"There are certainly many insights in Foucault's early writings. But the relativist method – which identifies reality with a way of apprehending it – must lead us to doubt that they are hard-won. For this method allows him to jump across to the finishing line of historical enquiry, without running the hard track of empirical enquiry. Consider what would really have to be proved by someone who believed man to be an artefact, and a recent one at that – more recent even than the medieval and renaissance humanists who extolled man's virtues. A proper assessment of Foucault's thought must therefore try to separate its two components: the relativist sleight of hand (which would lead us too simply to dismiss him), and the ‘diagnostic’ analysis of the secret ways of power. It is the second that is interesting, and which is expressed in Foucault's claim that each successive form of ‘knowledge’ is devoted to the creation of a discourse favourable to, and symbolic of, the prevailing forms of domination."
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Atheists from FranceAcademics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceHistorians from FranceSociologists from France
Original Language: English
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Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left (2015), Ch. 3 : Liberation in France: Sartre and Foucault
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
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Michel Foucault
1926 – 1984
französischer Philosoph
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