Saturday, June 21, 2025

Derrida discredited

The best postmodernist Foucault had his good points and his poor assumptions. Among his best points may well be the points he scored at the end of his life - against Derrida (pdf).

It was, I think, Foucault's mission to problematise core assumptions. But I do not find where Foucault argued that power should trump Truth. He argued mostly that power just... does so trump, at least in hierarchical human societies; leaving aside where it should. From what I read of Foucault, he does not sneer. Derrida sneered: at logos-centrisme, on the assumption the Western philosophies were Platonist. Foucault pointed out philosophies preceded and postdated Plato: he himself was a philosophe of sorts, claiming descent from the Cynics.

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