Foucault’s Fictions

[Philosophy Now]

Paul Royall reviews Didier Eribon’s new biography of an anguished French genius.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/6/Foucaults_Fictions

[Jai]

It is interesting to learn some factual details of the life of M. Foucault who seemed to prefer privacy and mystery. In an interview I saw on YouTube, there was an implication that he accepted orgiastic sex as a chose lifestyle. This is NOT funny, but as a man of great energy, sex is an easy release; not directly connected to being gay in a period to the 1940’ and 50’s when it was still taboo in the world media. His emphasis on power in knowledge is revealed in his tender feelings for human suffering, as opposed to pure metaphysical knowledge. Thus his original writings on the corruption in psychiatric and the penal system while intensely factual, are also deeply insightful. In this way he follows through in his early interest in Marxism by revealing how big money making business had taken advantage of social services, and from what I have read, most enlightening. I would call M. Foucault a true philosopher, though he may NOT have like the compliment. LoL.

[Gary Childress]

I read Madness and Civilization many years ago but now I've heard that it has a lot of factual errors and loose interpretations in it.