{"id":1741,"date":"2022-12-06T11:22:13","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T11:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/06\/scruton-on-foucault\/"},"modified":"2022-12-06T11:22:13","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T11:22:13","slug":"scruton-on-foucault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/06\/scruton-on-foucault\/","title":{"rendered":"Scruton on Foucault"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although linkage does not entail endorsement, I do endorse the following<\/a> from Powerline:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Roger Scruton\u2019s charming and invaluable memoir, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life<\/em><\/a>, includes a chapter explaining how he first started turning in a conservative direction (he wasn\u2019t raised one\u2014his father was a devoted semi-socialist Labourite), when he witnessed first-hand the student revolt in Paris in May 1968. He was repelled by the spectacle, and concluded that \u2018whatever these people are for, I\u2019m against.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

But what were the student protestors for?<\/em> He recounts arguing with a radical acquaintance on the scene over the question:<\/span><\/p>\n

What, I asked, do you propose to put in place of this \u201cbourgeoisie\u201d whom you so despise, and to whom your owe your freedom and prosperity that enable you to play on your toy barricades? . . .<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

She replied with a book: Foucault\u2019s Les mots et les choses [The Order of Things], the bible of the soixante-huitards [\u201csixty-eighters,\u201d as the May protestors are still known], the text that seemed to justify every form of transgression, by showing that obedience is merely defeat. It is an artful book, composed with a satanic mendacity, selectively appropriating facts in order to show that culture and knowledge are nothing but the \u201cdiscourses\u201d of power. The book is not a work of philosophy but an exercise in rhetoric. Its goal is subversion, not truth, and it is careful to argue\u2014by the old nominalist sleight of hand that was surely invented by the Father of Lies\u2014that \u201ctruth\u201d requires inverted commas, that it changes from epoch to epoch, and is tied to the form of consciousness, the epistime, imposed by the class that profits from its propagation. The revolutionary spirit, which searches the world for things to hate, has found in Foucault a new literary formula<\/strong>. [Emphasis added.]<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although linkage does not entail endorsement, I do endorse the following from Powerline: Roger Scruton\u2019s charming and invaluable memoir, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life, includes a chapter explaining how he first started turning in a conservative direction (he wasn\u2019t raised one\u2014his father was a devoted semi-socialist Labourite), when he witnessed first-hand the student revolt in … Continue reading “Scruton on Foucault”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,325],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-continental-philosophy-criticized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}