I found my anger simmering as I read Rosen’s summary of Foucault’s thesis. Foucault was obviously wrong from the beginning and yet the American elites embraced his thought with the terrible consequences Rosen acknowledges.
Why am I angry? Because Rosen and Bari herself are part of this elite class who pretended for over a generation that …
I found my anger simmering as I read Rosen’s summary of Foucault’s thesis. Foucault was obviously wrong from the beginning and yet the American elites embraced his thought with the terrible consequences Rosen acknowledges.
Why am I angry? Because Rosen and Bari herself are part of this elite class who pretended for over a generation that Foucault’s lies were true--and wrecked America. They’ve certainly destroyed the non-STEM American university system.
A friend of mine was accepted to Harvard Business School in the mid-80s. A month later she sent me a copy of Foucault’s “Madness and Civilization”. She was a B-School student and was being socialized to ingest Foucault as part of the entrance requirement for becoming a member of the Master Class.
A few years before, Yale’s star literary professor and the single individual most responsible for infecting American thought with what Rosen calls the “playful” school of Post-Structuralism, Paul de Man, was revealed to have been a Belgian Nazi. The rising star French-Algerian professor Derrida, like Foucault of Jewish descent, rose to the defense of Paul de Man, who was his close colleague and collaborator. In the name of tolerance these people promulgated lies, Nazism and the demoralization of America’s finest institutions.
And now we’re meant to be moved by the very late realization of these successful candidates for the ruling class that their intellectual mentors were liars, and that reality has consequences? As I look around at the vast cultural, social and political wreckage for which Foucault, de Man and Derrida bear a heavy responsibility, I am not inclined to be forgiving to their eager American collaborators.
I am nothing close to a philosopher. But one appreciation I have for Christianity is that it starts at the bottom of the intellectual scale, not at the top. Smart people just develop smarter excuses for their bad behavior.
I found my anger simmering as I read Rosen’s summary of Foucault’s thesis. Foucault was obviously wrong from the beginning and yet the American elites embraced his thought with the terrible consequences Rosen acknowledges.
Why am I angry? Because Rosen and Bari herself are part of this elite class who pretended for over a generation that Foucault’s lies were true--and wrecked America. They’ve certainly destroyed the non-STEM American university system.
A friend of mine was accepted to Harvard Business School in the mid-80s. A month later she sent me a copy of Foucault’s “Madness and Civilization”. She was a B-School student and was being socialized to ingest Foucault as part of the entrance requirement for becoming a member of the Master Class.
A few years before, Yale’s star literary professor and the single individual most responsible for infecting American thought with what Rosen calls the “playful” school of Post-Structuralism, Paul de Man, was revealed to have been a Belgian Nazi. The rising star French-Algerian professor Derrida, like Foucault of Jewish descent, rose to the defense of Paul de Man, who was his close colleague and collaborator. In the name of tolerance these people promulgated lies, Nazism and the demoralization of America’s finest institutions.
And now we’re meant to be moved by the very late realization of these successful candidates for the ruling class that their intellectual mentors were liars, and that reality has consequences? As I look around at the vast cultural, social and political wreckage for which Foucault, de Man and Derrida bear a heavy responsibility, I am not inclined to be forgiving to their eager American collaborators.
I am nothing close to a philosopher. But one appreciation I have for Christianity is that it starts at the bottom of the intellectual scale, not at the top. Smart people just develop smarter excuses for their bad behavior.
A relevant perspective on the Foucault’s, de Man’s and Derrida’s from Psalm 52 in our great Judeo-Christian tradition:
WHY do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against the godly? All day long
2 you are plotting destruction. Your tongue is like a sharp razor, you worker of treachery.
3 You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth.
4 You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue.
5 But God will break you down forever; he will snatch and tear you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living.
6 The righteous will see, and fear, and will laugh at the evildoer, saying,
7 “See the one who would not take refuge in God, but trusted in abundant riches, and sought refuge in wealth!”
8 But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.