to believe it is the truly best system or that it will be around for much longer. Marx took Hegel's rejection of the unchanging and applied it to economic systems, basically saying that Capitalism must at some point collapse, it can't last forever, and something new will take its place. Then he tried to predict what would come next, and his prediction was communism.
The opposite would be idealism -- our ideas shape our existence, if we change our ideas we change the world, etc
>>80777443
He's my favorite "leftist" philosopher, even if BDSM and AIDS killed him
>>80796608
But the way communists behave seems very idealistic according to your definition. They don't really think it will happen inevitably on its own or they wouldn't have to even organize for it. Aren't the leftists always going like "change our ideas, change the world"? Or is that just propaganda and different from the high level theory? I don't think any of their philosophy people they follow are considered idealists.
I've infiltrated different "critical theory" circles online. Their biggest fear is "right-wing bigots" assimilating their tools of "critique"
They seem to view Nick Land as grandfather of right-wing critical theory.
>>80797965
Marx and the later generations of Marxists thought that communism would happen eventually because they thought that in late-stage capitalist society there would be extreme wealth inequality, terrible working conditions, and so on. This would cause workers to develop class-consciousness, realizing how they were being exploited, and there would be a revolution. Marx was pretty clear in saying that we have to physically change our material conditions if we want to progress to the next stage of society, so that involves organizing. The existence of communism isn't a self-fulfilling inevitability, it's just that he believed this organization of the proletariat was inevitable because capitalism would become blatantly exploitative.
Obviously capitalism still exists and communism has since been a failure, but Marx could still be right in that capitalism is on its way out. It won't be around forever. The system that replaces it doesn't have to be communism though.
And about the American left, I have no idea what they believe but if they're saying "change our ideas, change the world," then that's not very materialist. Marx's big critique of German post-Hegelian Idealists was that they hadn't changed the material conditions of Germany at all. They liked to believe their great ideas were changing the world, but they weren't. Without real action that changes the material conditions of the world, and for Marx this goes down to the means of production, then the world can't significantly change.
