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chomsky famously believes in the possibility of objective morality based on shared sensibilities of right and wrong (as well as a capacity for rationally arriving at shared rules defining moral principles) that are derived from human nature itself.

Foucault, by contrast, sees all attempts at imposing an ostensibly objective morality as little more than the product of concrete institutions and discursive regimes that seek to maintain a certain order of behavior concerned primarily with upholding those in power. From what I understand, Foucault believes in concrete ethical situations and the decisions resulting from them, but not in a transcendent or objective morality.

Foucault is best understood in my opinion after you read Anti Oedipus and Thousand Plateaus. I think Foucault has a level of „you choose how much you harm actively“. I actually think Foucault internalized a lot of self hatred.

I read his works while being a provider of counseling services at a syringe exchange for unhoused folks. And I also train psychiatrists and clinicians on the current scientific understanding of trauma, cognition, and substance use and how they intersect. Plus I’m formerly homeless and mentally ill as fuck. Foucault is my dawg, but damn does he need some hugs and some love.This man accomplished so much and suffered from so much internalized ablesim.

So much of his work starts from him reconciling his own poor self worth. I think his critiques are accurate but they almost come off as self harm. They are so critical of himself that it’s painful for me to read at times.

I cannot believe someone is willing to interrogate themselves to the depths that Foucault did. It’s existentially distressing for me to read Foucault from my background. It’s like reading Lovecraft for me specifically.

• Chomsky also seems to believe that intent is irrelevant and only the consequences of your actions matter.
• And that might be a point because Foucault didn’t care much for ethics. He deemed himself a historian or a „happy positivist“ and his work was more groundbreaking for sociology which deems itself more of a descriptive discipline. I think there are even explanations where Foucault just for work interest reasons distances himself from ethics and questions about morals. He did however did his part to describe how morals were part of discourses, power and self-subjecting subjectivity.

  Foucault of course did some activism and was big in the anti prison movement. So he must have some moral beliefs.

• ablepsia – slepota
•  – ablepsia

What’s most striking with this statement is that Chomsky found Foucault’s philosophical language so different from his own that he would consider it almost non-human.

Chomsky’s main philosophical ideas are tied to essentialism. His philosophy of language is founded on the idea that language is fundamentally a logical structure or mechanism that’s innate to humans – human nature, if you will.

Foucault’s philosophy is so different from this (it’s more about the structure of power relations) that Chomsky found it not human, instead of an example that language (if we zoom out from the syntax level) is perhaps not quite  as logical as Chomsky thought.