I still enjoy Foucault, but I find his appropriation by various left-wingers somewhat odd. Foucault claimed that everything was nurture (i.e. convention), and, thus, judgments of good/bad or good/evil were just claims made by the powerful to subjugate the oppressed. This sort of argument makes a hash out of claiming that someone is being unjustly oppressed, since it's all a matter of power. This is also why Habermas called Foucault a conservative (or, at least, a person guilty of wrong-think). But Foucault's argument runs this way: if your team is losing, you should blow things up, but, if your team is winning, you should blow the people up who want to blow things up.
Foucault grew up in a bourgeois Catholic family and he was considered a Gaullist in the 1960s. He missed out on all the fun of Paris in May 1968 because he was in Tunisia at the time doing whatever it is that gay European intellectuals do in North Africa. He sort of reinvented himself as a leftist after May 1968, but seemed to be getting bored with leftism by the early 1980s.
A lot of Marxist thinkers have some useful insights but they often take them far past their logical end.
For example Foucault claimed that madness was entirely a social construction which is of course nonsense. But he had a useful insight that definitions of madness vary quite a lot over time and space, and I try to hold in mind that our contemporary definitions are probably wrong to some extent.
Personally, I’m a bit of a buffet eater when it comes to intellectual thought. I wasn’t when I was younger.
But at this point I am happy picking up bits and pieces from different thinkers in the full knowledge that they aren’t internally consistent.
Bought most professional intellectuals (Steve is an exception) aim for a kind of fully coherent view of the world that isn’t possible.
From what I've read, much like most leftists would have a hard time telling a neocon from a nationalist, postmodernists and Marxists don't actually get along. Postmodernists try to tear down all grand narratives, and Marxism is of course a grand narrative--the rise of the proletariat, creation of communism, and the defeat of capitalism.
There was a nice bit on Areo about turning Foucauldian skepticism (who determines this system of values? what authority do they claim? who does it benefit?) against the left. After all, who's to say that racism or patriarchy are bad? Someone's making that claim, and they're usually people who would benefit from measures against those things. Sadly, that website has gone private.
Good to see you in a fair article. I’m proud to now say I’m reading the book and subscribed to our modern Aristotle, Steve Sailer. I’m an inveterate observer and notice much of what you have noticed. I was a track , basketball, football coach, teacher and consultant but without your writing ability to describe the evident. Keep up the good work.
"What makes Sailer so unpalatable, and even offensive, is not primarily the above"
He might have qualified that to who finds him so.
I'm certain I read about inbred Arabs sometime around 2004-6, but the article in Noticing did not seem familiar, because it merely mentioned and did not stress the children of brothers aspect reinforcing tribalism that I recalled. Did someone take your idea further? I was also shocked around that time by an article about the low IQ means of Arab and African states but can't remember the source.
Her work was too late for the messy part of the Iraq War. Stanley Kurtz wrote two articles for NR in 2007: Marriage and the Terror War, which do stress the children of brothers, but they're heavier reading than I remember--or probably would have bothered with. Oddly, NR's link to the first part doesn't work.
Dr. Kurtz could have written my 2003 article "Cousin Marriage Conundrum" in 2002, but he was in favor of invading Iraq. I was not, so I was the first to explain why the Iraqi penchant for cousin marriage suggested American nation-building was unlikely to succeed in Iraq.
Still, I feel bad for not citing Dr. Kurtz as my inspiration.
Yeah, I still think Foucault is a pretty good writer. We’ll never have done with the panopticon!
Congrats, Steve. About time one of these rolled in. You were long overdue!
Wow, STANCIL still works? I used WILSON the other day.
I didn’t know Foucault was a pedo. I found accusations that he abused boys in Tunisia.
https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/guy-sorman-accuses-michel-foucault-of-abusing-boys-in-tunisia/news/amp
But Steve is the REAL problem.
I still enjoy Foucault, but I find his appropriation by various left-wingers somewhat odd. Foucault claimed that everything was nurture (i.e. convention), and, thus, judgments of good/bad or good/evil were just claims made by the powerful to subjugate the oppressed. This sort of argument makes a hash out of claiming that someone is being unjustly oppressed, since it's all a matter of power. This is also why Habermas called Foucault a conservative (or, at least, a person guilty of wrong-think). But Foucault's argument runs this way: if your team is losing, you should blow things up, but, if your team is winning, you should blow the people up who want to blow things up.
Foucault grew up in a bourgeois Catholic family and he was considered a Gaullist in the 1960s. He missed out on all the fun of Paris in May 1968 because he was in Tunisia at the time doing whatever it is that gay European intellectuals do in North Africa. He sort of reinvented himself as a leftist after May 1968, but seemed to be getting bored with leftism by the early 1980s.
A lot of Marxist thinkers have some useful insights but they often take them far past their logical end.
For example Foucault claimed that madness was entirely a social construction which is of course nonsense. But he had a useful insight that definitions of madness vary quite a lot over time and space, and I try to hold in mind that our contemporary definitions are probably wrong to some extent.
Personally, I’m a bit of a buffet eater when it comes to intellectual thought. I wasn’t when I was younger.
But at this point I am happy picking up bits and pieces from different thinkers in the full knowledge that they aren’t internally consistent.
Bought most professional intellectuals (Steve is an exception) aim for a kind of fully coherent view of the world that isn’t possible.
From what I've read, much like most leftists would have a hard time telling a neocon from a nationalist, postmodernists and Marxists don't actually get along. Postmodernists try to tear down all grand narratives, and Marxism is of course a grand narrative--the rise of the proletariat, creation of communism, and the defeat of capitalism.
There was a nice bit on Areo about turning Foucauldian skepticism (who determines this system of values? what authority do they claim? who does it benefit?) against the left. After all, who's to say that racism or patriarchy are bad? Someone's making that claim, and they're usually people who would benefit from measures against those things. Sadly, that website has gone private.
Good to see you in a fair article. I’m proud to now say I’m reading the book and subscribed to our modern Aristotle, Steve Sailer. I’m an inveterate observer and notice much of what you have noticed. I was a track , basketball, football coach, teacher and consultant but without your writing ability to describe the evident. Keep up the good work.
"What makes Sailer so unpalatable, and even offensive, is not primarily the above"
He might have qualified that to who finds him so.
I'm certain I read about inbred Arabs sometime around 2004-6, but the article in Noticing did not seem familiar, because it merely mentioned and did not stress the children of brothers aspect reinforcing tribalism that I recalled. Did someone take your idea further? I was also shocked around that time by an article about the low IQ means of Arab and African states but can't remember the source.
"Did someone take your idea further?"
H-BD Chick.
Her work was too late for the messy part of the Iraq War. Stanley Kurtz wrote two articles for NR in 2007: Marriage and the Terror War, which do stress the children of brothers, but they're heavier reading than I remember--or probably would have bothered with. Oddly, NR's link to the first part doesn't work.
https://eppc.org/publication/marriage-and-the-terror-war/
I heard about Middle Eastern cousin marriage from Stanley Kurtz in 2002.
Then I'd better not harass him for not referencing your 2003 article. Wonder why he waited.
Dr. Kurtz could have written my 2003 article "Cousin Marriage Conundrum" in 2002, but he was in favor of invading Iraq. I was not, so I was the first to explain why the Iraqi penchant for cousin marriage suggested American nation-building was unlikely to succeed in Iraq.
Still, I feel bad for not citing Dr. Kurtz as my inspiration.
The article is now number 5 in the popular list at The Federalist.