While he was often fantastically wrong whenever asserting something falsifiable (from the ship of fools all the way to statistics about madhouses in England) there was still an astounding amount of insight in those books.
I wish he had been alive to witness the Vatican's opening of the Inquisition archives. When you read something like THIS article by Cullen Murphy you realize just how much Foucault got right. One key moment:
A Franciscan inquisitor once confided to King Philip IV of France, in the early 14th century, that if Saints Peter and Paul had appeared before his tribunal, he had no doubt that the techniques he employed would be able to secure their convictions.
It all sounds very medieval. But it’s not merely medieval. Scholars may debate whether there truly is such a thing as a “totalitarian” state, and what its characteristics are, but the desire to control the thoughts and behaviour of others – joined to a belief that God or history will render an approving judgement – underlies much of the sad narrative of the past hundred years: the police states, the dirty wars, the ethnic cleansing, the internments, the renditions, the Red Scares, the fatwas, the special prosecutors, the electronic surveillance, the encroachments accomplished in name of national security.
Ouch.
I wish someone could write natural history on the view that reality itself will render an approving judgment. I know Nietzsche tried, but his history was worse than Foucault's. . .
Anyhow, it's a fascinating article and Joe Bob says check it out.
