alt Hacker NewsI can not understand why Foucault is taken seriously. In fact, I cannot understand how Sociology is taken seriously. In my uni course, the textbook tried to claim that childhood development is a myth. When I pointed out the decades of child development psychological studies and research, I was told "we aren't studying psychology, we are studying sociology."
Great! And yet there is an entire field that claims the direct opposite of what is being espoused and this is the best argument they could give me.
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3 different opinions amalgamated as 1 logical conclusion.
1 : your university course had a perspective another field of study contradicted (according to you and your teachers then)
2 : because of that one of those fields, the "new" one according to your learning process, can't be taken seriously
3 : consequently any author from that field can not be taken seriously
No, assuming your recall of the situation is correct it just means you had teachers who didn't care and relied on shitty textbooks, nothing deeper about entire fields.
> why Foucault is taken seriously
I studied philosophy at a pretty prestigious institution, and he's not taken that seriously. He lives squarely in the deep caverns of the "continental" space, where philosophy is often intertwined with psychology, politics, sociology, and so on. But even there, he doesn't reach the level of Sartre, Heidegger, or (of course) Hegel.
Let alone Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (who generally all have specifically dedicated courses). I'm not a huge fan of Nietzsche, but he always has a point. When I read Sartre or Foucault, I'm just left scratching my head as to what they are talking about.
Foucault is taken seriously because his ideas are politically empowering
What was the textbook?
I have a lot of issues with latter 20th cen continental (particularly french) philosophers, but of all of them Foucault is the last one anyone should have an issue with. While he's guilty of some of the pompous and needlessly intelligible stylistics this crew adopted, he at least has some pretty substantial ideas behind his work. Derrida and Lacan on the other hand....
As far as sociology goes, I think you probably realize claiming an entire field is bunk is dumb. In fact you are committing the very wrong you are apparently complying about (writing off the field of developmental psychology). I haven't heard of. a single beef between these two fields btw, must have been an odd textbook.
Fans of Nassim Taleb will know his disdain for Foucault.
You are making a point that shares much with Foucault’s work: trying to understand why and how fields like psychology and sociology came to be crystallized into academic pigeonholes. Your frustration is what he studied.
If you want a deeper answer to your question read:
R. Rorty (1991) “Moral Identity and Private Autonomy: The Case of Foucault” (in Essays on Heidegger and Others)
Rorty makes the point that there are (at least) two ways to read Foucault: both interesting and also in tension.